INTRODUCTION
Two years on from October 7 and the devastation and destruction, the starvation and bombing of the population in Gaza continues. The scenes we see regularly on the news and in documentaries such as Gaza: Doctors Under Attack (Channel 4) and Gaza: Dying For Food (BBC) are deeply disturbing - especially when they involve children who have missing limbs or who are dying for lack of food and medical aid.
There are two vastly different and competing narratives as to how this situation has come about and what can be done about it. Broadly speaking, there is the pro-Israeli view - that Hamas terrorists are to blame and that they need to be defeated - and the pro-Palestinian view that Israel's illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is to blame, that this must end and that the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination under international law must be respected.
Christians are divided on this issue too. There are who those who see the return of the Jewish people to 'their own land' as a fulfillment of prophecy and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 as a miracle of divine intervention on behalf of 'His chosen people' and, while not necessarily approving of everything Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have done, side with Israel. Others see what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank as a grave injustice and side with Palestine.
In the evangelical world I inhabit, the pro-Israeli view has been the dominant one. Zionism - the belief that the Jewish people have the right to return to their own land - is rife in evangelical churches, especially in the USA. Even where this is not the case, Christians recognise the special place that Israel had in God's salvation plan. The ancient Israelites were our ancestors in the faith; we have been 'grafted in' to the same family tree. Furthermore, the Jews endured severe persecution in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries and millions of them were massacred in the Nazi holocaust. Surely it is our duty now to stand in solidarity with them?
In this section of the website I want to challenge the pro-Israeli narrative with which most of us are familiar by examining what Christians living in Palestine have to say about the situation they are facing and also what several renowned Jewish historians and other international experts have to say about it.Â
It would be impossible to discuss in detail every possible aspect of the conflict in this short volume of material. Rather what is presented here will hopefully act as a primer introducing the basic issues from a Palestinian perspective. It is essentially a compilation of extracts from the writings of Palestinian Christians, Jewish historians and other experts along with links to a number of videos and articles that are relevant to the topics being discussed and a few thoughts of my own. In the final two chapters, I have recommend some further books and online resources which you might use to find out more about each topic for yourself. For context, this material was originally written between October and December 2025.