With all eyes focused on Iran and Lebanon this week, worrying over a cease-fire that appears to be hanging by a thread, Bishop William Shomali, the vicar general of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, urged that the people suffering under deplorable conditions in Gaza and the West Bank’s occupied Palestinian territories not be forgotten.

In Gaza, Bishop Shomali told Vatican News on April 1, “two million people are still suffering: The issue is unresolved.” On the West Bank, settler rampages and harassment against Christian and other Palestinian communities continue without significant intervention by occupying Israeli soldiers.

Scores of Palestinians have been assaulted and many killed, including three American citizens; homes and automobiles have been torched in arson attacks. Ancient olive groves have been cut down or uprooted and grazing animals stolen or killed.

Attacks on Taybeh, described as the last entirely Christian village in the West Bank, have been escalating since the middle of last year. The small community has endured multiple arson attacks, including a brushfire begun around the fifth-century Greek Orthodox Church of Saint George.

“What is happening to the Palestinians themselves is just sheer terror, designed to make the situation there so unlivable that they leave,” Michael La Civita, the communications director of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, said.

He could not speculate about why settler attacks have spiked in recent months but noted “bad actors” perceiving a political vacuum are often ready to take advantage of those conditions. And with bombs falling in Lebanon and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran dominating the news, “that opportunity for some Israeli extremists is now.”

After years of conflict, economic turmoil and accelerating discrimination, Mr. La Civita described the Christian community in the West Bank, indeed throughout the Holy Land, as a shadow of its former self. Those with the means to do so are leaving, Mr. La Civita said.

Now observing southern Lebanon experience the same “scorched earth” devastation already visited on Gaza, Mr. La Civita wonders: “How much more can they take?”

Palestinian Roland Bassir stands on a hill overlooking his and his brother's quarry in the Christian village of Taybeh, West Bank, March 23, 2026. Bassir cannot open his quarry since Israeli Jewish extremist settlers, he said, have taken control of the area, threatening him with violence if he comes to work in the quarry he has owned for 20 years.
Palestinian Roland Bassir stands on a hill overlooking his and his brother’s quarry in the Christian village of Taybeh, West Bank, March 23, 2026. Bassir cannot open his quarry since Israeli Jewish extremist settlers, he said, have taken control of the area, threatening him with violence if he comes to work in the quarry he has owned for 20 years. Credit: OSV News photo/Debbie Hill

In the smoke and confusion of the current war, “I don’t think anyone is thinking of the Christians,” he said.

Christians are facing pressure from all sides across the Holy Land, Edward Clancy, the U.S.-based director of outreach for Aid to the Church in Need, agreed. Many feel they have no allies and no power watching out for their interests.

“What’s lost, especially on the American church,” where self-described Christian Zionists remain strong supporters of Israeli policies, “is the antiquity of this church, the antiquity of these communities,” Mr. Clancy said. “They go back generation after generation after generation.” Enduring economic catastrophe, terrorism and war, will indifference finally prove their undoing?

A surge in settler violence

Human rights organizations and media in Israel report that settler violence has risen sharply since the Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023 and the devastating war across Gaza that it provoked.

But much of what the world is witnessing in the West Bank has occurred before, if not at this ferocious pace. Mr. La Civita called it “state-sanctioned land seizure.” In the past that has been conducted, he said, “under the guise of security.” Now “there’s no pretense of legality.”

A U.N. Commission of Inquiry was “appalled by the sharp deterioration in the human rights” in the occupied Palestinian territory since the start of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran on Feb. 28, suggesting that “the broader conflict is obscuring the plight and situation of the Palestinian people.”

According to the commission, since the Iran war began, 22 Palestinians, including children, have been killed by Israeli settlers or Israeli security forces. Israeli settlers have been carrying out daily attacks, “often with Israeli military backing.”

Settlers have also established new illegal outposts, “leading to more violence, with little apparent opposition by Israeli authorities.” The commission notes: “The increasing use of sexual and gender-based violence by settlers to intimidate and expel Palestinians from their land continues with impunity.”

An analysis of U.N. data by the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper found that since 2020, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,100 Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, at least a quarter of whom were children. The Guardian reports that no one has been charged over any of these deaths.

The once-tacit approval for settler radicalism among the top ranks of the Israeli government has become explicit; several ministers in the Netanyahu government come from settler communities themselves and have enthusiastically endorsed the establishment of new settlements and outposts on the West Bank, illegal under international law and often unsanctioned by the Israeli government itself.

According to Mr. La Civita, many average Israelis are troubled by the increasing aggression endured by Palestinian villagers at the hands of settlers who have enjoyed near-complete impunity. And there have been signs that patience, at least among some members of the Israeli security and political classes, with what some have called “Jewish terrorism” is wearing thin.

Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, visited the West Bank in March. “It is unacceptable that during a multifront war the IDF is also forced to confront a threatening minority from within,” he said. “These are rioters who do not represent the greater population. In reality, they endanger residents, security, stability and our values as a people and as a state.”

