For years, Gaza’s only Catholic church had been a sanctuary of prayer for its congregation, so little wonder it was where tons of would flee after the destruction of homes within the territory’s largest city, the point of interest of Israel’s ferocious aerial bombardment.
The parishioners turned nursery playrooms and even pews within the nave of the sprawling complex of the Holy Family Church into makeshift homes. They held Mass by torchlight, praying for survival as Israel’s bombing campaign levelled buildings in the realm around them.
Israeli tanks closed in and snipers positioned themselves on the apartment blocks overlooking the compound, making moving between the buildings of the limestone complex dangerous.
Samar Anton, 49 a Gaza City church employee, knew there was a risk in helping her mother Nahida, a grandmother in her seventies who was weak from two months of war and little food, to the lavatory.
It required crossing a palm-tree-lined courtyard that in every other yr per week before Christmas would have been crowned with a towering tree and full of children singing Christmas songs.
Now it was exposed.
A sniper bullet cracked through the air and into Samar’s head. Another hit Nahida, a grandmother of 15, within the stomach.
Some of the damage across the Holy Family
(Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem)
“Their family saw them drop to the ground,” says George, 31, who is said to the ladies but has asked for his identity to be protected, as he fears for the security of his family and for himself. Blood stained the ground.
Speaking to The Independent from the occupied West Bank, he says his parents and his 20-year-old brother, like most of Gaza’s dwindling Christian population, have been sheltering on this church in northern Gaza, and the Orthodox Church about two miles east.
His family told him the story of the killings – which have sparked global uproar, described by Pope Francis as “terrorism” – during rare phone calls because the signal faded out and in. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem – the Catholic authority within the region – said that Nahida and Samar were killed “in cold blood”.
“Some of our relatives rushed out to assist. One of them was a surgeon called Dr Elias, the others were my relations including a cousin, who’s just 16 years old. But they were then hit by a type of bomb.
“Seven in total were injured from shrapnel – including my teenage cousins. There isn’t any approach to properly treat them there are not any working hospitals in north Gaza.”
George, who had already lost 20 members of his family in Gaza, has now lost contact along with his parents and the others within the church. He doesn’t know in the event that they have been in a position to bury the bodies, or if the injured are still alive. All he knows is there’s “no hope”.
“All our homes have been bombed. Gaza is uninhabitable, dead bodies are in every single place, epidemics are taking up, the craters from the bombing are 20 metres deep. There is nothing left.
“We are very apprehensive if we cannot get them out.”
Those trapped had already been forced into rationing out the last scraps of oatmeal and dwindling, dirty water, unable to maneuver.
The Holy Family Church before the newest conflict
(AFP/Getty)
The bombardment of Gaza began within the wake of the 7 October attack inside Israel by Hamas, during which 1,200 people were killed and 240 people taken hostage. In the near-constant aerial assault that has followed, health officials in Gaza say Israel’s offensive has killed greater than 19,000 people, nearly three-quarters of them women and youngsters. Vast swathes of the 26-mile-long strip, which is home to greater than two million people, have been levelled in Israel’s bid to eradicate Hamas.
One of the chief focuses of Israel’s campaign has been Gaza City, where forces have encircled hospitals schools and now, apparently, churches.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the incidents on the church which took place on Saturday were still under review.
The Israeli military appeared to disclaim the report, saying that “it targets terrorists and terror infrastructure and doesn’t goal civilians, irrespective of their religion”.
But the killing of the 2 women within the church, in addition to the bombing and the siege on the compound, has solid a searing highlight on the Israeli military’s use of force. George says there are real fears Gaza’s Christian community will probably be on the verge of “extinction” if such attacks proceed.
Layla Moran, a Liberal Democrat MP, has family trapped within the Catholic church, including a grandmother, a cousin, his wife and their 11-year-old twins. She says the congregation are “innocent civilians who had nothing to do with Hamas and [are] absolutely terrified”.
In recent days she said, anyone who approached the church had been shot.
“I even have been told white phosphorus was thrown into the compound, that the bin collector was shot dead as he tried to come back into the compound, and that a janitor attempting to fix a carpet was also shot,” she tells The Independent. White phosphorus is an incendiary, used to create light and smokescreens during combat. Using it isn’t illegal but deploying it deliberately against civilians or in a civilian setting violates the principles of war. Israel says it complies with international law over its use.
‘My family will not be justifiable collateral damage’: Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran
(PA)
Ms Moran said the congregation were “innocent civilians who had nothing to do with Hamas and [are] absolutely terrified”.
She urged the Israeli military surrounding the church in tanks to “back off” immediately.
“We must exert maximum pressure on Israel and Hamas for that bilateral ceasefire. There isn’t any military solution to this. My family will not be justifiable collateral damage.”
