Palestinian terrorists fled into a church on Tuesday, using Christian worshipers as human shields after throwing fire bombs at Israeli civilians in Judea, Jerusalem’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
“Too often, violence against Christians in the Middle East is ignored. Yesterday it happened again in Judea and Samaria,” the ministry wrote in a post on X.
According to the Foreign Ministry, two terrorists entered the Church of Saint George in Al-Khader, an Arab village some three miles west of Bethlehem, as worshippers were celebrating the Feast of St. George, marked annually by Palestinian Christians, for whom he is their main patron saint, on May 5, because the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem follows the Julian calendar for many feast days.
“Israeli forces deliberately avoided entering the church to protect civilians and respect the sanctity of the holy site,” the Foreign Ministry tweeted. “Shortly afterward, violent clashes erupted between local Christians and Muslim residents in the village.”
Only some 33,000 Palestinian Christians remain in the three towns of the Bethlehem area, according to 2022 estimates.
In Bethlehem, one in five residents is Christian, a sharp decline since Jerusalem ceded control of the town to the Palestinian Authority in 1995, when 80% of the town identified as Christian.
