As Christmas arrives, the small Christian community in the Gaza Strip is again facing a season mired in war.
Once a time marked by family gatherings, decorations and liturgies, the holiday this year will be spent in makeshift shelters in partially destroyed churches standing amid the ruins of a war-torn enclave.
And for the roughly 700 Christians who remain in Gaza — almost half of the number before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas militants — survival has become a daily challenge.
Khalil Sayegh is a young Palestinian Christian. He runs the Agora Initiative, a U.S.-based nonprofit promoting democracy in the Middle East.
Mr. Sayegh told The Washington Times that more than 75% of the Christian Gazans have lost their homes, forcing them to relocate to church campuses, including members of his own family.
“Two main churches, in Gaza, became populated with Christians: St. Porphyrios Church and the Holy Family Catholic Church,” he said. “So they’ve been in the churches living, you know, for over a year, the Christians have been living, worshipping, burying their dead in the same compound, in a very small space.”
PHOTOS: In the shadow of war, Christians in Gaza face a somber Christmas
About 500 Christians are seeking refuge in Gaza City’s Holy Family Catholic Parish. Another 200 are sheltering in the Greek Orthodox church, St. Porphyrios Church, a fifth-century structure central to Gaza’s Christian life. Dozens of displaced families now live within its compound.
But these spaces are overcrowded — and they’re not safe. On Oct. 19, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit a building within the St. Porphyrios compound, where nearly 450 Muslims and Christians were housed. The strike killed 18 people, including children and elderly civilians seeking refuge.
Ramiz Souri, a Gazan, lost his three children and 12 of his relatives in that strike, a moment he described as a “catastrophe” that shattered his life. Since then, he says his wife has suffered from extreme heart conditions as a result of the emotional stress.
“The church was a safe haven protected by all international laws,” he said in messages exchanged over WhatsApp. “Yet, it was directly targeted. We ask the Lord for wisdom and safety, but we also ask the world to see our suffering.”
Since it began in October 2023, the war in Gaza has displaced nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents and claimed the lives of more than 45,000 people, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which Hamas operates.
Gazan authorities say that number includes 17,000 children — but not the 11,000 missing people believed to be trapped beneath the rubble. In totaling the number of casualties, Gazan officials do not differentiate between civilians and Hamas militants.
According to several sources, at least 5% of Gaza’s Christian population have died, either directly from violence or from the lack of medical care caused by Israel’s barriers to aid into the area.
Another Christian man in Gaza, speaking to The Times on the condition of anonymity, said he’s sharing a 13-by-19 foot room with nine people, where mattresses are spread on the floor. Meals are sparse, consisting of little more than rice or beans every other day, and medical supplies are critically low, he said.
“We feel safe being together, but it’s not truly safe,” he said. “At night, we hear a very big, huge boom, you know, and we have kids; we have elder people. We’re surviving — but in a hard way. The scary thing is, the situation is very unpredictable. You don’t know what’s gonna happen the next minute, you know?”
Mr. Sayegh said the destruction isn’t just affecting the churches. “A lot of Christian centers, such as the Orthodox Arab Center, Christian schools such as Orthodox school as well, were destroyed completely,” he said.
Nader Abu Amsher is the executive director of the Middle East Council of Churches in the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees. He lives in Bethlehem in the West Bank and coordinates internal Gazan aid from afar.
International organizations such as Catholic Relief Services and Orthodox Relief, he said, have attempted to provide food, water and medical care, but Israeli restrictions have made consistent delivery nearly impossible.
“They have no electricity. They charge their mobiles by using the generator,” Mr. Amsher told The Times. “[They use] electrical generators to, you know, charge mobiles to function. [There are] some lights in some specific places, especially they have underground building where the people with disability were staying, and they are lighting this place from time to time.”
He said lighting, in general, is hard to come by because there is so little fuel available. “They manage to get fuel from time to time, whenever it’s available, and buy it with very high prices in these areas.”
Though aid became “a trickle” earlier this year, as described by U.N. officials, several sources maintain that getting aid to Gaza has now become virtually impossible. As of a few days ago, 41 aid missions had been blocked since the start of December, say the U.N. humanitarian officials.
Faith amid destruction
Despite their situation, Gazan Christians say they’re determined to hold onto their faith. Mr. Sayegh said that even during Easter this year, displaced families found ways to celebrate, attending Mass and sharing what little they had.
“I expect the same will happen this Christmas,” he said. “There won’t be decorations or Christmas trees, but there will be worship and a quiet celebration of the birth of our Lord.”
On Sunday, the Holy Land’s Catholic leader, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, visited the Parish of the Holy Family in Gaza, assuring the remaining Christians that the “whole world is with you.” According to reports, the cardinal’s Mass began at dawn, celebrated in white vestments — a presumed symbol of Christmas joy.
