The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine, headed by Dr. Ramzi Khouri, member of the PLO Executive Committee, has issued an urgent call to churches around the world to take immediate and unequivocal action in response to the escalating campaign of Israeli settler attacks against Palestinian civilians, including Christians. In a strongly worded message, the Committee warned that the intensifying attacks pose a direct threat to the historical and living presence of Palestinian Christians on their land.
The Committee detailed a sharp rise in settler assaults across Birzeit, Al-Makhrour, Taybeh, Ein Arik, and Ush Al-Ghurab, including brutal physical attacks, arbitrary detentions, land theft, and the aggressive expansion of illegal settlement outposts. These actions, the Committee stressed, are part of a systematic and deliberate policy aimed at forcibly altering the demographic and geographic character of the land and driving its indigenous inhabitants from their homes.
Rejecting any attempt to portray these crimes as isolated incidents, the Committee emphasized that settler violence constitutes an organized campaign of terror carried out under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces and sustained by total impunity. According to official documentation by the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, settlers carried out more than 4,723 attacks in 2025 alone, alongside 720 additional assaults involving direct participation of occupation forces. The United Nations has confirmed that settlement expansion has reached its highest level since 2017.
The Committee placed these developments within the broader context of ongoing violations against the Palestinian people in occupied Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, including home demolitions, forced displacement, siege, and war – policies that collectively amount to collective punishment and flagrant breaches of international humanitarian law.
Calling on churches worldwide to rise to their moral, spiritual, and ethical responsibilities, the Committee urged sustained international pressure to ensure effective protection for Palestinian civilians, including Christians; to hold the occupying power accountable for its crimes under international law; and to firmly reject all policies that enable forced displacement and the erasure of the ancient Palestinian presence.
Concluding its message, the Committee affirmed that the land which witnessed the birth of Jesus Christ must never be emptied of its people, and that genuine faith is measured not only in prayer, but in courageous action, by standing openly against injustice and in defense of human dignity and justice.
