By John McHugo | Thu 22nd January 2026

On 7 January, Palestinian Christians gathered in Gaza City to mark Orthodox Christmas at Saint Porphyrius Church, one of the oldest churches in the world. It was the first Christmas service there in three years. In October 2023, Israeli airstrikesdestroyed a building in the church’s compound, killing 17 of the 450 Palestinian Christians seeking refuge inside. The two years that followed brought such widespread destruction, hunger and loss that there was little desire for festivity.

A powerful op-ed by Palestinian student and writer Ali Skaik captured the contradictory mood inside the church: sorrow intertwined with hope, loss alongside renewal. There was also defiance in the simple act of turning up, of refusing erasure. As one congregant put it, “Our presence protects Palestinian history. Christianity is a pillar of Palestinian identity. By celebrating Christmas here, we assert our existence and our belonging to this land.”

The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as a religious struggle between Muslim and Jewish groups, but the witness of Palestinian Christians exposes the hollowness of that narrative. It is a nationalist struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. Like the rest of the population, Gaza’s Christians have faced over two years of relentless bombardment and siege, while those in the West Bank endure the daily realities of life under unlawful occupation shaped by checkpoints, settler violence, land seizures, and Israeli military control.

The birthplace of Christianity, Palestine was once home to a large Christian community. The Christian population of the whole of Palestine was around 12.5%before the 1948 Nakba. That on the West Bank has now declined to under 50,000, or less than 1% of the total population. Today perhaps 140,000 Palestinian Christians live in Israel as Israeli citizens (well under 2% of the population) while less than 1,000 live in Gaza.

According to a 2020 study, escaping the conditions of occupation is a primary factor behind the emigration of Palestinian Christians, alongside related economic, educational and security considerations. Corruption and a weak rule of law are also factors. Christians are twice as likely as Muslims to seek to emigrate. Most participants felt that Israeli policies were designed to push them from their homeland. A substantial proportion also feared political Islamist groups; however, the overwhelming majority felt they were integrated into Palestinian society.

In parallel with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, Christian communities in the West Bank have faced a sharp escalation in settler violence and land seizures, often carried out with the involvement or protection of Israeli soldiers. In Taybeh, the last entirely Christian West Bank village, residents endured a series of settler attacks over the summer, including an arson attack on its ancient church and a raid in which settlers torched cars, spray-painted graffiti, and released livestock. Meanwhile, in Jericho, settlers illegally seized land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Abba Gerasimos of the Jordan.

Last month, in the Christian-majority town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, Israeli settlers bulldozed the Ush al-Ghurab hilltop to establish an illegal settlement outpost there. The move forms part of a strategy to isolate Bethlehem by creating a contiguous Israeli space extending out from Jerusalem.

Such incidents reflect the wider policies of oppression, apartheid and forced displacement that impact all Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike, forming the bedrock of the Israeli Government’s unspoken project to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their land.

Palestinian Christians face restrictions on their freedom to worship. While pilgrims from around the world can freely visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, believed by Christians to be the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, some Christians living just a few miles away are rarely granted permits. When I went on my pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a Christian in 2004, our guide could not meet us at Ben Gurion airport. The reason? She was a Palestinian from Bethlehem and was forbidden from entering Israel.

In Jerusalem’s Old City, Christians have been spat at, verbally harassed, and physically assaulted. The Religious Freedom Data Center documented around 200 such incidents between January 2024 and September 2025, predominantly committed by Jewish religious extremists against clergy or individuals wearing Christian symbols. Although president Herzog and prime minister Netanyahu have condemned this and Netanyahu has told the security forces to take action, his national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, appeared to justify the act of spitting at Christians, describing it as an “ancient Jewish tradition” that should not be criminalised.

Palestinian Muslims also face barriers to practising their faith, from intimidation tactics around the Al Aqsa Mosque to permit restrictions. These patterns point to a broader system that seeks to sever Palestinians from their land, their history, and the spaces through which communal life is sustained.

As with their Muslim neighbours (and despite the actions of the Jewish religious extremists) Palestinian Christians are not targeted because of their beliefs, but because they identify as Palestinian, their demand for rights equal to those of Israelis, and their refusal to leave. Like the congregation at Gaza’s Saint Porphyrius Church, the commitment of the Palestinian people as a whole to remain, to rebuild, and to resist erasure is a powerful and inspiring act of defiance.

Well done to the party for calling for British recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state and helping to influence a reluctant Starmer to go ahead with it! But further action is now vital to ensure that a two-state solution becomes once again viable, and Palestinians and Israelis can be given the chance to build peace together as equals.

* John McHugo is a member and former Chair of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine and a member of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum. His next book, provisionally titled “How Hell came to Israel and Palestine: the conflict between Zionism and Islamism”, will be published by Hurst later this year.