Good Friday Offering - St Luke's Hospital, Nablus

2024 Good Friday/Easter Offering

  • Good Friday - March 29th, 2024

  • Easter Sunday - March 31st, 2024

Thank you to all Dioceses/Churches/groups who joined this year's Good Friday/Easter Appeal.

Churches, associations and individuals can send their offering via Cheque or Bank Transfer

Cheque: Payable to The Jerusalem and Middle East Church Association 

Post to The Secretary, JMECA, 1 Hart House, The Hart, Farnham, Surrey. GU9 7HJ with accompanying note specifying it is for the GFO2024

Bank Transfer:

Please email the Secretary for bank details, and please use ref: GFO2024

JMECA invites parishes and individuals to dedicate a Good Friday or Easter Offering to support St Luke's Hospital in Nablus, and to join together in prayer for our brothers and sisters in the Holy Land.

The Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity where Christians have consistently played a pivotal cultural and political role in the various parts of the region in which they lived alongside the undoubted history of civil and legal disadvantage. Their presence remains important for the health of the wider societies today, especially with the current challenges of regional instability. The Church remains an important presence in Jerusalem because Jerusalem needs the Body of Christ in the face of death and destruction witnessing to the triumph of God’s faithfulness through cross and Resurrection.

For over 130 years, Anglican church congregations have supported the Province of Jerusalem & the Middle East through the Good Friday Offering, showing their support for the presence and witness of Christians in the region. 

This year, the situation in Israel/Palestine is in the news and on our hearts and so all donations given to the Good Friday Offering via JMECA will be directed to support St Luke's Hospital, Nablus in the West Bank

The surgical theatre in St Luke's hospitalThe Gaza war has caused severe economic hardship in both Gaza and the West Bank, which will certainly have short and long-term consequences that have already begun to spread through all of the occupied Palestinian territory.

  • The shock to Palestinian economic activity has been severe. Movement restrictions have meant that 200,000 people who normally travel between the West Bank and Israel are no longer able to do so.  This has meant that in the West Bank, an estimated 40 percent of jobs have been lost. People cannot attend as outpatients particularly at Saint Luke’s hospital Nablus, which then results in a drop in income generated by the hospital, calculated at as much as 60%.
  • Employees and labourers in Israeli firms, who travel from the West Bank, have been made unemployed. Employees of the Palestinian Authority institutions are not receiving their salaries anymore because the transfer of agreed Tax income by the Israeli government has been suspended. Also, some European countries have suspended aid.
  • Many of the Holy pilgrimage sites, including those in East Jerusalem and in Bethlehem, are no longer able to operate and this has had a devastating effect on tourism and related sectors including hotels, transportation, restaurants and souvenir shops. Also local Palestinian tourist guides have no work.

This has impacted the economic situation of the Palestinians families living in the West Bank who are no longer able to cover the cost of basic needs, including health and school fees for their children.

Diocese institutions provide services to the community through their health and education institutions regardless of their ability to pay, focusing on the most vulnerable people. Due to the high unemployment rate consequent on the war, the number of people who seek affordable or free-of-charge services in the institutions has been dramatically increasing. This has directly affected their income  in a situation where their income streams were already strained.

St Luke’s Hospital in Nablus

The entrance to St Luke's hospitalSt Luke's offers high quality care in the midst of the West Bank is one of those institutions. It is the only charitable hospital in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, where it offers a full range of medical services and boasts particularly well-regarded neurosurgery, obstetrics, and neonatal departments.

The services offered by this 119-year-old hospital are a lifeline for the 15,000 patients seen at its outpatient clinic each year.

The hospital aims to provide medical care for all who are in need, regardless of race, religion, or financial status and also to serve almost 350,000 people living in the Northern area of Palestine, Nablus city and the villages in the surrounding area. It does all this as an expression of Christian commitment to the welfare of this Palestinian community.

A father and his daughter visit their new born, who is in an incubator in the neonatal unit
The neonatal unit at St Luke's Hosptial

Please support our brothers and sisters in the diocese of Jerusalem this Easter.

Resources available on request: