Star Metro - Exodus: West Bank hardships drive out Palestinian Christians

"If the current conditions continue, there will not be a single Palestinian Christian left by 2050," said Raheb, founder and president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Faced with growing uncertainty over economic and security conditions, hundreds of Christians have left since the war in the Gaza Strip began nearly three years ago.

Since the Gaza war began, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have become an almost daily occurrence, while the Israeli military has multiplied its operations and security checkpoints.

Issa Qassis, a 31-year-old entrepreneur, is considering leaving his family and the startup he established in the West Bank city of Ramallah to immigrate to the United States.

"I started seriously thinking about it about a year ago," Qassis told AFP, saying he feels "frustrated and hopeless" about the situation.

"Every time I move one step forward in my work, I end up taking three steps back."

Between 40,000 and 45,000 Christians are estimated to live in the West Bank today, accounting for slightly more than one percent of the population.

In 1967, when Israel began occupying the territory, Christians made up around six percent.

- 'Warning bell' -

Clergy members, officials and researchers say young Christians such as Qassis leave due to the deterioration of the humanitarian and economic situation in the West Bank, where jobs are increasingly scarce and movement restricted.

"Parents used to pressure their children to stay here. Now they encourage them to emigrate," Qassis said, adding that his mother, who once opposed his departure, is no longer against it.

The desire to leave the West Bank is not limited to Palestinian Christians, but there are factors making it easier for them to do so, said Palestinian foreign minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin.

Christians can emigrate more easily than Muslims because they are more likely to have relatives abroad, giving them better opportunities to find work and integrate culturally and socially, says Aghabekian, an Armenian Christian herself.

The decline in the Christian population in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, "should ring a very serious alarm bell for the Christian world", she said.

She called for "very strong action to ensure Christians remain in the land where Christ was born", adding that "the Christian world must see the reality of this occupation".

The Christian population is significantly less in the Gaza Strip, with only around 600 left in the war-ravaged territory of over two million.

-- Accelerated emigration --

Christian communities have emigrated from West Bank cities in successive waves since the 18th century, with large Palestinian Christian diasporas now established in the Americas, including more than 40,000 in Chile alone.

More than 200 Christian families have emigrated from the West Bank since the Gaza war began in 2023, according to Reverend Raheb.

Church leaders told AFP they are seeing increasing emigration among young members of their congregations.

Christians of the West Bank are concentrated in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and Bethlehem, as well as Ramallah and several surrounding villages and towns.

In the town of Taybeh, east of Ramallah -- the last entirely Christian town in the West Bank -- churches have documented the emigration of more than 15 families since 2023.

Its population, now 1,200, stood at 3,000 in the 1980s.

The town has been repeatedly targeted by Israeli settler attacks in recent years, targeting lands, residents' properties and even holy sites.

"The daily suffering caused by the lack of security" resulting from the attacks, combined with difficult economic conditions, are pushing residents to reconsider their futures, Father Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of the Latin Church in Taybeh, told AFP.

Although Taybeh lies just 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Ramallah, it took AFP journalists about an hour to reach it because of Israeli military checkpoints.

Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, home to around three million Palestinians.

A 2020 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 35 percent of Christians in the West Bank were considering emigrating for economic reasons, educational opportunities or in search of stability and freedom.

It also noted a concern about hardline Islamic groups in Palestinian society as well as armed groups.

The centre's director, researcher Khalil Shikaki, said that the desire to emigrate in the West Bank is twice as high among Christians as among Muslims.

Now six years after that survey, he said, "almost everything has become worse".

O.Ouellet--SMC