Christian advocates have urged President Donald Trump to press Israel to protect Palestinian Christian communities from settler violence, warning that attacks and restrictions are pushing them out of the West Bank, “dismantling one of the oldest Christian presences in the Holy Land…with American diplomatic cover,” one told Newsweek.
Trump on Sunday gave his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in power for around 19 years in total across three periods, for reelection at the end of the month.
This came two days after settlers allegedly attacked an American journalist in the occupied West Bank, which Trump's ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, called a “despicable act of terror,” demanding that Israel arrest and prosecute those responsible. During the incident, settlers reportedly besieged three Palestinian homes, including one belonging to a dual U.S. citizen.
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Huckabee said the U.S. Embassy had been involved in efforts to have Israeli forces remove the settlers. The Israeli police have opened an investigation into what Netanyahu called a “confrontation,” adding that “serious questions remain” about what was one of several “disputed incidents,” suggesting that Palestinians or "far-left" activists might have been responsible.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said he “seriously condemned” the “severe acts of violence by Israeli rioters in the area of Taybeh” over the weekend.
On Saturday, European diplomats and a French mayor were also allegedly attacked by masked settlers in the village of Taybeh, the West Bank’s last entirely Christian village. Sa’ar said the delegation had not coordinated with the Israeli military and argued that this could have helped improve security. Israeli police said on Monday they arrested 10 people in relation to the weekend's violence without identifying the suspects or specifying their roles in the attacks.
Advocate Alexandrya Pouliot, a Coloradan who runs the Save West Bank Christians campaign, was in Taybeh was with the European delegation who got attacked on Saturday. She told Newsweek how these were just the most recent examples of the violence Christians are facing there. “Christians in the West Bank are facing an existential threat - at risk of erasure in a matter of years if settler violence and pressure continue to escalate as they have been,” she said.
“What we are watching is the deliberate dismantling of one of the oldest Christian presences in the Holy Land -a community that predates the modern state by nearly two thousand years, that has never produced an enemy of the United States, and that is being systematically terrorized with American-supplied weapons and American diplomatic cover,” Pouliot added.
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Similarly, the Reverend Mae Elise Cannon, Protestant pastor and director of Churches for Middle East Peace, told Newsweek how “every Christian family” she knows in the West Bank town of Bethlehem “has at least someone who has already fled the country or is considering leaving because there is little opportunity to have a safe and prosperous life.”
Both called on the Trump administration to add pressure to Israel to address settler violence, with Pouliot urging it to use the “window” of the October 27 election.
In response, a White House official told Newsweek it has “clearly communicated” to “all parties” that a “stable” West Bank helps keep Israel secure and is part of the administration’s goal for peace in the region.
When Newsweek contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment, it was directed to the Israeli police. Newsweek reached out to the Israeli police and Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., via email, on Monday.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they support and protect Christian communities in the country. In January, President Isaac Herzog welcomed Christian leaders for a New Year’s celebration, calling the Christian population “a blessing to the State of Israel.”
“We are committed to ensuring that Christian communities can continue to grow and thrive, with full freedom of religion and worship,” he said.
Trump’s Israel Policy and Christianity
There have been countless appeals from multiple Palestinian organizations for more action against settler violence in the West Bank, but these appeals from Christians stand out because of the link the Trump administration has repeatedly made between Christianity and its support for Israel.
In 2020, when Trump was talking to a Wisconsin rally about his decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate the U.S. embassy there, he said it was “for the evangelicals.”
Last month, when the White House released a list of 250 Trump victories for “people of faith,” it included support for Israel on the list.
Huckabee has explicitly referenced this connection several times. “The reason we stand with Israel is not political, but because of God’s promises to Abraham,” he told pro-Israel Christian pastors at the Jerusalem Summit at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June.
He addressed reports of violence against Christians in Israel at the same event, saying: “I cannot think of a warmer welcome I could have received, not just from the government officials, but from the people on the streets and everywhere I go in this country. I am amazed at the reception that people show me, knowing full well that I am an Evangelical Christian who believes in the Bible.”
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Huckabee has also repeatedly condemned violent settler attacks, and has been vocal about Friday’s attack on veteran American photojournalist Heidi Levine of The Washington Post, who was hospitalized for serious injuries, including a broken rib, multiple fractured vertebrae and severe damage to a finger that required surgery, according to her daughter.
Huckabee said the identity of the culprits is still being investigated, but called the attack a “dishonorable act of senseless violence….carried out by masked cowards.”
“We have called for a full investigation, arrest, and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law to whoever participated in this,” he said in a post on X.
