Where are the Christians of Bethlehem and the Middle East?

March 20, 2025

By: Joseph Puder

Palestinian Islamists' oppression compels Christians to leave, while the Christians in Western Europe are silent and take in millions of Muslims.

In the fall of 1991, broadcasting from Israel as a radio talk show host on WMCA-New York, I sat down for an interview with the mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, at city hall, just a stone’s throw away from the Church of the Nativity.

A jovial man, Freij, as a Christian surrounded by a majority of Muslims in his city, had to have a thick skin. Despite not being formallypart of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, he fully identified with the PLO out of necessity/self-preservation. He would subsequently serve as part of the Jordanian/Palestinian delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference. 

With typical Arab hospitality, Freij had a servant bring us strong black Turkish coffee and sweets as we sat in a balcony overlooking much of the city. Following my questions about PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the terror campaigns waged by the PLO against Israelis, which he largely defended, I asked him the cardinal question: Where are the Christians in this, the birth city of Jesus? He hesitated for a moment and then pointed his finger westwards toward the Mediterranean Sea and responded, “In Santiago de Chile!”

In 1950, two years after Israel’s independence, there were 36,000 Christians in Israel. Today, there are 187,900 Christians in Israel, making it, as of 2021, the only country in the Middle East with a growing Christian population.

While the number of Christians in the Jewish state grows, a different story is occurring in areas controlled by the Palestinian Arabs, including Gaza. The Greek Orthodox Church recently said that “Terrorist attacks against Christians, assaults on churches, cemeteries, and Christian properties in the Palestinian Authority … have become daily occurrences, and their severity clearly intensifies during Christian holidays.”

Both the demographic tendencies of Christians, as compared to Muslims, as well as the rate of emigration, have drastically reduced the Christian population in the Middle East. While in 1914 they represented some 26% of the population in the whole of the Near East (Israel, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria), today they are estimated at no more than 1% or 2% percent of the population in Gaza and what is commonly referred to as the West Bank, or less than 10% throughout the entire region.

There are conflicting statistics regarding the extent to which Palestinian Christians are leaving or have left their ancestral residences, in what is now PA-administered territory. One reason for differing figures is that some provide overly optimistic estimates of the remaining Christian population to retain whatever residual political and economic clout the various communities enjoy.

All informed opinions, however, accept that the Christian population has declined, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the total population of Palestinians. Palestinian Christian emigration peaked during the First Intifada (from 1987-1993) and increased rapidly at the onset of the Second Intifada (2000-2005). Between October 2000 and November 2001, 2,766 Palestinian Christians left the West Bank and 1,640 left the Bethlehem area.

Long considered a Christian city, Bethlehem exemplifies these trends of demographic and cultural decline. According to the Christian Information Center, in 1950 Christians made up 86% of Bethlehem’s population. Until the Oslo Accords, Bethlehem had the largest Christian majority of any city in the area. However, after the Palestinian Authority assumed control, the Christian population decreased precipitously.

In Gaza, the situation is even worse. Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, the Christian population has shrunk from 5,000 to approximately 600 today. Testimonies from Palestinian Christians in Gaza, collected by Christian organizations, describe a constant threat to their lives.

What Westerners don’t understand is that in the Muslim world, religion is the primary form of self-identification. In Palestinian-administered territories (West Bank and Gaza) and, in the greater Middle East (governed by some form of Sharia Islamic law), Christians and Jews occupy the status of dhimmi, meaning “protected people,” who must pay a special tax known, historically, as a Jizya. It is intended to compel Christians and Jews to convert to Islam.

Salafi Muslims, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, seek to emulate the successors of the prophet Muhammad known as the Rashidun, an Arabic word for “rightly guided” that refers to the first four caliphs of the Islamic community after the death of Muhammad. These caliphs colonized the Middle East and were responsible for the mass conversion of Christians and some Jews to Islam—by force of the sword and through economic pressure. It is therefore not surprising that they would oppress the Christian minority in Gaza.

Whenever the opportunity presented itself, Palestinian Islamists desecrated Christianity’s holiest sites. For instance, in 2002, after a suicide bomber killed 30 Israelis and injured another 140 people attending a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel Defense Forces went into Bethlehem. Palestinian terrorists ran and hid inside Bethlehem’s holiest Christian site—the Church of the Nativity, where they were surrounded by the IDF. During the standoff, which lasted for more than a month, the terrorists reportedly also stole valuable icons and used pages from holy books as toilet paper.

Western societies, by and large, have discarded God and religion, particularly those in Western Europe. Yet, they have a reverence for Islam, which is slowly conquering Europe after a failed attempt in the 8th century C.E. The Europeans murdered their Jews, who gave them culture and Nobel prizes, and replaced them with millions of Muslims who will eventually end their “good life.” In the meantime, these same Western Christians are silent about the Muslim oppression of their co-religionists, and about the fate of the Christians in the birthplace of Jesus.

https://www.jns.org/where-are-the-christians-of-bethlehem-and-the-middle-east/