Anadolu Ajansı © 2026
In the lush valley of al-Makhrour, west of Bethlehem, a wooden cross once stood on Alice Kisiya’s family land.
Now, only splintered wood and broken pieces remain.
On May 8, Israeli occupiers broke into the property, approached the cross and cut it down, Kisiya told Anadolu.
"They started to throw stones at the cross,” Kisiya said. “But then after, they brought an electric saw … and they cut it into pieces."
For Kisiya, a Palestinian Christian activist, the incident is part of a long-running pattern of harassment and violence against her family and other Palestinian Christians in the occupied West Bank.
"It's not new that they came and they vandalized our cross again. They always come and harass us in the land,” she said, adding that Israeli occupiers have repeatedly vandalized Christian symbols on the property, destroyed cameras and uprooted trees.
Apart from battling daily attacks by occupiers, Kisiya's family has also spent more than 15 years fighting legal battles over ownership of land in al-Makhrour, an area threatened by settlement expansion.
Last year, an Israeli court rejected an occupier organization's allegation that the land belonged to them and ruled that the documents presented were fabricated.
The court ruled that the Kisiya family were the legal and rightful owners, forcing the occupiers to leave Kisiya's land and dismantle an illegal outpost.
"This case has been going on for more than 15 years, and we faced lots of demolitions of our businesses, restaurant and the house," she said.
In 2019, during the last and fourth demolition, the family decided to stay in tents on the land, but after Oct. 7, 2023, the occupiers took advantage by "annexing and taking over and stealing the land."
Fighting the case wasn't easy.
"It needs lots of patience, lots of energy to face it," Kisiya said.
The family has faced repeated attacks, arrests, intimidation and rumors, including pressure linked to her father’s work permit in Jerusalem in an effort to cut off the family’s income.
"We already knew that we have the documents that we are the owners, but we were waiting for a small gap to use it against them, to kick them out."
Kisiya explained that the Israeli company involved is not even registered among the list of companies allowed to do any development projects in Area C, the part of the occupied West Bank.
“It is all a big web of corrupted people who only work for their own interests,” she said.
Kisiya said Palestinian Christians were increasingly being pressured to leave their land through repeated intimidation and settlement expansion.
“They do this intentionally to Christian Palestinians to force them to leave those lands,” she said. “They hate Christians, they don’t like us.”
She argued that Christian communities, which own significant amounts of land, have become increasingly vulnerable to settler violence and land seizures.
“This land has been giving us so much, it has been caring for us so much,” she said. “So it's time to give it back what it deserves, and it's time to protect it because it's our home.”
Palestinian human rights activist Rifat Odeh Kassis highlighted that while "settler terrorism and violence" are part of the measures taken against the Palestinians in general, the Palestinian Christians have been facing a surge in attacks over the last three years.
"It is becoming unprecedented," said Kassis, recalling the case of an occupier pushing over and kicking a French nun in Jerusalem in April, which triggered international outrage.
He noted that while the nun’s assault was captured on video, many attacks on clergy and Christian residents receive far less attention.
According to a report by Israeli non-profit the Rossing Center, harassment and violence against Christians have been increasing, with 155 documented incidents, including 61 physical attacks, in 2025. These figures, researchers add, represent just the “tip of the iceberg.”
In certain areas of Jerusalem, clergy report that “harassment has become so routine that stepping outside can carry an almost certain risk of abuse,” according to the report.
Spitting on Christians and churches, verbal harassment, arson, trespassing and vandalism, including on sacred sites like cemeteries and churches, were all documented last year in Israel and occupied territories.
The report also found a pattern of increasing restrictions on access to religious celebrations. Examples include the cancellation of a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Nazareth due to severe restrictions and Israeli police blocking Jerusalem's Catholic cardinal from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Palm Sunday Mass.
Kassis also noted growing immigration restrictions on foreign clergy.
"The latest incident of a Jordanian who was denied a permit to stay and had to leave,” he said. “There are several clergy who were also denied either entry to the country or they received orders to leave the country."
Kassis said even since last year, incidents like these have been “intensifying.”
He also described Israel as moving from being a racist secular regime to becoming a racist religious state, with Christian villages under attack from occupier violence and illegal expansion protected by the Israeli forces.
"Very recently Beit Sahour, which is my city, now has a new settlement being built on the land,” he said. “When it is completed, this will be a major threat for the community at large."
"We feel that this will be a reason to push out at least one-third of the Palestinians living in Beit Sahour because living next to settlements with lunatic racist settlers, I mean this is not an easy issue."
He said that other places, including Taybeh, the West Bank’s last fully Christian village, were facing settlement expansion and other restrictions.
“Taybeh is a very peaceful community, 2,000 Christians living there ... There is no reason to attack them, no reason to vandalize them, and despite all this, they (the occupiers) want them out, and this is the reason for these daily attacks.”
Due to the ongoing situation, Kassis said that people were forced from their homes.
"No one leaves his or her country by choice. People leave when the pressure mounts in an unprecedented way, when people cannot continue living peacefully, when uncertainty has spread to the level that people become so afraid about their children's future and about their life."
A 2024 survey by the Rossing Center found that 48% of Christian respondents said they were considering leaving the region. Twenty-five percent of the Jewish population surveyed said they believed the government should act to encourage this emigration.
Kassis said the Christian community does not judge those who leave.
"I mean, any person with some sanity and with some connections abroad, he would leave not because of his safety, but because of the safety of his children,” he said.
Since the Gaza war, Kassis estimated that more than 300 to 400 Palestinian Christian families have left Bethlehem and that only around 400 remain in Gaza.
Saying that he does not feel that there is a "light at the end of the tunnel," Kassis urged the international community to take action.
"Either the international community intervenes now or we will witness the erosion of the Palestinian Christians in the land where Christianity was born,” he said.
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