Once again, Palestinian Christians in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) have observed the Easter season with frustration, their communities in sorrow and their rights slipping away.

Easter week opened with Israel’s bombing—for the fifth time since October 2023—of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, Gaza’s only Christian-run hospital. Israeli military authorities gave hospital directors just 20 minutes to evacuate patients from one of the hospital’s departments before two missiles struck the building. One patient, a child on oxygen, died while being transported abruptly to a nearby clinic. The military justified the bombing, in spite of Geneva Convention prohibitions on attacking civilian infrastructure, by claiming that the medical center was being used by armed Palestinian resistance groups as a command center—a charge denied by hospital officials.1

The Jerusalem Diocese of the Episcopal Church, which owns and runs the hospital, condemned the attacks “in the strongest terms.”2 The diocese said that the attacks had demolished the two-story Genetic Laboratory and damaged the Pharmacy and the Emergency Department buildings, while also hurting nearby structures—including the Church of St. Philips.

This trauma continued as Palestinian Christians from West Bank cities like Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin were barred from entering Jerusalem to pray and celebrate at their holy sites. Not a single person from Gaza was permitted to worship in Jerusalem this year; prior to the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas and the subsequent war, some Gazans were allowed to make the pilgrimage.

Clergy used to submit lists of parishioners to ask for month-long entry permits; most were approved, allowing Palestinian Authority (PA) ID holders to cross the few designated checkpoints leading to Jerusalem and its holy sites.3 This year, however, Israeli authorities introduced an automated system while also tightening the checkpoints and increasing security monitoring. New guidelines by the Israeli military required individual Christians to apply online for a permit, selecting only one week (a seven-day period) during the Easter season to access the city.

“The problem is that we are asked to choose a single week during the Easter holidays,” Samuel Saleem, a resident of Ramallah, told Jerusalem Story. Saleem, whose sister and family live in Jerusalem, explained: “If I include the week from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, I would not be able to visit my sister on Easter Monday. I decided, therefore, to skip Palm Sunday because we want to celebrate Easter [Sunday] in Ramallah and make our holiday visitations the following day.” Only 6,000 permits were issued this year.4

Yet even obtaining a permit did not guarantee access. Soldiers at Israeli checkpoints regularly turned away Palestinians, including Christians with permits, especially on Holy Fire Saturday, the day before Easter. Rafi Gattas, from Arabic Catholic Scouts, told ABC News that in fact only 500 permit holders were actually allowed to enter at the checkpoints.5 This day holds deep significance for Orthodox Christians, who gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to receive the Holy Fire brought out from Jesus’ tomb by the Latin Patriarch. This special flame is passed from candle to candle among those present, and then delivered to Christian communities around the world (see Only in Jerusalem: The Zaffeh Procession and the Hajmeh Descent).

Even for those who made it to the city or live there, access restrictions to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were especially severe this year. Photos and videos taken near the New Gate—the closest gate to the church’s entrance—showed Israeli police blocking both civilians and clergy, including the Vatican’s ambassador, from entering the church grounds (see this video shared on X by African Stream and this one shared on X by DropSite News).6 Jerusalem resident Mayadah Tarazeh, a member of the World Council of Churches Jerusalem Liaison Office advisory committee, shared:

Worshippers waited for hours at the New Gate, jostled and harassed, before being allowed in. After New Gate, they encountered three more successive checkpoints, and were treated violently by Israeli security and police. In one video shared on X by the Palestine Communication Center, a scout leader was threatened by a border policeman with his pistol, “marking the first time a firearm was visibly used inside the patriarchate to threaten the crowd during this event.”8 Even the Vatican emissary, apostolic Nuncio Adolfo Tito Ylana, was barred from entering.

When scouts were denied entry, a parade of the scouts, another tradition dating to the British Mandate period, had to be cancelled, turning the Holy Fire ceremony into a strictly religious affair.9

The final blow of this sad Easter season came with the passing of Pope Francis on Easter Monday. The pontiff spoke frequently about the suffering in the oPT and, since October 7, 2023, when bombing beset the small Christian community in the Gaza Strip, called his parishioners daily by video at about seven in the evening. A video has reemerged of Palestinian children in Gaza singing the pontiff “Happy Birthday” in Arabic to mark his special day on December 17, 2024.16

In keeping with his Jesuit training to remain close to the voiceless, Pope Francis used his final Easter address to call for a ceasefire:

The small Christian community of approximately 1,000 in Gaza, parishioners at some of the region’s oldest churches, already miss him.

“He listened, really listened,” George Anton, head of the Emergency Response Committee for the Catholic Church in Gaza, told the Los Angeles Times.18 “He was asking, ‘What did you eat today? Did you eat anything?’ And it wasn’t a casual question. He came to know Gaza—not from news reports, but from our voices, our hearts,” he said.

“As Palestinian Christians, we often feel forgotten, but in those moments, we weren’t.”

The events and tensions of Easter week 2025 in Jerusalem, however, do not bode well for the future.