'Gaza's Christians Are Tired. They Want to Leave': A Palestinian Bishop on Survival, Settlers and Reconciliation -
Bishop William Shomali in his office near Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Christian Quarter. "History can surprise us. The first condition, however, is justice. Justice means giving each person and each people, Israeli and Palestinian, what is rightfully theirs." Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
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At dawn on Saturday, October 3, 2026, Maisa Abu Dawoud and her daughter Mary, members of Gaza's Greek Orthodox community, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza City. Their deaths deepen the losses of a community whose numbers have fallen by about half since the war began. During the war, 58 Christians died, either as a result of military attacks or from illness.
"There are now 550 Christians left in Gaza," says Bishop William Shomali, vicar general of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem since 2021. Speaking from his office near Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem's Old City, he describes a community struggling to rebuild, even as many of its members seek a way out.
Gaza's Christians are "in need of so much. They are tired. And they want to leave," he tells Haaretz.
Shomali, the most senior Palestinian Catholic prelate, was born in 1950 in the West Bank city of Beit Sahour. He studied in Beit Jala, Jordan and Rome, and was consecrated as an auxiliary bishop of Jerusalem and Palestine in Bethlehem in May 2010. As vicar general, he is second-in-command to Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in a Patriarchate encompassing Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Cyprus.
His work brings him into close contact with congregants and their communities, while navigating between the warring sides requires both pastoral care and a healthy dose of ecclesiastical diplomacy.
Before the war, most of Gaza's Christians lived near the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches in Gaza City, and their children attended Christian schools. Displaced from their homes, they sought refuge from the shelling in the church compounds. Those places of shelter also became sites of death.
On October 19, 2023, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building within the compound of Gaza City's Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, killing 18 civilians. At the Catholic Holy Family Church compound, two women were killed by IDF fire in December 2023, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Israeli tank fire struck the compound in July 2025, killing three people.
The community's plight drew sustained attention from the Vatican. A week after October 7, Pizzaballa expressed his "total willingness" to be exchanged for Israeli children held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. From the start of the war until two days before his death in April 2025, Pope Francis made daily phone calls to Father Gabriel Romanelli, the Argentinian priest of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.
During the war, around 40 to 50 Christian families left Gaza for Australia, while 22 students went to Madaba, Jordan, to study at the university established there by the Patriarchate. Others continue to seek a way to leave, according to Shomali.
"Many of them call me every week," Shomali says. "They say: Father, we want to go abroad, wherever we can, to Jordan, Egypt, Europe, Australia, Canada. But it is not easy to leave now. There are many, many political challenges."
Yet he also sees tentative signs of renewal. According to Shomali, following the cease-fire in October 2025, many Christians returned to homes that had been damaged but not completely destroyed. The church compound remains a gathering place where congregants can charge their phones, get drinking water and pray.
The Latin Patriarchate School in Gaza reopened in September, welcoming about 1,000 students, he notes. "Some are Christians, but the majority are Muslims: The Muslim families believe in the education we offer, which is quite different from the radical education provided by Hamas. There were 10,000 applicants, but we don't have space for them."
In the West Bank, a different set of pressures is also driving Christians to consider leaving. The severe economic repercussions of the Gaza war, surging settler violence and growing intimidation by settlers and the IDF are accelerating emigration.
"Settler attacks on, and IDF incursions into, Christian towns like Taybeh, Birzeit, Aboud, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour create unrest and fear," Shomali says.
"Many Christian families, especially in Bethlehem, are thinking of leaving, and procedurally it's easy for them to leave." Many Palestinian Christians have relatives abroad and already hold foreign passports, including from the United States, Canada or El Salvador; many others have applied for immigrant visas.
"Every family that leaves unfortunately makes the Christian community remaining in Bethlehem more vulnerable and fragile," he says.