Ms Moran says that the remaining generators have been destroyed within the bombardment, meaning there isn’t any power.
The church’s solar panels had also been destroyed, water tanks had holes from shrapnel and gunfire, and the one source of electricity, one last generator, was also blown up in an explosion that saw the dear fuel resources disappear in a fireball.
The MP says she was stunned that Israel had rejected negotiations to even discuss a ceasefire recently – although talks now seem like on – and that the US and other countries have vetoed efforts for a humanitarian pause.
“Our only hope is that we are able to get my family to south Gaza in the subsequent truce, but they’re too scared to depart the church complex now because everyone seems to be shot,” she says.
“There isn’t any approach to evacuate, men are frightened to go south because Israeli soldiers are arresting and taking away men from the so-called secure corridor,” Moran says. “Snipers don’t distinguish between civilians and [combatants].”
‘There isn’t any way of getting aid there’: Shireen Awwad in Bethlehem
(Bel Trew/The Independent)
Shireen Awwad, head of the Bethlehem Bible College and a peace activist who met Pope Francis last month to relay her concerns over conditions in Gaza’s churches, says her family is split between the Catholic church and the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, said to be certainly one of the oldest lively churches on the earth.
“The family split between the 2 churches so if one gets bombed, among the family will survive,” she says, revealing a selection no family would ever intend to make.
Describing the situation as “horrific”, she says her aunt Najwa, in her seventies, was badly injured when an Israeli airstrike hit the Orthodox church in October. Najwa underwent surgery without anaesthesia in the town’s al-Ahli Hospital, which had also just been hit. The hospital has since been raided by Israeli forces and is now shut.
Having faced a harrowing two-mile journey, Najwa is sheltering within the Catholic church, where she “exists in diapers, with nobody to assist her walk or move.”
“She is in deep pain, all she desires to do is die,” says Awwad. She mentions one other uncle in his eighties who died 10 days ago on the Holy Family Church when his appendix burst and there was no hospital to take him to.
The Latin Patriarchate said that earlier Israeli tank fire that day had also destroyed other parts of the church compound sheltering 54 disabled people, and so they now lack access to respirators they should survive. Three more were wounded during intense bombing nearby.
Beyond the phobia of sniper fire, shelling and bombing, there’s also the specter of disease. Given the variety of elderly, disabled and wounded, there’s an actual fear of more deaths. The water tanks have holes from shrapnel and gunfire and people inside are “now drinking dirty salty water … There isn’t any way of getting aid there,” Awwad adds.
Palestinians search the destroyed annexe of the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church after the strike in October
(AFP/Getty)
Israel is under increasing pressure to conform to a ceasefire. Its military’s use of force is already within the highlight after the military admitted to “mistakenly” shooting dead three of its residents – three male hostages – whilst they were wielding a white flag and calling for assist in Hebrew while attempting to escape in northeast Gaza.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his Gaza offensive, saying the “military pressure is crucial each for the return of the hostages and for victory”.
The military has not been clear about what happened on the Holy Family Parish Church. It said church representatives had contacted it early on Saturday regarding explosions in the realm but didn’t report any casualties within the church complex. However, in the identical statement shared with The Independent, it was discussing the unsuitable a part of Gaza City. In the statement, the military said that “it takes claims regarding harm to sensitive sites with the utmost seriousness — especially churches — considering that Christian communities are a minority group within the Middle East”.
There were believed to be a couple of greater than 1,000 Christians left in Gaza before Israel launched its heaviest ever bombing campaign on the strip. Over the years, Christians – who until comparatively recently numbered 3,000 – have sought to flee the realm which has been subject to a 15-year Israeli and Egyptian siege.
Before the war, most were only in a position to get out of Gaza via special permissions granted to simply a handful of Christians at Christmas and Easter to worship in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, to see family in other parts of the occupied Palestinian Territories, or to briefly travel abroad.
Now “life is absolute hell,” say members of the community who didn’t need to be named, fearing for his or her safety.
In the south of Gaza, where Israel is pushing the newest a part of its offensive against Hamas, Christian and Muslim families have spoken of the terrible conditions for people who have managed to maneuver from the north, including massive overcrowding in tents, no water, and no food. Medics tell The Independent they don’t have any medical supplies to save lots of lives. All the Christian families The Independent spoke to said they were desperately in search of visas to get their family members out of Gaza.
But while the border stays closed, the Bethlehem Bible College’s Awwad says all this leaves is petitions to the next power: “We have lost all hope in all countries – England, the US – who won’t vote for a ceasefire, we have now lost hope in humanity.
“The only resource we are able to count on is prayer.”
