PERSECUTED AND ABANDONED: the story of the church in the Middle East
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
If only this scripture applied to the church in the West bank and Gaza. But sadly, it does not. The Palestinian church has been hard pressed, crushed AND abondoned. Not because of a lack of knowledge, but because of a misplaced loyalty.
I have served the Persecuted Church for more than forty years. I have travelled extensively, served faithfully and loved unconditionally. Today I realise that seasons have changed and that a silent pandemic of spiritual hypocrisy has infected the body of Christ. My observation of current events in the Middle East therefore moves me to speak plainly, truthfully, and without compromise:
“If you claim to have a heart for the persecuted Church in the Middle East, yet refuse to speak for the suffering of Christians in Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli occupation, then your witness is inconsistent and your compassion selective. That is hypocrisy.”
Across the Middle East, churches and ministries speak passionately about standing with persecuted Christians — in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and beyond. We mobilize prayer, raise funds, and tell their stories with urgency. Yet when the suffering of Palestinian Christians comes into view — in the West Bank, in Gaza, in places like Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Taybeh — many of these same voices fall silent.
The church cannot claim to defend the persecuted while ignoring those persecuted by the very state it blesses.
Rev. Dr. Jack Sara, President of the Bethlehem Bible College and general secretary for the World Evangelical Alliance for the Middle East & North Africa, recently wrote an article that exposes this hypocricy with painful clarity. Let us consider the INSPIRATION, the INFORMATION and the INTERPRETATION
INSPIRATION
Dr.Sara relates an encounter with an elderly Palestinian woman he met while visiting a close relative in a hospital. The woman had worked in the hospital for many years and was supposed to be retired. Yet there she was, back at work. He asked why.
She told him that settlers had taken her family’s 80 dunums of land north of Ramallah – roughly 20 acres. The land had been their security and livelihood. Now, she said, they had lost everything. They could not afford an effective legal struggle, and they believed the authorities stood with the settlers rather than with them. So, at an age when she should have been resting, she had returned to the hospital to survive.
Her particular account deserves proper investigation, and even though Dr.Sara withheld identifying details for her protection, her story is not isolated. It belongs to a wider, well-documented pattern of land loss, intimidation, restricted access, damaged livelihoods, and displacement across the occupied West Bank. When Christian communities like Taybeh face arson, land confiscation, intimidation, and attacks on holy sites, the global church cannot pretend this is unrelated to its mission. These are not abstract political debates; they are wounds carried by our brothers and sisters in Christ.
INFORMATION
The information shared by Dr.Sara is both overwhelming and heartbreaking.
By 20 July 2026, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had recorded more than 1,330 settler attacks causing Palestinian casualties, property damage, or both since the beginning of the year – more than six incidents per day across 250 Palestinian communities. OCHA also reported about 880 Palestinian injuries in the context of settler attacks, including 720 people injured directly by settlers. More than half of the fatalities connected to settler attacks occurred in the Ramallah governorate.
The human consequences extend beyond the moment of an attack. By early July, more than 6,200 Palestinians, including over 3,000 children, had been displaced from their communities in the context of settler attacks and related access restrictions since January 2023. In the week covered by OCHA’s 14 August report alone, 38 additional settler attacks resulted in casualties, property damage, or both.
Christian communities are also under attack. Settler violence is threatening the fragile Christian presence in the occupied West Bank. Taybeh for example, east of Ramallah, is widely described as the West Bank’s last entirely Christian Palestinian town. Its churches and families have reported repeated incursions, intimidation, damage to agricultural land and property, and threats to Christian holy sites. In July 2025, church leaders said settlers started a fire near the town’s cemetery and the ancient Church of St. George. Later that month, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem condemned another assault in which vehicles were set on fire and threatening graffiti was left in the town.
The pressure did not end there. In March 2026, reports from Taybeh described settlers taking control of a local cement factory and quarry, depriving Christian families of access to property and livelihoods. In August, after further attacks, the Israeli military temporarily closed Taybeh to non-residents, saying the measure was intended to prevent attacks by Israeli settlers. The World Council of Churches reported that Taybeh’s families and children were living with continuing fear after repeated attacks, destruction of trees, and damage around Christian property and heritage.
