Many observers now speak openly of “low intensity ethnic cleansing”. Growing hostility, particularly in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is pushing more and more Christians to leave their lands. Harassment and acts of violence by settlers and extremists are now daily. In the Old City it is now not uncommon to be spat on and even friars and nuns are not spared from verbal insults and pushes. Acts of vandalism and desecration of churches, monasteries and cemeteries are also increasing.
The latest 2025 report from the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, the Jerusalem-based interfaith organization, founded in 2006, which promotes an inclusive society and coexistence in Israel between Jews, Christians and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians and which works through education, meetings, research and advocacy to combat prejudice, photographs a situation that is slowly but surely worsening.
In particular the report reports 155 documented incidents in 2025 (there were 111 in 2024). Physical assaults remained the most prevalent category, with 61 cases recorded, followed closely by attacks on church property (52 cases). The remaining incidents consisted of harassment (28 cases) and defacement of public signs with Christian content (14 cases). «These figures represent only the ‘tip of the iceberg'”, we read in the Report, and “reflect a persistent and worrying pattern in which both overt violence and daily humiliations accumulate into a broader phenomenon”.
The result is a progressive depopulation of the areas where Christians live. Although these acts are less visible than large-scale military operations, they are becoming a systemic process aimed, consciously or unconsciously, at changing the demographics of some areasparticularly in East Jerusalem, making daily life unsustainable for Palestinian Christian residents.
Discrimination and intolerance, despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s words of principle (who, after an Israeli soldier had hammered the head of a crucifix in the Maronite Catholic village of Debel, Lebanon, immediately declared that Israel is a safe place for Christians), they actually increase and the situation seems complex.
The main hostility comes from a specific current of radical Religious Zionism, the Kahanism. This current identifies Christianity as a historical enemy, culminating in the Holocaust, and imagines a Jerusalem inhabited only by Jews. The main exponent of this current (whose founder had been banished from Israel by Rabin shortly before his killing) is the minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. According to Gvir, the state must be guided by the principles of Jewish religious law.
The positions of Kahanism intersect with those of religious Zionism tout court which has moved towards increasingly radical positions since 2005 with Israel’s retreat from Gaza. Part of the far right rejects the authority of the democratic state and justifies violence to pursue its own messianic design. Draft that is considered superior to civil law and pursuing Jewish control over the entire “Promised Land”.
The Netanyahu government benefits from the support of these extreme fringes and, indeed, includes them in the executive. And therefore, not only does it allow acts of discrimination against Christians, but it creates a climate of impunity for those who perpetrate them.
In the same hours in which Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was prevented from entering the Holy Sepulchre, for example, a group of extremist Jews desecrated, also taking with them some animals, Christian and Muslim religious places inside the old city of Jerusalem without being stopped and indeed, boasting of their actions through social media.
But it’s not just acts of violence and humiliation.
Netanyahu’s government has given political legitimacy to a vision (that of far-right parties such as Otzma Yehudit and the Religious Zionist Party), which considers Christians, like Muslims, an obstacle to be removed.
Furthermore, precise discriminatory policies are being implemented to erode the Christian presence. First with the permit system with very harsh restrictions that drastically limit access to holy places and the daily life of Palestinian Christians. Secondly with the economic pressure by attempting to confiscate church lands and impose punitive taxes on religious institutions.
Finally, while, as we said, the Government presents itself abroad as the “protector of Christians”, internally it remains silent in the face of violence. Indeed, the prime minister’s statements comparing Jesus to Genghis Khan, confirming the superiority of the latter, are read by the population as a llegitimacy of aggression.
Furthermore, legitimizing and encouraging discrimination The Netanyahu government removes a major obstacle to his narrative of building a great Western power against the threat of Islam. If, in fact, the Palestinians are also Christians, the justification of “his” war as a necessity against the “Islamic danger” does not hold up. Once the mask has fallen, it remains clear that it is, in reality, a war of occupation. Who would like to sweep away anyone who gets in his way. Christians included.
