Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
August 2009 – The Middle East has existed in a state of crisis for more than 60 years, and most people who have stayed abreast of that turmoil understand it to be rooted in the conflict between Israel and Arab Muslims.
But there is another group of people whose circumstances, while increasingly precarious, are almost invisible to the world: Palestinian Christians.
A combination of threats and intimidation from Muslim extremists and the fallout from the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict are driving many of these believers from their ancestral homes.
David Parsons, media director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem and contributing editor of the Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, said that the “Palestinian Christian community is dwindling fast, from about 10% of the population in 1948 to barely 1.5% today.”
Most of the Palestinian Muslims and Christians live under the Palestinian National Authority (PA), created in 1994 to administer parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, pending an agreement between Israel and the PA to establish a permanent and autonomous Palestinian state.
The West Bank, just west of the Jordan River, includes the Biblical territories of Judea and Samaria. The Gaza Strip is a small sliver of land on the southwestern corner of Israel bordering the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt.
There have been disagreements between the principle parties that have prevented that Palestinian state from becoming a reality. Armed conflicts between Palestinian Muslims and the state of Israel have frequently turned nasty.
That has been part of the reason for the exodus of Palestinian Christians. Parsons said of this mass departure, “What remains in dispute is who is to be held responsible for the decline – Israel or the Palestinian Muslims.”
Muslim journalist Khaled Abu Toameh dismisses any attempts to blame Israel above all factors. “True, Israel’s security measures in the West Bank have made living conditions more difficult for all Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike,” he said. “But to say that these measures are the main and sole reason for the Christian exodus from the Holy Land is misleading.”
The exodus is not simply the fault of the entire Muslim community, either, Toameh said. The Arab-Israeli conflict has ruined the economy in many places throughout the Palestinian region and has heightened the dangers facing Christian families.
Many place the majority of blame on Islamic radicals. “Christians don’t feel free anymore. … [Muslim extremists] are trying to impose their way of life,” an Arab Christian told WorldNetDaily (WND). He added: “At times we don’t feel safe for us, our families and our Christian friends.”
In the West Bank, for example, Palestinian thugs – identified by local government sources as members of Hamas, a terrorist organization – destroyed the headquarters of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), according to WND. The YMCA was accused of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.
Two years ago, according to the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Rami Ayyad, director of a shop owned by the Palestinian Bible Society, was kidnapped and murdered in Gaza City by jihadists, Muslim fundamentalists who have declared “holy war” on infidels.
While the murder of Christians does not occur on a regular basis in the PA, other acts of intimidation are growing.
“Over the past few years, a number of Christian businessmen told me that they were forced to shut down their businesses because they could no longer afford to pay ‘protection’ money to local Muslim gangs,” Toameh said.
Jewish human rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner, a scholar-in-residence at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said those who remain in the PA “do so as a beleaguered and dwindling minority. They have faced virtually uninterrupted persecution” over the last 14 years.
What Weiner describes seems like bedlam. “[L]awlessness and anarchy have swept the West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent years,” he said. “Gangs of Muslim thugs and thieves have created what a former Palestinian cabinet minister described as ‘total chaos.’ … [T]hese militants … frequently abuse and intimidate Christians.”
The persecution is taking its toll in some locales. “Today, Christians in Bethlehem constitute less than 15% of the population,” said Toameh. “Five or six decades ago, the Christians living in the birthplace of Jesus made up more than 70% of the population.”
Squeezed between Israel and Palestinian Muslims – especially Muslims on the more radical fringe – the difficulties endured by many of these Palestinian Christians are often completely off the radar screen of believers elsewhere. 
