In his Christmas Day column in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, Jordanian-Palestinian journalist and writer Hamada Fara'neh, who is a member of the PLO Palestinian National Council, wrote that Christianity belongs to the Palestinians and that Jesus was "the first Palestinian martyr." 

He stated that "those who conspired with the Roman colonialism" against Jesus (i.e., the Jews) continue to commit crimes against the Palestinians, thus creating a link between the ancient antisemitic accusation that the Jews killed Jesus and the contemporary Palestinian narrative that describes Jesus as a martyr who died as part of the Palestinian national struggle. 

Fara’neh expressed hope that Christmas will herald the "hoped-for day" on which the descendants of the Palestinian refugees will return to their land and their cities inside Israel: "Lydda, Ramla, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Safed and Beersheba."