The Palestinian territories, comprising the West Bank and Gaza Strip, are overwhelmingly Muslim, around 97 to 98 percent Sunni, with a small Christian minority of roughly 1 to 2 percent concentrated in Bethlehem, Ramallah and parts of Jerusalem, a population that has declined significantly over the twentieth century through emigration driven by economic pressure and the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict, per estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020.
Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional site of Jesus's birth on foundations dating to the fourth century under Constantine and rebuilt in the sixth century under Justinian, remains one of Christianity's most venerated pilgrimage churches and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, traditionally identified as the burial place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives, is sacred to both Judaism and Islam, and the building's division into separate Jewish and Muslim prayer areas since 1994, following a mass shooting of Muslim worshippers by an Israeli settler that year, exemplifies the layered and often contested religious geography across the territories.