Christians ‘Disappearing From the Land Where Christianity Began’
Cannon, based in Jerusalem and ordained by the Reformed Church in America, said Palestinian Christians are “disappearing from the very land where Christianity began.”
“Christians tend to have more financial resources and relationships with the international community,” she told Newsweek, meaning they are “able to leave much more readily than their Muslim neighbors.”
An estimated 50,000 Christians live in the West Bank and Jerusalem, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2023 International Religious Freedom Report—less than 2 percent of the West Bank’s roughly 3 million residents.
Official emigration figures broken down by religion are not available, but Pouliot told Newsweek the current Christian population in Taybeh is 1,224, down 75 people (19 families) since tensions escalated in the region after October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and abducting 251 hostages to Gaza. Israel's response has killed 74,480 people in the Gaza Strip as of Wednesday, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
Newsweek has also reviewed several independent reports showing hundreds of Christians leaving Bethlehem. For example, in January, the Catholic Diocese of East Anglia estimated around 260 Christian families had left Bethlehem since October 2023, while religious outlet Christianity Today reported in October 2025 that 400 Bethlehem families had applied for visas to emigrate at that time, citing Simon Azazian, assistant pastor at Jerusalem’s Alliance Church.
Meanwhile, Christians who remain in the West Bank are contending with the threat of violence and its effect on their livelihoods.
The village of Taybeh was not able to harvest its olives for the fourth year running, Catholic outlet Vatican News reported earlier this year.
In August, Israeli authorities declared Taybeh a closed military zone, after months of attacks, which the military said at the time only closed the area to Israelis, not Palestinians who live there.
But Palestinian Christian activist Ihab Hassan said “Israeli settlers are roaming freely” while “most of the land is out of reach,” cutting residents off from their olive trees.
Bishop James Curry, lead bishop for the Holy Land for the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said at the time that he was “deeply alarmed” about Israel’s designation of Taybeh as a closed military zone.
“It is claimed that this is designed to prevent attacks on residents by Israeli settlers, but it is far from clear that this move will achieve that objective…this ban will lead to a vital loss of income from tourism and pilgrimages and, thereby, international scrutiny on the situation.”
Newsweek has contacted the IDF via email for comment.
Cannon said Christians around the world “often close their eyes to Jewish settler violence because they view Jewish Israelis as the chosen people who were given the land by God,” adding that they “ignore or justify the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.”
“The Christian population in the West Bank is only in the tens of thousands and in Gaza only several hundred Christians remain,” she said. “The community, like their Muslim neighbors, is isolated from one another and their sacred Holy Sites in Jerusalem and Israel.”
Just a few weeks ago, the U.S. Senate voted against a resolution that would have required the State Department to provide a report to Congress on “increasing violence in the West Bank–including the killings of American citizens–and the daily injustices facing Palestinians.”
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote in support of the bill, while Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman crossed party lines to oppose it. It was introduced by Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat.
“The U.S. Government–including this Administration–has said time and again that our number one priority abroad is ensuring the safety and security of American citizens," Van Hollen wrote in a statement after the vote. "And yet, as we’ve seen violence rise in the West Bank, nine American citizens have been killed in recent years, and they have received no justice and no accountability. Their families–and the American people–deserve answers on their deaths. Republicans denied them that.”
In January 2025, Trump dismantled former President Joe Biden administration’s West Bank sanctions program, removing financial restrictions imposed on people and organizations accused of undermining peace and security in the territory.
America and Israel Condemn Settler Violence
While the Trump administration supports Israel, as has every American administration before it, the U.S. government has repeatedly condemned settler violence in the West Bank.
Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. wanted Israel to do more to deter attacks by settlers. "We're very disturbed by those images and what we're seeing," he told reporters. "We've asked the Israelis and continue to ask them to crack down on that stuff."
Rubio said Trump's administration would make its expectations clear to Israeli officials "to prevent that from happening in the future. We don’t need that right now; Israel doesn’t need that right now," he added.
On Sunday, U.S. diplomats, including Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Riley Barnes and Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch, visited Taybeh in response to the settler attacks the days before.
Pouliot, one of the activists who attended, told Newsweek they “made promises to take serious action to protect the community.”
The Israeli government has also condemned settler violence, arguing that it is rogue extremists who carry out these acts.
In August, after attacks on the West Bank villages of Qusra and Jalud, Netanyahu spoke out against the “criminal acts of violence committed…by a handful of rioters” for “violating the law, causing a grave injustice to the law-abiding Jewish community, interfering with the IDF in carrying out its missions, and harming Israel's standing in the world.”
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Ben Kelly and Edward T. Cummins