Do you have any evidence for that claim whatsoever? I have never seen or heard of any such account from either a Palestinian Christian or a member of Palestine’s small pre-Zionist indigenous Jewish community.
What I do know is that our Palestinian Christian brethren are treated just as badly as their Muslim co-inhabitants by the Israelis. I personally have heard testimony from an elderly Melkite Catholic priest about being unable to open his Church for Divine Liturgy because of gun-toting Israeli soldiers, of being abused, stripped and humiliated at checkpoints while trying to travel to outlying areas, of being refused permission to visit Jerusalem to meet with his Bishop for over ten years. I also know of the Orthodox priest brutally martyred by extremist Israeli settlers at the very site of Jacob’s Well.
Muslim-Christian violence is almost non-existent - Yasser Arafat was married to a Christian woman, and a disproportionately high number Christians are involved at the highest levels in the Palestinian Government (far more so than Muslims in Western Europe). Indeed, one of the few incidents reported in recent years is now strongly rumoured to have been a hoax. There is also a small Samaritan Jewish community remaining in the West Bank, who in spite of their their tiny size have been afforded independent national representation.
The real ‘second-class citizens’ are the entire Palestinian people, penned inside a fraction of their historical homeland, barred from using the most direct roads to heir homes and unable to leave their houses at night - we should stand by them, especially our Christian brethren. I know of one parish in Liverpool, England which has instituted a close relationship with a Latin Rite Parish in Nablus, including reciprocal visits by their respective parish priests - given the fragility of the Palestinian Christian community, our support would be well received.
