Israel has paralysed the start of the academic year for Christian schools in occupied East Jerusalem with a sudden rejection of entry permits for Palestinian teachers. The schools will remain closed until permits are renewed. The Israeli apartheid regime’s move is one of many making life increasingly impossible for Palestinian Christians.
Severing East Jerusalem from the West Bank
Israel suddenly chose not to renew the permits of more than 70 Palestinian staff members from the occupied West Bank, just as schools were due to open up after the summer holiday. Already, this has affected 8,500 students. Bethlehem clergyman Mitri Raheb told Al Jazeera this was:
just another step in attacks on the church presence in Jerusalem, which is really now threatened with extinction
Historian Zachary Foster, meanwhile, said this decision fits in with Israel’s clear double standards and pattern of trying to isolate East Jerusalem from the West Bank. He told the New Arab that:
Israeli Jews that live in settlements in the West Bank can enter Jerusalem without any problems
At the same time, about 45,000 East Jerusalem students at Israeli-run schools now have to follow the Israeli curriculum, as part of an escalating push to control the cultural and historical narratives Palestinian children hear at school. As Raheb asserted, this is:
part of a pattern of settler colonialism, where an attempt is made to make native people unlearn their own history and adopt the settler-colonial narrative
This is just another tactic within Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, he said.
Israel has illegally occupied East Jerusalem since 1967. Thousands of Palestinian families had fled to East Jerusalem after the Nakba in 1948. And while the much smaller number of Jewish people who left East Jerusalem at the same time can now reclaim property they allegedly owned there, Palestinian refugees can’t do the same.
Although most Palestinians in East Jerusalem live in poverty, Israeli authorities regularly enforce evictions or demolitions as part of a longstanding ethnic cleansing campaign. The apartheid state has also seized or attacked UN property in the occupied city to weaken support for Palestinian refugees.
Israel assaults Palestinian Christians
Former UN special rapporteur Michael Lynk has highlighted an increase in attacks against Christians in Jerusalem. This assault extends throughout Palestine and beyond.
In recent days, the occupied West Bank has seen Israeli forces demolish a Christian family’s home and farmland while the aggression of illegal Israeli settlers has forced another family to abandon their home in the Christian town of Taybeh. Church leaders in Taybeh have condemned the intensifying attacks on residents.
The ancient town of Sebastia, meanwhile, where pilgrims go to honour Saint John the Baptist, is under serious threat from Israel’s land seizure and settlement expansion plans. This is despite UNESCO listing it as a heritage site.
Christians haven’t been safe from the genocide in Gaza either. Israeli forces have hit a number of churches in the occupied territory, for example, and even bulldozed largely British and Australian graves in a Commonwealth cemetery.
In short, the viral images of Israeli thugs toppling a Jesus statue in Lebanon were just the tip of the iceberg. And while the attention those images brought embarrassed Israel’s leaders, they very much capture the systematic disrespect for religious communities in territories under Israeli occupation.
This is why many Christians — an integral part of the Palestinian community — are taking the difficult decision to leave their homeland. And Western Christians shouldn’t just see this as Palestinian Christians ‘getting caught in the crossfire’, because Israeli occupiers clearly target all Palestinians – regardless of their religion.
End Israeli impunity
The Western world generally seems to care more about Christian deaths than non-Christian deaths. So perhaps increasing coverage of the Christian plight in occupied Palestine will help wake more people up to Israel’s crimes — which absolutely haven’t just gone away because they’re in the news a bit less.
While the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran dominates the news right now, Israel is also still attacking Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. It’s killing people in the West Bank and attacking infrastructure like hospitals and desalination plants in Gaza, where the ‘ceasefire’ is an absolute insult to the meaning of the word.
The genocide in Gaza is very much continuing. It’s just in a phase where occupation forces are killing fewer people. But even since the ceasefire started in October 2025, Israel has bombed Gaza almost daily, murdering over 1,300 people (around four per day). And one person within the average daily death toll is a child.
All Palestinians, whatever their religious beliefs, deserve justice. And for that to happen, the world must put a definitive end to Israel’s impunity.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
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