GAZA CITY: A tiny Palestinian Christian community has had to find a modus vivendi in the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip, while enduring the same hardships as Muslims in the besieged and impoverished coastal enclave.
Caught in the crossfire of the Israel-Hamas conflict which cost 1,400 lives in a December 2008-January 2009 war and wary of groups more radical than Gaza’s rulers, discretion has been the name of the game.
"Each moment is a balancing act. We have to stay alert at all times," said Greek Orthodox Archbishop Alexios after a service attended by around 100 worshippers in Gaza City’s Saint Porphyrios church.
"We have good relations with the Hamas leadership. Tolerance serves both sides," said Alexios, who has regular meetings at the highest level at Hamas-run ministries.
"They asked us if we need guards for the church" after a spate of violent incidents in 2007 and 2008, when a member of the Baptist church was murdered and several Christian targets were firebombed, said the prelate.
"We said we felt very safe. We don’t want guards," added Alexios, whose flock accounts for about 2,500 of the estimated 3,000 Palestinian Christians in the densely populated narrow territory of 1.5 million people.
He has also instructed members of his church not to give in to demands for women in Gaza’s traditionally conservative society to wear Islamic headscarves, whether it be at school or on the streets.
But to respect the red lines of conduct, apparent would-be converts are turned away to avoid accusations of proselytising, a criminal offence in Muslim countries.
Amid alleged Baptist efforts to convert people through aid work in an enclave suffering an economic meltdown and perceived Western influences, Bible School bookshop owner Rami Ayyad was kidnapped and killed in October 2007.
The Baptists’ bookshop was firebombed that same year, while Christian schools in Gaza City and the YMCA library were also bombed in 2007-2008 night-time attacks, without causing casualties.
The Hamas government has repeatedly stressed a policy of tolerance towards the religious minority and has made arrests, but those detained were held only briefly and no charges were filed.
The attacks were listed as attempts at criminal extortion rather than politically motivated.
"At the beginning it was not easy. But now the people have grown used to it. There is no problem from the political leadership," said Alexios. "The fanaticism comes from the outside."
But the Christian community, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Middle East, is shrinking in number, mostly because of unemployment which last year reached 39 percent in Gaza, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The ancient Mediterranean seafront city once had a thriving Christian community, especially under British-mandated Palestine that ended in 1948 with the creation of the Jewish state.
Now it is being steadily stripped down by emigration to Australia, the United States, Sweden — or wherever else Gazan Christians have family connections.
"I hope we can go out for the sake of my children, to give them a future. There is no work here," said Jaber Jildah, 52, a teacher at a church school for both Christian and Muslim children.
"Everything is going down, but we are still here. We can color ourselves to suit the circumstances, if you know what I mean."
In an Easter message, Reverend Manuel Musallam, whose Latin rite has Gaza’s third church, stressed the bitterness of Muslims and Christians at being barred from their holiest sites — geographically so close — by Israel’s lockdown.
"Every stone built in the ‘apartheid wall,’ every axe strike digging under Al-Aqsa mosque (in Jerusalem), and every house destroyed by Israel will increase the intensity of resistance and resentfulness," he said.
Musallam was referring to Israel’s "security fence" in the West Bank that has also affected the lives of Christian villagers around Bethlehem, again uniting the two religions in the hardships of Palestinian daily life.
In Gaza, Islamic rules mean that alcohol is banned. On entry from Israel, an interior ministry sign at passport control warns that any liquor will be "seized, destroyed and poured in front of their owners".
But Alexios explained that his VIP pass for the crossing allows him to bring in ecclesiastical needs such as wine for communion, Bibles and candles.
Alexios, a Greek national from the Peloponnese whose services are conducted mostly in Arabic, has lived for more than four decades in the region, including the past nine years in Gaza City.