This is not merely an attack on stones, fields, or buildings. It places additional pressure on one of the world’s oldest indigenous Christian communities and accelerates the temptation to emigrate. When the Christians of Taybeh suffer, the global church cannot treat them as strangers. ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together’ (1 Corinthians 12:26).
Evangelicals who speak passionately about protecting Christians in the Middle East must include Palestinian Christians living under occupation and settler violence.
INTERPRETATION
A call to repentance
Repentance is not hostility toward Israel or the Jewish people. It is a return to truth, justice, and the way of Jesus. Evangelicals or any other Christians who have blessed settlement expansion, funded it, volunteered for it, or used biblical language to excuse its violence should repent. Churches should examine whether their tours, donations, preaching, and political advocacy have contributed to Palestinian invisibility or harm.
Such repentance must bear fruit. Evangelical leaders should publicly condemn settler attacks and every assault on civilians. They should stop describing all the land through language that erases Palestine. They should listen to Palestinian Christians as members of the same body of Christ, not as a public-relations problem. They should support legal aid, trauma care, protective presence, livelihoods, and church ministries serving threatened communities. They should ask Israeli authorities for equal enforcement of law, protection for Palestinian residents, and accountability for perpetrators. And they should pray – specifically and publicly – for Palestinian Christians and for all Palestinians facing fear, displacement, and loss in the West Bank.
Prayer is essential, but prayer that refuses truth becomes avoidance. We must pray for Israeli families living with fear and grief. We must pray for Palestinians living under occupation and violence. We must pray for the repentance of those who attack, those who incite, those who enable, and those who remain silent. We must pray for courageous Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and international partners who resist violence and work for a just peace. And then our budgets, pilgrimages, partnerships, and public statements must agree with our prayers.
The church’s final vision is not one nation triumphing over another. Revelation gathers a multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9). Isaiah envisions nations transforming weapons into tools for cultivation (Isaiah 2:4). This is God’s heart for the nations: not erasure, not domination, but worship joined to justice and peace.
It is hypocrisy to champion persecuted Christians in the Middle East while refusing to acknowledge Palestinian Christians who suffer under occupation, settler violence, and dispossession. It is hypocrisy to preach reconciliation while blessing policies that uproot families, erase communities, and pressure Christians to emigrate from their ancestral homeland. And it is hypocrisy to use biblical language — “Judea and Samaria” — in ways that erase the people who live there now, turning Scripture into a political weapon rather than a call to justice.
If the church is to be credible, its compassion must be consistent. If we defend Christians in Syria and Lebanon, we must also defend Christians in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Gaza, and Taybeh. If we condemn persecution in one place, we must condemn it in every place — including when it is carried out by those we consider allies. Anything less is not the gospel of Jesus; it is selective morality shaped by politics rather than truth.
https://www.comeandsee.com/view.php?sid=1470
Over 100 Palestinian Villages in West Bank Evacuated / Unprecedented Increase in Zionist Settler Attacks – ABNA English
UN OCHA, Humanitarian Situation Report, 14 August 2026
UN OCHA, Humanitarian Situation Report, 23 July 2026
UN OCHA, Humanitarian Situation Report, 10 July 2026
The Washington Post, Israeli figures warn state has lost control, 19 November 2025
Reuters, Israel sends troops into West Bank homes besieged by Jewish settlers, 13 August 2026
Reuters, Palestinian-American journey to his Qusra home under settler siege, 17 August 2026
Associated Press, Israeli settlers siege Palestinian homes in Qusra, August 2026
The Times of Israel, settler terror attacks rose 63 percent in first half of 2026, 10 August 2026
The Washington Post, IDF troops stood by during the Qusra siege, 14 August 2026
Reuters, Israeli military closes Palestinian Christian village Taybeh citing settler attacks, 9 August 2026
World Council of Churches, In Taybeh children live in fear, 12 August 2026
Reuters, Clerics accuse West Bank settlers of attacking Christian sites, 14 July 2025
Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Statement on the attack in Taybeh, 29 July 2025
International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024
United Nations, Implementation of Security Council Resolution 2334, 9 March 2026
Reuters, Christian evangelicals harvest land in settlements Israel hopes to annex, 12 September 2019