As part of a five day annual pilgrimage to support Christian communities in the Holy
Land, bishops from Europe and North America joined local Catholic parishes for Mass
on Sunday morning in Nablus, Jerusalem and Gaza City. Philippa Hitchen is travelling
with the bishops and went with a group of the Church leaders to the only Catholic
parish in the Gaza strip. “It was a cold, bright and sunny day as we drove out
of Jerusalem on Sunday morning, against the rush hour traffic, heading southwest towards
the Gaza strip. Home to over 1.5 million people, many of them living in huge refugee
camps, and controlled by the Islamic Hamas group, Gaza remains under tight military
control imposed by Israel to try and stop militants firing rockets into nearby border
towns. The narrow coastal strip is sealed off with a huge concrete wall topped
by barbed wire and look out posts and very few people are allowed in or out at the
heavily guarded crossings. Driving through empty fields and orange groves towards
the Erez border, I was struck by group after group of young Israeli men and women
in military fatigues, with combat boots and guns headed into the training camps we
saw along the route. Once through the heavily protected security gates and passport
controls, you enter another world where donkey drawn carts compete with rusty cars
along the potholed and rubbish strewn roads, while skinny boys drive small flocks
of sheep amidst jagged concrete slabs and rusting wires of a bombed out industrial
estate. The signs of the 2009 conflict and the continuing Israeli air strikes are
all around, though new houses are being built, students crowd around the smart university
buildings and the shops seem to be bustling with business. All the women are veiled
with some wearing the ‘niqab’ or full facial cover. By contrast, our convey was
greeted by women with smiling faces and children welcoming us with a marching band
and drums as we drove into the compound of the Holy Family parish, home to just a
couple of hundred Catholics resident in the Gaza strip. With the help of the Church
in Jerusalem and elsewhere, the parish runs three schools for Moslem and Christian
children, as well as a centre for the elderly and catechism programmes for the youth
and young married couples. The Argentinian born parish priest Fr Jorge also provides
food and medicine for some of the most needy families, assisted by a dozen dedicated
sisters from different parts of the world. After Mass in the simple whitewashed
church with bright stained glass windows, we sat and listened as local people talked
of their difficulties, caught between the Israeli blockade, denying them contact with
family and friends in the West Bank (around 500 permits are issued for the 3000 Christians
at Christmas and Easter, but not for those aged between 16 and 35) and the problems
of finding jobs or raising families in the majority Islamic society. Most of the people
here love the Christians, one man said, while another mother complained that their
children were ‘invited’ to become Muslims and needed to be strengthened in their Christian
faith. Night falls fast in this part of the world and anyone able to leave Gaza
has to do so before 3 o’clock when the border crossing is closed. We made it through
the first gate and across the eerie no-man’s land to the Israeli side in record time,
with evident relief written all over the faces of our guides travelling with the visiting
bishops. Yet as we headed back towards Jerusalem at dusk, I found it hard to forget
the faces and voices of the women in particular at the Holy Family parish urging us
to tell the world about their plight, to pray for peace and above all for the courage
that they may continue to witness to their Christian faith in an increasingly difficult
context.” Listen