These departures intensify a demographic decline that began long before Israel's founding. In the mid-19th century, historic Palestine's 21,000 Christians constituted about 10 percent of its population, Shomali says. Lower birthrates and sustained emigration, starting from the late Ottoman period, have since reduced their share. Poverty, harsh rule and fear of conscription into the sultan's army drove many to South America, including Chile, now home to an estimated 400,000 people of Palestinian descent, among them Shomali's relatives.
Within the Holy Land, Christians have increasingly moved from their villages to Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jerusalem to sustain communal life. Today, Shomali estimates that more than 1.5 million Palestinian Christians live in the diaspora, while Christians number 185,000 in Israel and 50,000 in the Palestinian territories, about one to two percent of their respective populations.
The figures are bleak, but Shomali rejects predictions that the community will disappear.
"Some pessimists say that in 30 or 40 years, there will be no Christians left in the Holy Land. I think this is far too pessimistic. Christian communities will remain, especially around the holy places. But numbers also matter, and today our numbers are very low."
A recent encounter with settlers in his hometown of Beit Sahour in the West Bank brought those pressures closer to home.
We were both in Beit Sahour in August when settlers fired toward Palestinians and Israeli activists taking part in a solidarity action. Why were you there?
"I have an emotional attachment to Beit Sahour. I was born there, and my family lives there. When I was told there would be a tree-planting event on land belonging to Christian families, I couldn't say no. It was a way to show my solidarity. When I heard that Israeli visitors were joining us, I felt my decision was affirmed.
"Within minutes of our arrival, the settlers knew we were there. A drone was already filming us. Settlers came running, and soldiers followed immediately afterward, with their weapons at the ready, ordering everyone to stop. I'm convinced that the presence of Israelis alongside us provided a certain degree of protection. Without them, I believe we would have faced much harsher treatment.
"I had never witnessed live fire before. This aggressiveness is new to me. I will never forget the courage of the Israeli solidarity activists with us, or the contrast with the settlers' violence. I see this as a source of hope: We shouldn't consider all Israelis to be settlers or extreme right-wingers. On the contrary, salvation may come from Israelis themselves.
"This is part of the great mistake Hamas committed on October 7, 2023. They attacked southern Israel, knowing that many of the people they attacked were peace activists. No one in Beit Sahour supports what Hamas has done, not only because of the terrible repercussions of this war, but because the action itself is undoable."
"Many Israelis, before October 7, supported the rights of Palestinians to autonomy, to sovereignty, to two states. But because of what happened, many Israelis took a step back," he says, while recognizing the "many groups" of Israelis who still act in solidarity with Palestinians.
In late March 2026, during the war with Iran, Israeli police severely restricted access to Jerusalem's major holy sites. Their decision to bar the Catholic patriarch from conducting a minimal Palm Sunday Mass at Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre with a few Franciscan friars drew international condemnation, including from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, prompting Netanyahu to order a U-turn.
What are relations with the Israeli government like now?
"There were serious tensions during Holy Week," Shomali notes. "We informed the police beforehand, but Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, accompanied by the Custos of the Holy Land [the Franciscan friar who is the official guardian of the Christian Holy Places], was nevertheless prevented from reaching the church.
"The next day, seeking to avoid a diplomatic crisis, the government intervened and instructed the police to allow the cardinal and a delegation of 15 people to enter the Holy Sepulchre and participate in the Holy Week services.
"The situation could have been handled with greater sensitivity. There are, after all, different ways of enforcing a law: One can apply it in the strictest possible way, or with a certain degree of flexibility, civility and common sense. In this case, the police chose to enforce it very strictly.
"Once a year, we pay a visit to the president of Israel, and our relationship with him is generally cordial and correct. There are established channels of communication with his office, and they function reasonably well. However, we have not met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he formed his present government in 2022."
Do you think the Israeli government is more careful not to upset or harm Palestinian Christians than Muslims?
"There is no single attitude among Israelis. Some, including certain government officials, take a longer view. They understand that Israel has an interest in maintaining good relations with the Christian world and respecting the small Christian communities that continue to live in the Holy Land. Unfortunately, not everyone shares this awareness.
