Christians in Gaza have reported a dangerous shortage of food and clean water in the compound of the Holy Family Parish.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem can provide only two full meals each week and a loaf of bread every two days for each Christian in Gaza. “People walk for long hours to get a small box of food, which in the end is not enough for three people,” a source told Aid to the Church in Need.
“We have dirty water for toilets and sanitary units, and water is being purified using traditional methods,” he said, warning that illness was spreading from a lack of sanitation.
“Children are suffering from a virus that causes nausea and diarrhoea, and [some] of the elderly are facing serious illnesses and would require immediate hospitalisation.”
The Vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land, Fr Ibrahim Faltas, has appealed for global assistance for mothers and children in Gaza. Last week he said that the roughly 60,000 pregnant women in the region “suffer from hunger and malnutrition in their delicate and important condition: that of giving life”.
Fr Faltas demanded international action to help the innocent in Gaza. “We can’t just tell them that their hunger must wait until the powerful people of the world have given their permission to feed them,” he said. “Let us pray that the light of truth that defeats hypocrisy may touch consciences.”
In an interview with the Swiss network RTS, where he made a controversial appeal for Ukraine to negotiate a peace with Russia, Pope Francis described his contact with the Holy Family Parish which he calls each day at 7pm.
“They tell me about what they are witnessing,” he said. “It is a war. And it takes two to make war, not just one. Those responsible are these two who make war.”
On Monday, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Paul Gallagher attended the annual meeting of the heads of Catholic Churches in the Holy Land, held in Jordan, where he concelebrated a Mass with the Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa.
A delegation of 23 Christian peace campaigners from the US visited the West Bank from 27 February to 4 March and published a report on the conditions of the Palestinian people, accusing Israel of “an attempt to wipe Palestinian history, tradition, and culture from human memory, the very definition of genocide”.
“The Stones Cry Out: From the Ground in Palestine to the US Government and Churches” said that 76 years of oppression by the Israeli state had worsened after 7 October 2023, when Hamas fighters “pierced the walls of the concentration camp called Gaza”.
“We grieve for all who have died, including the victims of the Hamas attack,” it said, describing Gaza as “a killing field”.
Scott Wright represented Pax Christi USA, alongside representatives from the Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Reformed Church of America, United Church of Christ, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite Church and Presbyterian Church.
Members of the US peace campaigners delegation in the West Bank. Credit: Scott Wright, Pax Christi USA
They met Palestinian clergy, laypeople, civil rights lawyers, NGO leaders and the director of the UN Relief Works Agency, who called for an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas and political prisoners held by Israel.
In its report, the delegation demanded that the US follow international law and support the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice at The Hague that recognised a “plausible case” that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
The delegation also warned that “while our eyes are fixed on Gaza – and rightly so – there is ethnic cleansing exponentially increasing in the West Bank”, demanding an stop to illegal Israeli settlements, night raids into Palestinian homes and military rather than civil trials for detained Palestinians. They called too for an end to Israel’s policy of house demolitions of Palestinian homes.
The delegation said it wanted UNRWA funding restored immediately because “UNRWA is the only organisation that can deliver mass human services to Gaza”, while condemning the US for “funding this crisis”.
“This is a US war: the weapons are US made, the money is US money,” it said, commemorating the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman, Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC on 25 February.
The delegation cited Bushnell’s final statement: “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people are experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine.”
World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel is promoting an initiative to connect the Easter story with current circumstances in the Holy Land.
Under the theme “Out of the darkness – Easter solidarity with the Holy Land”, the Easter Initiative stories and prayers will touch upon the importance of solidarity with the Christian community in Palestine and Israel, as many young families face the difficult choice of whether to remain or seek their futures elsewhere.
Pax Christi International has again called on members to campaign for an immediate bi-lateral ceasefire, the release of all the hostages and those held in Israeli detention, the full restoration of UNRWA funding and an end to unrestricted arms transfers to Israel.
Loading ...
