The number of Christians in Bethlehem and the wider West Bank has plummeted in recent years, a trend that has only accelerated since the October 7 attack last year.

Father Issa Thaljieh of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, said his congregation has fallen from 6,000 to 3,000 during his 13 years at the church. Ten families have left within the past few weeks.

“People are running from this place because they have no freedom, no security, no jobs,” said Thaljieh, 42, whose family have lived in Bethlehem for more than 200 years.

Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, economic pressures have been made markedly worse by the Israeli government’s tightening of movement restrictions for Palestinians.

An increasingly belligerent and emboldened Jewish settler movement also threatens to isolate Bethlehem behind a palisade of state-sanctioned settlements approved this year by Israel’s hard-right finance minister.

The threat of Islamic extremism is also of great concern, with one local saying that were anything to happen in Palestine like the takeover in Syria by a group once linked to jihadists he would leave immediately.