"The case of the Christian villages of Iqrit and Bir'am in northern Israel illustrates the difficulties that Christians have faced. Their inhabitants were displaced in 1948, and despite favorable Israeli court rulings regarding their return, they have never been allowed to re-establish their villages."
How important is the Christian community in the Holy Land to American Catholics?
"There are 80 million Catholics in the United States, including senior administration officials such as Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. There is great solidarity between U.S. Catholics and the Christian communities of the Holy Land. They know that we are a peaceful people and a vulnerable minority, and that continued political unrest threatens our presence in the Holy Land.
"This solidarity is also expressed through material support. Much of the assistance we provide to our people, helping families pay their rent and school tuition or meet basic needs such as buying food, comes from Catholics throughout the world, with particularly generous support from the United States. This is a powerful and concrete sign of solidarity.
"There is also an important diplomatic dimension. When needed, the Holy See engages with U.S. political leaders, appealing for restraint, an end to excessive violence and greater efforts toward peace. These efforts to end the conflict may not yet have yielded visible results. But we hope that, in time, the solidarity expressed by the Vatican and the Catholic world will make a more concrete contribution to peace.
"One important area is advocacy for a political solution according to UN resolutions. In Europe, there is a move towards a two-state solution. In the U.S., the shift is smaller but it is happening. The shocking images from Gaza have had an impact, and settler violence is harming Israel's image in the world, even among supporters of Israel. If U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has the courage to talk about 'Israeli terrorists,' even though he was attacked for saying it, others will follow and have the courage to say more."
Shomali notes that, after the wave of sympathy for Israel after October 7, international public opinion has shifted due to the scale of Palestinian suffering. "Suffering is not the monopoly of one people, one religion, or one community. We must acknowledge the suffering of everyone – Christians, Muslims and Jews. At the same time, the magnitude of the suffering endured by the people of Gaza has been without parallel," he says. "It is in Israel's own interest to change this situation and demonstrate a genuine commitment to a just solution, rather than remaining indefinitely in this gray zone of neither war nor peace."
Can there be reconciliation?
"I would like to give the obvious example of Europe. After two terrible world wars, during which tens of millions of civilians and soldiers were killed, and the map of Europe was changed, three political leaders – [French Foreign Minister] Robert Schuman, [Italian Prime Minister] Alcide De Gasperi and [West German Chancellor] Konrad Adenauer, all Catholics and men of faith, I say this with pride – had the courage to choose reconciliation rather than revenge.
"If Europe could reconcile after so much bloodshed, then reconciliation is also possible in the Middle East. We need leaders with the same courage and vision to build a new Middle East out of the suffering of today, just as those leaders built a new Europe out of the ruins of war.
"Another striking example is the visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Israel's Knesset in November 1977. I was 27 years old. When I was told that Sadat was coming to Jerusalem to propose peace, I could hardly believe my ears. I cried throughout his speech, especially when he said: 'When the bells of peace ring, there will be no hands to beat the drums of war.' There he was, being applauded by the members of the Knesset and receiving a standing ovation. This happened here, in the Middle East.
"There are other examples. I remember King Hussein of Jordan coming, with great humility, to offer his condolences and ask forgiveness after a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls at Naharayim in March 1997. And I remember Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had made the courageous decision to seek a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before he was assassinated.
"That is why I still have hope. History can surprise us. What happened before can happen again. The first condition, however, is justice. Justice means giving each person and each people, Israeli and Palestinian, what is rightfully theirs.
"There must also be forgiveness, because we are deeply shaped by our memories. We are, in a way, what we remember. There were mistakes on both sides. The challenge is not to erase our memory, but to purify it. We must remember what happened, acknowledge the suffering and injustices of the past, but without allowing that memory to become a source of perpetual hatred and revenge.
"Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor denying justice. It means refusing to allow our wounds to prevent a different future. We all have to find the courage to forgive and to begin again. When we have justice and forgiveness, genuine reconciliation becomes possible."