By Dalia Qumsieh, Founder and Director, Balasan Initiative for Human Rights – Palestine
This message for the new year comes from Dalia Qumsieh, a renowned Palestinian jurist and human rights activist. Through legal advocacy, research and policy planning, her organization challenges unjust Israeli policies and exposes their effects on their effects on the Palestinian people, especially historic Christian communities. Last year, Qumsieh contributed an Easter message to Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada’s website and was featured on our Voices of Solidarity podcast and our webinar on Palestine. The opinions expressed in this article are her own.
As the world steps into a new year, marking it as a moment of renewal and fresh starts, Palestine flips the calendar into the year with open wounds instead of closures and hopes for new beginnings.
Recent news of a ceasefire in Gaza and renewed talk of the so-called “peace plan” put forward by the U.S. president may suggest to distant audiences that the violence has subsided and that a political horizon has opened. On the ground, however, this is far from being our reality. Gaza continues to suffer the devastating consequences of Israel’s genocide, months of bombardment, mass displacement in inhumane conditions, starvation and over 400 Palestinians killed since the announcement of the ceasefire.
At the same time, you might have seen videos of the Christmas tree lighting in Bethlehem for the first time in two years, hoping that it signals the end of Israel’s prolonged, unlawful occupation. But it does not.
Little to celebrate in Bethlehem
The entirety of the West Bank remains under intensified policies of Israeli annexation, with unprecedented illegal settlement expansions, land confiscation, home demolitions, forcible displacement, mass arrests and settler violence without any accountability. The very city of Christmas, Bethlehem, enters 2026 under growing pressure. No amount of tree-lighting festivities can “Christmas-wash” the grim impacts of Israel’s occupation on its geography and demography, which threaten the historic connection of the Indigenous Palestinian Christians to their ancestral homeland. In the West Bank, and especially in Bethlehem, annexation is not a future threat; it is an ongoing process, advancing quietly while the world’s attention is fixed on Gaza.
The Bethlehem Governorate is witnessing an unprecedented acceleration in isolation and creeping annexation policies, particularly since October 7, 2023, within a broader strategy to reshape Palestinian geography and demography in the West Bank as part of the “Greater Jerusalem” project. What is happening in Bethlehem cannot be read as isolated security measures but as an integrated package of administrative, legal, military and settlement policies aimed at transforming temporary occupation into permanent de facto annexation.
In reality, and on a daily basis, the lands of Bethlehem are being confiscated for expanding Israeli settlements; its homes are being demolished; its farmers are being blocked from accessing their lands; its people are being oppressed and forcibly displaced by Israeli settlers and soldiers; its archaeological and UNESCO World Heritage sites are being annexed. Bethlehem’s Christian population is being severed from Jerusalem and isolated in small enclaves; robbed of fundamental rights, dignity and safety; and being led, under a deliberate and coercive environment, to leave their ancestral homelands, resulting in an alarming drop in their numbers.
Bethlehem has been dissected by 65 checkpoints, which not only restrict movement, hinder access to other fundamental human rights and largely disrupt daily life, but also actively reshape the city’s spatial configuration, gradually severing it from its western and eastern villages and restricting access to essential services. It is being gradually reduced from a living, interconnected space into a controlled enclave, isolated from its surrounding villages and stripped of its ability to sustain its people.
Tourism, once central to the local economy, has been suspended for two years, while access to land and livelihoods continues to shrink in a deliberate Israel impoverishment and de-development policy. What is most dangerous in this new era is not only the policies themselves but their normalization: restrictions have become routine, violations of fundamental rights have become the norm and this deliberate instability has become the permanent condition.
A message for the new year: what is required
For Christians, Bethlehem should not be a distant symbol in the Bible. It is a living community despite everything. The Palestinian Christian community, one of the oldest in the world, has been carrying the faith uninterrupted since the time of Christ. Now, for the first time in history, and as a result of Israeli policies, it risks going extinct.
Confronting such multi-layered injustices requires, first, a firm refusal of the comfort of institutional silence, and then, an unequivocal commitment to human dignity and justice. Principled advocacy is also needed within the Church itself to encourage and support it in defending international law more confidently and in continuing to work concretely―with actual work plans and budgets―to promote accountability and protect the threatened rights and presence of Christians in the land that brought Christ to the world.
We also require serious advocacy for the Canadian Government to uphold international law without exception, including for the protection for civilians and accountability for violations that have been very well documented with meticulous evidence. It must be understood that Canada’s recognition of the State of Palestine remains declarative if not matched with action, in line with international law.
Also required is action in faith; support for humanitarian and rights-based organizations working with Palestinian communities; accompaniment, donations, awareness raising, elevating Palestinian and Christian voices; and bearing witness. Let your faith be visible in solidarity.
A message for the new year: stand up our rights before it’s too late
This new year is not an occasion to celebrate; it is rather an alarming deadline. The turning of the calendar into 2026 invites serious reflection, repentance from silence and complicity and renewed commitment to human rights and justice. It starts with understanding that a fragile ceasefire does not undo the complete decimation of an ancient city like Gaza or the bloodshed and misery that has already occurred, and that a Christmas tree lighting in Bethlehem neither stops Israel’s annexation nor guarantees safety, accountability or justice.
The Gospel, international law and logic share a clear conclusion: peace without justice is neither feasible nor sustainable. Canada, a country that places itself as a defender of the values of human rights and the rule of law, has a significant role to play. Canadian churches, institutions and believers have long stood for peace rooted in justice, from South Africa to Indigenous reconciliation at home. Palestine calls for the same moral, legal and spiritual standards and consistency.
As we enter this New Year, and from the heart of Bethlehem, we do not ask for charity but for our rights. We do not ask for sympathy but for responsibility and accountability. We ask our Christian Canadian sisters and brothers for partnership rooted in shared faith and values. Resolutions for human rights, dignity and justice are not political distractions from faith; they are the very path through which hope is renewed, faith is made credible and peace becomes possible.
From Bethlehem, we invite you to walk this path with us, treating solidarity as a verb, knowing justice is a merit.