I Confronted the Palestinian Authority: I Saw a Culture of Fear and Discrimination Against Christians

“Excuse me. This is not true. This is not true. Excuse me … I never supported killing civilians or kidnapping kids and women. Never! Even in the past. Okay?” shouted Palestinian leader Jibril Rajoub during an interview that I independently conducted with him at his office in Ramallah last summer.

The secretary-general of Fatah’s Central Committee, Rajoub is one of the most powerful figures in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is widely regarded as a potential successor to President Mahmoud Abbas. Previously sentenced to life imprisonment for lobbing a grenade at an Israeli army bus, Rajoub later became infamous for torturing political dissidents during his stint as the head of the West Bank’s Preventive Security Force from 1994 to 2002.

As a 19-year-old American student living and working in the largely Palestinian Christian town of Beit Sahour, landing the interview was surprisingly easy.

After confirming a time with Rajoub’s assistant, I hopped into an orange minivan (a common form of public transportation in the West Bank), and headed to Ramallah from Bethlehem. During the ride, I asked my driver — who knew that I was scheduled to meet a Palestinian politician — what his main grievances with the PA were. He replied, “They don’t do anything for us.”

I told him that I’d bring this criticism up. He immediately blurted out, “No, don’t do that!”

At the behest of Rajoub’s assistant, I arrived at the entrance of a corporate office building in an upscale Ramallah neighborhood. Moments later, Rajoub’s assistant appeared, and I was led to a different building. Upon entering this other building, which I did not know, I was greeted by a gigantic mural of former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat.

While waiting for Rajoub, who was half an hour late to the interview, I chatted with Fatah-affiliated staff members, who explained that the building was the meeting ground for members of the Fatah Central Committee.

As I asked Rajoub various questions — such as, “What do you think is the most legitimate criticism directed toward the PA today?” — I came to realize that he was a master at evading accountability.

Throughout the interview, Rajoub became increasingly fed up with me, often uttering phrases such as “listen” and “excuse me.” But it was when I attempted to ask Rajoub about his comments following Hamas’ terrorist actions on October 7, 2023 (which he ridiculously blamed Israel for) that he cut me off and started yelling. After I became visibly intimidated, Rajoub had the nerve to tell me, “I’m more democratic than you expect.”

As I left Rajoub’s oversized office, he asked, “Where are you going next?” After I told him that I was returning to Bethlehem, I realized my mistake. I thought, “If they didn’t know before, the PA definitely knows where I live now.”

On the drive back, I was silent and aloof. Thinking that I may be targeted by the PA, the days following the interview filled me with dread. I knew that some American citizens had been tortured by PA forces. When I volunteered at a summer camp, I told a Palestinian Christian colleague about what happened in the interview. She replied, “If we [as Palestinians] asked [Rajoub] what you did, we’d be sent to Jericho.” In the PA’s Jericho prison, Palestinians are routinely tortured.

What this experience revealed to me was that Palestinians in the West Bank live in a constant state of fear due to authoritarian PA rule, which severely restricts basic freedoms. But I quickly noticed that this culture of fear doesn’t affect each group in Palestinian society equally.

“There is a level of [discrimination] organizationally. There’s always a favoritism [toward] Muslims versus the Christians. I’ve seen that happen over and over again,” said Christy Anastas, a Christian Bethlehemite, who fled due to religious and political persecution. The West Bank’s culture of fear disproportionately affects Christians, the most vulnerable demographic.

In 1950, Bethlehem and the surrounding villages were 86% Christian. In 2017, Christians constituted approximately 10% of Bethlehem’s population and 1% of the West Bank’s.

While the number of Christians has marginally increased since the PA’s first census in 1997, the percentage of Palestinian Christians has rapidly dwindled, which is partly the result of emigration. Christian flight is the consequence of various factors, including economic hardship, political instability from the Mideast conflict, theological reasons, better opportunities abroad, corrupt and repressive Palestinian governance, and religious discrimination/extremism.

A 2020 study found that Christians are overwhelmingly worried about the presence of Salafist groups (77%) and armed factions such as Hamas (69%). Two-thirds were fearful of rising political Islam and Sharia-based PA rule. Finally, 70% reported hearing statements that Christians would “go to Hellfire,” 44% believed that Muslims don’t wish to see them in the land, and an identical percentage perceived discrimination when seeking jobs.

Additionally, Christians are commonly cursed on mosque loudspeakers. Rajoub himself has made anti-Christian comments. Unlike Muslims, who similarly experience PA repression, Christians face discrimination in many areas of daily life because of their religion.

Sometimes, anti-Christian discrimination is subtle. “As a Christian who went to an Islamic university uncovered, I used to get sexually harassed the whole time just because I had a cross and I didn’t have a headcover. I personally experienced that over and over again. It’s subtle. You can’t go up and say, ‘It’s because I am a Christian.’ You can’t prove it. That’s part of the problem,” Anastas explained. Other times, discrimination manifests in anti-Christian violence. In December 2025, Muslims severely beat a Christian man in Beit Jala. Some days later, Muslim extremists set ablaze a Christmas tree in Jenin’s Holy Redeemer Church.

However, most Palestinian Christians are afraid to speak about this discrimination.

“They will not talk about it [discrimination] publicly. They will not talk about it in groups,” said Luke Moon, Executive Director of the Philos Project. When I asked Anastas what happens when Christian-Muslim issues do occur, she told me that Palestinians are “always trying to manage it within the society, shut it down, and think, ‘It’s the Israeli occupation trying to create fractions between us.’”

Since Palestinian society perpetually aims to project a false image of unity, it’s uncommon for stories of anti-Christian violence to appear in international media. Consequently, it’s typical for these media outlets to inaccurately place the blame for Christian suffering entirely on Israel, while ignoring the problems within Palestinian society.

A 2024 study found that Christians don’t typically report incidents of harassment (or worse) to the police because it may instigate further oppression. As I questioned Maurice Hirsch, the study’s first author, about the interviews he conducted with Christians, he said that his sources “cannot be named. These people suffer the effects of PA retribution.”

Similarly, Anastas explained that the consequences of reporting discrimination are unpredictable: “Sometimes you go into Stockholm syndrome, where you’re inside an oppressive system, and you’d rather make friends with the oppressive system to be able to survive, versus try and fight it, because you never know what the consequences are. The consequences are unpredictable. Sometimes, you can get away with it. Sometimes, you can get killed for it.”

What I experienced in Ramallah was not simply an interview with a senior Palestinian official, but a glimpse into the culture of fear that operates in the West Bank. This casts a shadow on the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

By maintaining an atmosphere of fear, the PA undermines the possibility of reform. A society that intimidates its own citizens (and especially religious minorities), engages in torture, discourages self-criticism, and incentivizes martyrdom is not a viable partner for peace. Until this changes, moderate Palestinians won’t have the ability to create a future where values such as freedom, justice, and peace with Israel are upheld.