Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics marked the Christmas holiday by releasing data showing that 154,400 Christians currently live in the Holy Land.
Christians make up just over two percent of Israel's population. Eighty-one percent of Israel's Christians are Arabs. Most of the others are Russians who arrived during the major aliyah of the 1990s, but are not religiously recognized as Jews.
The largest Christian town in Israel is Nazareth, with a Christian population of 20,000. The second largest Christian population is in Haifa (14,000), and the third largest is in Jerusalem (12,800).