I remember when Bethlehem was 90% Christian under Israeli rule, now it's 90% Muslim.

Christians in Palestine are the most prominent leaders of the Palestinian people, for example: Wadih Haddad, George Habash, Nayef Hawatmeh, Azmi Bishara, Hanan Ashrawi, Atallah Hanna, Hilarion Kpoji and the list goes on. Many supporters of these leaders of the Muslims :)

Try being honest for once.

The more "Islamic" the political culture, the harder life is for these minorities. That's how it's always been. The Christians, like the Jews, are deemed "People of the Book", but they're still non-believers and have lived a second-class status since Islam began. It's even worse for those deemed "pagans" (like the animists of Sudan) or "heretics" (like the Bahai of Iran). Nor is it surprising when Muslims fail to distinguish between religion and politics. Under Islam there is no distinction between "church" and state. Finally, it's true that Christians have been in the Middle East long before Islam. (Egypt was once majority Christian.) But the Jews had an extensive Diaspora throughout the region since Roman times, before there *were* Christians.

I hope christians and arabs in general don't blame Israel for this.... but I guess they will, at least christians in Israel. At least in israel, arab christians say that they are leaving because occupation, but this is not true at all. The decreasing in the percentage of christians in all the arab world is because many reasons 1) They prefer living in a western, christian mayority country. Here in latin america almost all of arabs (lebanese, palestinians, syrians) are christians. The same in USA. 2) muslim birth rate is bigger than the christian one... muslims have 20 children (lebanon used to be a christian country, 80% aprox in 1920. Now christians are a minority in lebanon, a muslim country) 3)Because muslim intolerance. Just see Irak. Christians are leaving because they fear any attack from islamist. in egypt, the muslim regime considers christians almost second class citizen... it's difficult to be a christian in egypt.. Convertions to christianity or even building a church is very difficult ... in Israel, if I'm not wrong, Christians are growing in number and percentage... and I want to say more but my english is limited