In Israel
In July 2014, during operation
Protective Edge an Israeli-Arab Christian demonstration was held in Haifa in a protest against Muslim extremism in the Middle East (concerning the rise of the
Islamic State) and in support of Israel and the IDF.
[41]
Christian Arabs are one of the most educated groups in Israel.
[42][43] Statistically,
Christian Arabs in Israel have the highest rates of
educational attainment among all religious communities, according to a data by
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics in 2010, 63% of Israeli
Christian Arabs have had college or
postgraduate education, the highest of any religious and
ethno-religious group.
[44] Despite the fact that Arab Christians only represent 2.1% of the total Israeli population, in 2014 they accounted for 17.0% of the country's
university students, and for 14.4% of its
college students.
[45] Christians are proportionally more likely to have attained a
bachelor's or higher
academic degrees than the Israeli national average.
Christian Arabs additionally have one of the highest rates of success in the matriculation examinations, (73.9%) in 2017
[46][47] both in comparison to the
Muslims and the
Druze and in comparison to all students in the
Jewish education system as a group.
[48] Arab Christians were also the vanguard in terms of eligibility for
higher education,
[48] and they have attained a
bachelor's degree and
academic degree more than the median Israeli population.
[48] Christians schools in Israel went on strike in 2015 at the beginning of the 2015 academic year in protest at budget cuts aimed at them. The strike affected 33,000 pupils, 40 percent of them Muslim. In 2013, Israel covered 65% of the budget of Palestinian Christian schools in Israel, a figure cut that year to 34%. Christians say they now received a third of what Jewish schools receive, with a shortfall of $53 million.
[49]
The rate of students studying in the field of
medicine was also higher among the Christian Arab students, compared with all the students from other sectors. The percentage of Arab Christian
women who are
higher education students is higher than other sectors.
[5
In September 2014, Israel's interior minister signed an order that the self-identified ''Aramean Christian'' minority in Israel could register as Arameans rather than Arabs.[51] The order will affect about 200 families.
[51]
The first local woman cleric ordained in the
Holy Land was Palestinian Sally Azar of the Lutheran church in 2023.
[52]