In the green hills of the Galilee, where Jesus is said to have preached two thousand years ago, a group of Aramaic speakers looking to revive the language of Christ are celebrating a victory in their quest to safeguard their heritage.

In a place where tensions run high on issues of ethnicity, faith and citizenship, members of the Christian sect have won the right to change their designation in the population registry from “Arab” to a newly-created ethnic classification: “Aramaic.”

The group that sought the change is small, a few hundred people at most, but their campaign is part of a larger debate on issues of identity in the Holy Land and Israel’s treatment of its Arab minority.

Supporters said yesterday Israel’s agreement to allow the group to define itself as “Aramaic” is a sign of ethnic tolerance.

But critics call it an attempt by the government to encourage splits within its Arab population, which largely defines itself as Palestinian and makes up about a fifth of the country’s 8.2 million citizens. Others say it is also another reflection of the reality for Arabs in Israel, where many Arab citizens say they are discriminated against. Shadi Khalloul, a former captain in the Israeli army, heads the Aramaic Society in Israel, which lobbied the government for the change. His two-year-old son, Yacov, is the first in Israel to be listed as Aramaic.

“It’s a spiritual matter, to feel I am equal among equals, that I am no less than them – Jews, Arabs, Circassians, Druze, Italians, Greeks. My forefathers would be proud,” said Khalloul, who volunteered for the military, which drafts Jewish men and women at the age of 18 but exempts Arabs from conscription.

The campaigners are all residents of the village of Jish and belong to the Maronite Church, which took root in fifth-century Lebanon. Its liturgical language is Aramaic, dialects of which are spoken by no more than a few hundred thousand people across the world.

Speaking at the ceremony to mark the change, Interior Minister Gidon Saar said Aramaics had suffered persecution, oppression and discrimination in the Middle East, and that Israel, built as a home for Jews, who themselves suffered persecution, “must protect this minority and allow it to keep its culture and heritage”.