Palestinian Christians call themselves “living stones” and say they have lived continuously in the Holy Land for the last 2,000 years.
But Reverend Mitri Raheb, founder and president of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus Christ, believes their presence could disappear.
“If the current conditions continue, there will not be a single Palestinian Christian left by 2050,” said Raheb.
Since the Gaza war began, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank have become an almost daily occurrence, while the Israeli regime’s military has multiplied its operations and security checkpoints.
The combination of settler violence, Israeli military restrictions and worsening economic conditions has increased pressure on Palestinian Christians to leave.
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 per cent of the population.
In 1967, when Israel began occupying the territory, Christians made up around six per cent.
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 Al-Quds 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 12km from Ramallah, it took AFP journalists about an hour to reach it because of Israeli military checkpoints.
Excluding east Al-Quds, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, home to around three million Palestinians.