The cities and communities where most Christians in Israel reside are Haifa, Nazareth, Shefa-Amr, Jish, Mi'ilya, Fassuta and Kafr Yasif.

[7] The Christian communities in Israel run numerous schools, colleges, hospitals, clinics, orphanages, homes for the elderly, dormitories, family and youth centers, hotels, and guesthouses.

[28] In this period, the Second Temple of Jerusalem was still central to Judaism, but synagogues were also established as institutions for prayer and the reading of Jewish sacred texts.

[23] The main sources of information regarding Jesus' life and teachings are the four canonical gospels, and to a lesser extent the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles.

Some of the early Christian communities attracted God-fearers, i.e. Greco-Roman sympathizers which made an allegiance to Judaism but refused to convert and therefore retained their Gentile (non-Jewish) status, who already visited Jewish synagogues.

Saul of Tarsus, commonly known as Paul the Apostle, persecuted the early Jewish Christians, then converted and started his mission among the Gentiles.

[46] The main concern of Paul's letters is the inclusion of Gentiles into God's New Covenant, sending the message that faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation.

His poems give insights into the life of Palestinian Christians and the religious persecution they suffered under the rule of Fatimid caliph al-Hakim (r. 996–1021).

[58][61] The territory of present-day Israel came under control of the United Kingdom following the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.

Following the Balfour Declaration (1917) and the visit of the Zionist Commission to Mandatory Palestine (1918), local Christians participated in forming groups which opposed Zionism, called "Muslim-Christian Associations".

Generally, most Christians in Israel were expelled like Muslims, especially in the main cities and West Jerusalem, but some were allowed to remain in their homes, especially in the lower, central and Upper Galilee.

[71][72][73] Due to an uproar from Evangelical Christians in America, who generally support Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the bill would not move forward.

[83] The Baptist Village (Kfar HaBaptistim), north of Petah Tikva, was established in 1955 as a farming community with "a boarding school for orphans ... now used mainly for conferences and camps.

[97] Israeli JW congregants have faced some religious persecution in the past century: for instance, in March 1997, a mob of over 250 ultra-orthodox Jews attacked one of their meeting halls.

[103][104] Some ultra-Orthodox Jews have been reported to have a decades-old practice of cursing and spitting on Christian clergymen in Jerusalem,[105][106] and there have been cases where churches and cemeteries were defaced by price taggers.

[107][108][109][110] When the doors of the Latrun Trappist monastery were set aflame and the phrase "Jesus was a monkey" was painted on its walls in September 2012, the Vatican reacted with a rare official complaint against the Israeli government's inaction.

[111] In June 2015, an auxiliary building[112] of the Church of the Multiplication was significantly damaged by an arson attack and its walls defaced by Hebrew graffiti, bearing the words "the false gods will be eliminated" (quoted from the Aleinu prayer).

In addition, increasing numbers of Christian leaders and community members are pointing to Muslim violence as a threat to their way of life in Arab majority cities and towns.

[124] Sons of the New Testament as a party and a national movement has been met with wide admiration from the Jews of Israel, harshly negative scorn from the Muslim Arabs, and mixed reactions from the Christians themselves.

In 2008, Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat, established the Center for Jewish–Christian Understanding and Cooperation (CJCUC), the first Orthodox Jewish institution to dialogue with the Christian world on a religious and theological basis.

[citation needed] A 2012 survey indicated that Christians in Israel were prosperous and well-educated, but some feared that Muslim intimidation would provoke an exodus to the West.

In a recent case, the son of Gabriel Naddaf, a prominent Eastern Orthodox priest who is regarded as being pro-Israel, was severely beaten.

[138] In 2016 Arab Christians had the highest rates of success at matriculation examinations, namely 73.9%, both in comparison to Muslim and Druze Israelis (41% and 51.9% respectively), and to the students from the different branches of the Hebrew (majority Jewish) education system considered as one group (55.1%).

However, a higher proportion of Arab Christian students chose to study fields such as law, medicine, computer sciences, mathematics, engineering and architecture.

According to study the majority of Christians in Israel (68.2 per cent) are employed in the service sector, i.e. banks, insurance companies, schools, tourism, hospitals etc.

[159][127] Arab Christians also live in a number of other localities in the Galilee; such as Abu Snan, Arraba, Bi'ina, Deir Hanna, I'billin, Jadeidi-Makr, Kafr Kanna, Muqeible, Ras al-Ein, Reineh, Sakhnin, Shefa-Amr, Tur'an and Yafa an-Naseriyye.

[161] Some Druze villages, such as Daliyat al-Karmel,[162] Ein Qiniyye, Hurfeish, Isfiya, Kisra-Sumei, Maghar, Majdal Shams and Peki'in, have small Christian Arab populations.

[163] Mixed cities such as Acre, Jerusalem, Lod, Ma'alot-Tarshiha, Nof HaGalil, Ramla and Tel Aviv-Jaffa have significant Christian Arab populations.

[176] According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2015, 60% of Christians in Israel fast during Lent,[177] Most (81%) also said that they have icons of saints or other holy figures in their home.

[185] Many in Israeli academia advocate the recognition of the Aramean identity and have called on the government of Israel to promote the awareness regarding this issue on the basis of the international principle of ethnic self-determination as espoused by Wilson's 14 points.