Your Beatitudes and Eminences,
We write to you once again at a moment of profound danger in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, where policies of settlement expansion, annexation, and forced displacement continue to accelerate at an alarming pace. At the same time, organized settler crimes and daily attacks against the Palestinian people are escalating under an increasingly permissive environment of impunity. Together, these developments pose a grave threat to the prospects for peace and justice and are rapidly eroding the Palestinian presence in its homeland, including the historic Christian presence that has been an integral part of the Holy Land.
The number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, exceeds 800,000, spread across hundreds of settlements and outposts. In addition, more than 200 settlement outposts and pastoral farms have been established as instruments of territorial control, facilitating the seizure of Palestinian land and the displacement of Bedouin and rural communities. The Israeli government continues to devote unprecedented financial resources to this enterprise, allocating more than 19 billion shekels to settlements and related projects, alongside over one billion shekels for settlement road networks designed to link settlements together while fragmenting Palestinian territory, isolating cities and villages, and transforming them into disconnected enclaves.
The settlement project has evolved far beyond the construction of housing units. It now constitutes a comprehensive system of colonial policies and practices aimed at permanently reshaping Palestinian geography. Through the expansion of bypass roads, infrastructure projects, and accelerated land registration and classification procedures, vast areas of Palestinian land are being redefined as so-called “state land,” creating irreversible facts on the ground and entrenching direct Israeli control.
In this context, Israeli authorities have established an online platform operating under the Civil Administration, to oversee the registration and settlement of land ownership in the West Bank. This move forms part of a broader process that paves the way for land reclassification and gradual annexation. Simultaneously, efforts are underway to alter the status of areas currently designated as Area A and transform them into Area C, including the area surrounding Solomon’s Pools south of Bethlehem. These measures reflect a systematic strategy to expand geographical and administrative control over Palestinian land.
Your Beatitudes,
These policies manifest themselves daily in acts of violence and organized crimes directed against Palestinian civilians and against the Palestinian Christian community, which remains an inseparable part of the identity, heritage, and living witness of the Holy Land. Recent months have witnessed a dangerous escalation in settler attacks targeting Palestinian communities with deep Christian roots, including Taybeh, Birzeit, and areas throughout Bethlehem and Jerusalem. These attacks have been accompanied by repeated assaults on clergy, churches, and Christian holy sites, amid a climate of incitement and near-total impunity.
In occupied Jerusalem, policies of home demolitions, land confiscation, and forced displacement continue unabated as part of systematic efforts to alter the city’s historic, cultural, and demographic character. Hundreds of Palestinian residents of the Al-Bustan neighborhood in Silwan face the imminent threat of displacement under plans designed to remove them from their homes and ancestral lands. Over the past two years alone, 57 homes have been demolished in the neighborhood, including 16 since the beginning of 2026. Israeli authorities have also confiscated approximately 110 dunums of land in Nabi Samuel and Beit Iksa in further efforts to isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings and expand settlement projects. Meanwhile, the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar continues to face the threat of forced displacement under the E1 settlement plan, which seeks to connect settlement blocs and permanently sever Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.
The situation in the Gaza Strip is equally alarming. More than two million Palestinians are enduring an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe marked by widespread destruction, mass displacement, and the near-total collapse of civilian infrastructure. At the same time, policies aimed at imposing new realities by force continue, with effective control reportedly extending over approximately 60 percent of the territory and official statements indicating intentions to expand that control even further. Such developments reflect a deeply troubling effort to reshape the demographic and geographic reality of Gaza and impose lasting constraints on the lives and future of its people.
Your Beatitudes and Eminences,
What is unfolding before our eyes is not merely a violation of international law and United Nations resolutions. It represents a direct and existential threat to the Palestinian people, to the historic Christian presence in the Holy Land, and to the very possibility of achieving a just and lasting peace grounded in justice, human dignity, and rights.
At this critical juncture, we look to your spiritual, moral, and humanitarian leadership to raise a clear and principled voice in defense of truth. We urge you to engage your governments, institutions, and communities in calling for an immediate end to these violations, accountability for those responsible, effective protection for the Palestinian people and their Muslim and Christian holy sites, and respect for the rights guaranteed under international law and international humanitarian law.
We further call upon churches and Christian institutions around the world to use their moral authority and prophetic witness to defend justice and reject policies of land confiscation, displacement, collective punishment, and the systematic undermining of the prospects for a just peace in the Holy Land. Silence in the face of such injustice can no longer be regarded as neutrality. At a time when fundamental rights are being denied and entire communities face displacement and dispossession, silence risks becoming a form of acquiescence that perpetuates suffering and prolongs injustice.
We remain hopeful that the churches of the world will continue to stand as witnesses to truth, defenders of justice, and guardians of the human and Christian presence in the Holy Land. The challenges of this moment demand moral clarity, courage, and principled action.
Palestine, the land of faith, message, and peace, deserves renewed international and moral commitment in support of justice, human dignity, and the protection of holy sites and people. It deserves a future in which freedom, equality, and peace prevail over occupation, and dispossession.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ramzi Khouri
Member of the PLO Executive Committee
Head of the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine
