| The plight of Palestinian Christians
Home > Resources > The plight of Palestinian Christians
The Christian population of the Holy Land forms
one of the oldest Christian populations anywhere in the world.
Today, the land's Arab Christians are divided between being Israeli
citizens (with the same rights afforded to Israeli Jews and Muslims)
and Palestinian.
Under Palestinian self-rule since 1994, Christians
living in the Palestinian Authority have been consistently discriminated
against by the Palestinian leadership.
Many feel caught between a rock and a hard place
- wanting to support Palestinian nationalism, yet being discriminated
against by many of their Muslim Palestinian compatriots.
Australian Christians who support Israel love
and support the Jewish state for many different, often overlapping
reasons (some of these reasons can be found here).
However, this support for Israel does not equate to a hatred of Arabs, be they Muslim or Christian.
Unfortunately, many kind-hearted but otherwise
ignorant Christians read the statements made by the Palestinian
Christian leadership and come to think that it is Israel who is
oppressing Palestinian Christians in the West Bank.
This is because most of those leaders only rose
to their positions of leadership due to their anti-Israel stance.
In short, many of them put their political ambitions ahead of
concern for their flock.
It is the view of the ACSI leadership that Christians
who support Israel should also pray for the well-being of Palestinian
Christians. In order to pray with knowledge, this page will list,
as they come available, articles about Christians under Palestinian
control. For an overview, however, we suggest you start by reading this in-depth report, published in 2003, but still relevant today.
If you see an article about Palestinian Christians
that you think should be on this list, please e-mail
ACSI and tell us about it.
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