Illegal Israeli settler violence against Christians in West Bank is growing, warns Jerusalem bishop

LONDON

Christians in the occupied West Bank continue to face aggression by illegal Israeli settlers, threatening their presence in the region, according to an auxiliary bishop of Jerusalem on Saturday.

"The aggressions against Christians in the West Bank are multiplying," William Shomali told American-based global Catholic news organization EWTN News.

The bishop warned that Christians in the occupied West Bank continue to face an onslaught of aggression by Israeli settlers while threatening their presence in the region.

Shomali went on to say that Israeli settlers have prevented Palestinian Christians from accessing their land through various threats, physical aggression, and property damage, including burning their cars.

"This happened mainly in the Christian village of Taybeh, and we communicated this news to all the world, even to the American ambassador in Tel Aviv, who came to visit the place, and he promised to do something, but not many things were done," he noted.

Settlers have been coming to Birzeit, a Palestinian Christian town, "almost every day" to threaten them in their homes or places of work, Shomali said, calling on the Church to intervene and provide aid for people to survive.

"This has become a real threat to Christian families," he added.

Shomali said Israeli settlers have also recently occupied land belonging to a convent of sisters in a village near Bethlehem called Urtas. The sisters “have a hill where they plant and grow olives and other things,” he said. “Settlers came to occupy this hill and to make it theirs, where they think of building a new settlement.”

The bishop said he just heard today that settlers entered a piece of land and put an Israeli flag "to mean that this land now is Israeli," while there is a deed of ownership to a Christian family that he knows from Beit Sahour.

"So slowly, slowly, the land of Palestine that Israelis call now Judea and Samaria, the biblical name, is becoming less and less Palestinian and more and more settlers’ land," he added.