“The reality is that right now, villages are being attacked, communities are being deliberately driven from their homes, sheep are being slaughtered, orchards are being burned, people are being attacked simply because they are Arab,” Israeli minister Meirav Cohen said in The Times of Israel.

“This is indeed terrorism—and Jewish terrorism,” she said. “It has become more widespread, more organized, more dangerous. And it is dangerous not only for Palestinians, but also for Israelis, for soldiers, for our country.”

In a letter to the Guardian on March 25, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert urged the International Criminal Court at the Hague to intervene against settler violence because of what he described as the failure of Israeli authorities to respond. Mr. Olmert charged that settlers seek to clear Palestinians from areas in the West Bank with attacks reminiscent of those “once directed against Jews in Europe.”

“If law enforcement authorities in Israel do not fulfil their duty,” Mr. Olmert told the newspaper, “perhaps international legal authorities will do what is necessary to save the Palestinians and us from the criminal acts being committed by Jewish terrorists right in front of all our eyes.”

Even within the settler movement itself, concerns are boiling over about the attacks orchestrated by “the Hilltop youth,” a reference to a loose collective of mostly young Israeli men who have taken to establishing so-called outposts near West Bank communities. Their unsanctioned outposts become launching sites for harassment campaigns against nearby Palestinians that have grown more frequent and violent this year.

B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, reports that since October 2023, “military attacks and settler violence in the West Bank have led to the displacement of Palestinians on a scale not seen since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967.”

How should America respond?

The Trump administration has recently applied more pressure on the Netanyahu government to do more to get settler violence under control. Responding to America by email, a State Department official said: “We are in regular dialogue with the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority about countering illegal activities and improving stability in the West Bank. We condemn criminal violence by any party in the West Bank.”

“Ambassador [Mike] Huckabee has visited Christian communities of the West Bank on multiple occasions, including visits to Taybeh and Bethlehem. The Ambassador has condemned criminal attacks on Christian churches and reaffirmed the Administration’s strong support for their freedom of worship and the protection of their religious sites.”

The ambassador has also shown strong support for Christian Zionism and wondered aloud how any Holy Land Christian leader could not share his enthusiasm for it.

Both Mr. La Civita and Mr. Clancy, longtime observers of Holy Land dynamics, called prayer the first response American Catholics should take up as West Bank Christians struggle to hold on. “Pray for justice, pray for peace,” Mr. La Civita urged, suggesting as a next step that Americans better inform themselves of the complex history and politics of the region.

“Read Vatican News, read the Catholic press,” he said, where a more nuanced understanding of Holy Land realities and history and respect for the human dignity of all people of the region will more likely be encountered than in mainstream media distorted at times by partisan agendas.

“The pope, in his statements on what is happening, has been remarkably clear.”

But action is warranted, too, Mr. La Civita said. Much as Pope Leo XIV recently implored people of good will to take their petitions for peace to end the war with Iran to their political representatives, Mr. La Civita urged U.S. Catholics to reach out to Congress to demand that the protection of West Bank Christian Palestinians be made a higher priority.

“There’s no one who’s happy with what is happening in Washington and the inertia or the inability for anything to get done,” he said. “Unfortunately, though, Washington these days only functions from crisis to crisis. This is a crisis, and we need to let folks know that there will be repercussions for this” at the ballot box in November.

“The power of the vote, of exercising your civic duty is extremely important and to advocate, advocate, advocate for the rights, not just the Christians, but for all who are trying to lead normal, healthy lives,” Mr. La Civita said. “They just want peace and security for their families. They all do, whether they’re Jewish, Christian or Muslim.”

He added that he expects the generosity shown by the U.S. Catholic community to support Palestinians, Christian and Muslim alike, in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to continue. All economic sectors are in disarray but particularly the tourism and agricultural sector relied on by many Christians.

Aid to the Church in Need has been supporting families, places of worship and communities. CNEWA and other regional charities like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas International are also responding to this displacement and economic crisis and will be ready to assist with reconstruction when this latest cataclysm of violence ends.

The loss of the Christian witness in the Holy Land would be incalculable, Mr. Clancy said. In addition to roles as educators and entrepreneurs, Christians have long performed a mediating role in Israel and other Middle Eastern states, acting as spiritual and social mortar.

When the war ends, he worries that Christians will again be excluded from the table. He urges that supporting their continued presence in the Holy Land be a strong consideration of the Trump administration.

“There needs to be a real concerted effort to protect and to reinvigorate the Christian communities there,” Mr. Clancy said. “If you want to rebuild a structured, positive society, the Christian presence is necessary.”

“We’re not looking for…some sort of extraordinary [intervention], but just give them the opportunity to stay where they are, to have a life. They will endure if given the opportunity.”

More from America

A deeper dive

The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. Last time: On immigration and war, the U.S. bishops are echoing Oscar Romero.

For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches. This week: Catholics hope Pope Leo’s Africa trip will uplift countries suffering from U.S. aid cuts and Does just war theory justify the Iran war? Catholic voices debate.

Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).