This was a very interesting article. Someplace I read a statistic that the Christian population was 20% of Palestine in 1947 and is down to less than 2% today.  Can anyone confirm or refute those numbers?

            Thanking you in advance for any feedback.

Nigel Nicholson

Havre de Grace, Md.

Victor Makari, Middle East Coordinator of Mission for the PC(USA), responds:

In an April 2008 lecture by Professor Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University (he has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Virginia), he has pointed out that today's Christian population in the Palestinian territories is about 1.2% and in Israel proper about 1.7%. In pre-1948, the Christian population of Palestine was about 18%.

            Sabella cites, among his sources, George Kossaibi's chapter "Demographic Characteristics of the Arab Palestinian People" in the book The Sociology of the Palestinians by Khalil Nakhleh and Elia Zureik (published in London by Croom Helm, in 1980; and a review of a survey conducted in 2006 by Sabella himself that was titled "Palestinian Christians: Historical and Demographic Developments ..."