​Palestinian Christians -
​The Forcible Displacement and Dispossession Continues
The Nakba, or catastrophe, which culminated in the forcible displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians, between 1947-1949 continues today. During the Nakba, 90,000 Palestinian Christians were forcibly displaced, and a long list of almost thirty churches of different denominations were forced to close.5 The ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christian communities involved multiple documented cases of massacres and the desecration of various churches. Examples of these cases include the Haganah’s terrorist attack on the Semiramis Hotel in Qatamon, Jerusalem, which saw the bombing of the hotel and the murder of 25 Palestinian Christians.6

For Palestinians generally, including Palestinian Christians, the Nakba is an ongoing reality and an ongoing catastrophe given that Palestinians continue to be denied their right to return and many remain at risk of forcible displacement and transfer. This document, a collaboration between Kairos Palestine and BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights makes the clear and convincing case that the decline in numbers of Palestinian Christians is mainly and directly related to Israeli colonial and apartheid policies. In 2012, we published the study, Palestinian Christians Ongoing Forcible Displacement and dispossession...until when?8 Eleven years later now, and 75 years since the beginning of the Nakba, Israel’s colonial-apartheid regime and its displacement of Palestinian Christians continues.

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The report concludes with the following recommendations...

​Recommendations
BADIL and Kairos Palestine call upon the international Christian community to:
  • Acknowledge the colonial-apartheid nature of the Israeli regime and take related steps to dismantle the colonial-apartheid regime and its structures of domination and subjugation of the Palestinian people.
  • Recognize the right of Palestinian refugees and IDPs to reparations in the form of return, restitution, compensation, and the guarantee of non-repetition as an inseparable part of the internationally-recognized right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.
  • Affirm the Palestinians’ right to resist the occupation, dispossession, and abrogation of their fundamental rights.
  • Join Palestinians in their creative and non-armed resistance.
  • Urge communities (faith-related, business-related, academic, entertainment and others) to support the BDS campaign by divesting from companies that directly or indirectly support the illegal Israeli occupation.
  • Take action to pressure legislative bodies to remove the Jewish National Fund's charitable status in their respective countries.
  • Expand community-led advocacy work that intensifies public pressure to hold Israel accountability under international law.
  • Continue efforts to investigate and prosecute Israeli perpetrators of international crimes and other complicit individuals/institutions.
  • Reject theologies and understandings of the Bible that have been used to justify the oppression of the Palestinian people.
  • Support the work of Palestinian churches and church ministries.
  • Oppose anti-Semitism by working for justice against anti-Judaism, racism and Xenophobia, and crucially oppose the equating of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel’s unjust actions with anti-Semitism.
  • Come and see the reality in the Holy Land with compassionate eyes for the suffering of Palestinians, and stand in solidarity with grassroots initiatives on the part of all faiths and secular groups who challenge the occupation and who work for a just peace.