“You must not lose hope, because Christmas is the festival of hope, because the light of Christ is with you,” Cardinal Pizzaballa told Gazans. “Sooner or later, the war will end. When it does, we’ll rebuild everything, your schools, your hospitals, your homes.”
The West Bank, though not enduring the same fog of war as those in Gaza, has remained similarly solemn. Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, is not the joyous occasion it once was, Mr. Amsher said.
“Christmas is sad here. No lights,” he told The Times, noting this is the second year in a row that Bethlehem has remained quiet over the holidays.
“It is impossible to celebrate while there is still blood being spilled in the Gaza Strip and dozens of people are killed every day,” Bethlehem Mayor Anton Salman said in a statement to Haartez.
Masses on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day will still be held in Bethlehem and Gaza.
“The heads of churches decided not to celebrate. They celebrate the feast in prayer,” Mr. Amsher said. “We have no, you know, these kind of decorations and trees. Some families put trees in their homes, but many others, not. The majority are not.”
Broader implications
Jamie Eyre, CEO of British-based nonprofit Embrace the Middle East, told The Times that challenges for humanitarian aid are growing because the war has decimated much of Gaza’s infrastructure.
“The situation degrades day by day,” Mr. Eyre said. “Freedom to move is reduced, supplies are scarce and the safe spaces to operate grow smaller.”
Leaving is not an option for many Gazan Christians. The Israeli government encouraged civilians to move south when it began its military operations in North Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ rampage on Israel’s soil — an attack that claimed the lives of more than 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians.
But as the fighting moved south, many Palestinians said they had nowhere to go. Egypt, which is the only other nation besides Israel to share a border with the Gaza Strip, had shut its gates.
“Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to brokers of up to $10,000 to help them exit the territory through Egypt,” The Guardian reported earlier this year. But many can’t afford it.
Other Palestinians argue that evacuation is an attempt at an Israeli land grab. Late last month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should occupy Gaza and “encourage” half of the Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinians to leave for good in the next two years.
These populations, Mr. Eyre said, are now at a loss as to what they can do. And he described the adaptive efforts of Christian relief organizations to provide for displaced populations despite shifting front lines and resource shortages as “incredibly tough.”
“Our partners are doing their best to ensure access to food, warm shelter, and basic medical care. But the reality is grim,” he said.
Gaza’s cold weather can wax bitter, and organizations such as Mr. Eyre’s are reportedly struggling to provide warm clothing and adequate shelter for displaced families.
“We have been involved in setting up mobile clinics,” he added, “and in helping pregnant women, children and those with chronic diseases. But, frankly, the needs are enormous.”
The impact of this displacement is also felt by Gazan Christians in other ways — some more severe than others. Mr. Amsher told The Times that volunteers are seeing a resurgence of diseases like polio, linked to poor sanitation and limited access to clean water.
Mr. Eyre said efforts to mitigate this crisis are underway, but tenuous. “Our teams have joined vaccination campaigns with UNICEF and WHO to protect children under 10. The work is critical but … insufficient given the scale of the need.”
For many Gazan Christians, holding onto hope amid despair is an act of resilience. Mr. Amsher said the community is determined to find joy in the simplest acts of worship.
“Even with no decorations or feasts, they will celebrate the birth of Christ,” he said.
Pope Francis has made his support for the Gazan people abundantly clear. From his seat in the Vatican, the pontiff said he felt pain when thinking “of such cruelty, to the machine-gunning of children, to the bombing of schools and hospitals … How much cruelty!”
The Holy See drew ire from Israel supporters, too, this month when the Vatican unveiled its official Nativity scene — featuring a kaffiyeh-draped manger surrounding the infant Jesus. The kaffiyeh, a checkered headscarf worn by many Palestinians, has become a clear symbol of support for the Palestinian state.
The pope’s comments haven’t sat well with the Israeli government. The Foreign Ministry described his viewpoints as “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism — a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7,” according to The Times of Israel.
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” read the Foreign Ministry’s statement.
For the Christians The Washington Times spoke with, the politics of the Gaza war is beside the point. It’s normalcy they yearn for, they said, even as they face the monumental task of rebuilding their lives.
The situation in Gaza remains dire, with calls for a ceasefire growing louder across the globe. International human rights organizations and faith-based advocacy groups have urged Israel and global powers to address the humanitarian crisis. Israel maintains that its actions are necessary in self-defense.
“We are staying here in the church, waiting for food or assistance,” one Christian resident told The Times. “We’re trying to explain to our children what’s happening and how long this will last, but we don’t have answers.”
When The Times first inquired about his feelings at Christmas, Mr. Amsher didn’t know what to say. After a long moment, he lent his final thought.
“Christmas is celebrated everywhere in the world today,” he said, “but it’s dark in the birthplace of Jesus.”
• Several quotes in this report were translated from Arabic.
• Emma Ayers can be reached at eayers@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.