✝️ Easter in Palestine: Faith as Resistance

3 min read

A celebration of faith, under the weight of occupation.

Every spring, as churches around the world fill with light and song, Palestinian Christians prepare to mark Easter in their ancestral land — the birthplace of Christianity. But in Palestine, Easter is not just a religious observance. It is a sacred act of endurance, of belonging, and of resistance.

Worship Through Barriers

In occupied Jerusalem, Christians must often apply for military-issued permits just to enter their own churches. Soldiers and checkpoints line the ancient streets. Congregations are delayed, restricted, or outright denied entry to pray.

Yet despite this, they come.
From Bethlehem and Ramallah, Nablus and Gaza, they arrive — walking, waiting, enduring.
They carry olive branches and wooden crosses. They sing in Arabic.
Their voices echo through the Old City as they declare their faith on the very soil where it began.

A People Who Refuse to Disappear

Easter in Palestine is about more than liturgy. It’s about refusing erasure.

For decades, Palestinian Christians have been marginalized not just by Israeli policies but also by a global narrative that often forgets them. Yet they remain rooted in the land, preserving traditions that stretch back centuries.

Church bells still ring.
Tatreez-adorned thobes still fill the pews.
Families still gather around maamoul and qatayef, passing stories and recipes from one generation to the next.

They are not merely surviving — they are upholding a culture that occupation has tried, and failed, to suppress.

Faith as a Form of Defiance

In a land where movement is restricted, where identity is criminalized, and where even prayer is policed — showing up to worship becomes an act of resistance.

To hold onto faith under occupation is to resist despair.
To celebrate resurrection in a land under siege is to insist on a future.
To walk through the streets of occupied Jerusalem as a Palestinian Christian is to say: we were here before the walls, and we will be here after them.

This Easter, Stand With Us

As we commemorate this season of renewal, we invite you to reflect on the resilience of Palestinian Christians and their unwavering connection to the land and to hope.

They remind us — and the world — that Palestine is not just a place of pain. It is also a place of light, of faith, and of futures being written in the language of resistance.