(RNS) — It was 3 a.m. when David Azar’s phone rang. The assistant pastor of an evangelical Christian congregation in Ramallah, north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, had been visiting late in the city on Sunday (July 27) and decided to spend the night at his in-laws’ home rather than risk the 8-mile drive back to his village of Taybeh.
On the other end of the line was his brother Jeries, pleading for help. Their family car had just been torched, and he was terrified he, with his wife and 2-year-old child, might meet the same fate as the Dawabsheh family, who had been burned to death, including their infant son, when Jewish settler extremists attacked the nearby village of Duma in 2015.
The attack on Taybeh was not the first, nor was it isolated. On July 7, a group of settlers set fires near Taybeh’s cemetery and the Church of St. George, which dates back to the fifth century A.D. and is one of the oldest religious landmarks in Palestine.
Visiting Taybeh on July 19, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist and a close ally of the Israeli prime minister, promised that those settlers responsible for previous attacks would be held accountable. The ambassador told CBS News: “To commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship, it is an act of terror, and it is a crime. We will certainly insist that those who carry out acts of terror and violence in Taybeh, or anywhere, be found and prosecuted. Not just reprimanded, that’s not enough. People need to pay a price for doing something that destroys not just what belongs to others, but what belongs to God.”
What’s also not new in Taybeh, however, is the protection the settlers enjoy from security forces, nor how they are emboldened by Israeli political leaders. Two senior Israeli ministers, the minister for national security and the finance minister, live in illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Both are central figures in a government that has actively encouraged settler expansion and shielded those who commit acts of violence.
Israeli police and military personnel visited the scene of the attack on the Azar house in Taybeh and conducted an initial investigation, but, true to precedent, no accountability is expected. Impunity, not justice, remains the rule.
According to the Rossing Center, an Israeli nongovernmental organization, there were 111 documented incidents of harassment or violence against Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem in 2024 alone. Between 2005 and 2020, Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights group, tracked 1,664 police investigation files related to settler violence against Palestinians. Of those, 94% were closed without indictment, and only about 3% led to convictions.
For years, Palestinians have warned that the Israeli-Palestinian political conflict must not be allowed to morph into a religious war, but it is now taking a dangerous religious turn. Yet Israeli radicals have increasingly assumed powerful positions, undermining long-standing understandings at Islamic and Christian holy sites. In Jerusalem, the fragile status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, is being steadily eroded.
In Hebron, the Israeli government recently stripped the local municipality of its role in managing the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, and holy to both Jews and Muslims. Israeli media report that it is still unclear whether the site will now be administered by the Israeli army or by the council of the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement.
The rise of Jewish supremacist ideologies, meanwhile, and the absence of a political horizon are creating a volatile and perilous future, especially for Palestinian Christians, whose numbers are rapidly dwindling. Observers are beginning to draw uncomfortable parallels between the rise of Jewish supremacy in Israel and the resurgence of white supremacy in the United States. Both reflect an alarming trend of extremist ideologies gaining mainstream traction and undermining pluralism and the rule of law.
A political solution to the conflict is still considered the best way forward. A high-level conference is currently being held at the United Nations in New York, co-sponsored by France and Saudi Arabia, to revive a political process based on the U.N. General Assembly’s framework for a two-state solution. However, some of the main players are balking. Israel’s current government openly rejects the creation of a Palestinian state, and Washington has said it will not participate in the conference.
Meanwhile, the future for Palestinian Christians becomes bleaker. They remain disproportionately active in political, social and economic life, despite being a shrinking minority. Yet as terror like that faced by the Azar family hits home, the pressures to emigrate grow stronger. While Palestinian Christians consistently express a deep desire to preserve their presence in the Holy Land, continued violence and intimidation risk turning churches into empty monuments, museums without worshippers.
Christian leaders often implore visitors to the Holy Land to engage not just with ancient stones, but with the living stones — the people who have sustained Christianity here for centuries. The question now is whether anyone in power will act to protect them before it’s too late.
(Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian Christian journalist, is the publisher of Milhilard.org, a news website dedicated to Christian Arabs in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, and the author of “State of Palestine NOW.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)