Catherine Baker and Shahd Safi
Fri, December 22, 2023
In Bethlehem, Occupied West Bank, the Lutheran Church decided that its Christmas nativity scene this year would be different by placing the symbolic Baby Jesus in a manger of rubble and destruction to reflect the reality of Palestinian children living and being born today. (Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
Sara, 24, is four months pregnant with her third child and living with at least 50 other people in a house in Gaza. This location is supposedly in a safe area — in Rafah, on the border with Egypt. But this city too is being bombed now.
This young woman’s plight, and that of the estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, evokes the nativity story depicted in Christmas pageants at churches around the world this time of year. Some 5,500 Gazan women are expected to give birth during Advent.
Sara is from Al Shuja’iya, a neighborhood of Gaza City less than 50 miles southwest of Bethlehem. She and her family complied with Israeli orders to evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, traveling by car and foot, and also by donkey cart as if it were Biblical times. They had to pick their way over rubble-strewn roads congested with more than 1 million other exhausted and frightened travelers.
Read more: Opinion: I am nine months pregnant and living in Gaza. Will my baby first hear my voice or bombs?
When Sara’s family left their home, they first found refuge at her parents’ house, but were forced by the chaos to move another six times, several of them during intense bombardment. Their current location has no electricity, running water or heat and only an open fire for cooking. With the intensifying combat, the situation is extremely stressful, which increases risk for miscarriage, preterm labor and a low-birth-weight infant.
In the Gospel story, once Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem from Nazareth, they could find nowhere to stay until an innkeeper offered them the use of his stable. For many pregnant women in Gaza, there is literally “no room at the inn.” They are giving birth in cars and on the street.
For now, Sara is considered one of the lucky ones. She’s had a single maternal care visit so far, at the Al-Helal Emirati maternity hospital in Rafah. It was crowded with about 50 other women seeking attention, but she was able to meet with a doctor, who gave her a bottle of prescription vitamins. Her family has been able to find food for her to eat — oranges, cucumber, tomatoes, nuts and canned food — but the market shelves are increasingly depleted and prices have skyrocketed.
Read more: Opinion: Here's what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide
It’s unclear where Sara will be in May when her baby is due and whether bombs will still be falling. For women giving birth in Gaza this Advent, the odds are narrow that they can obtain a hospital bed, since so many healthcare facilities are in shambles. Many will give birth in Al-Mawasi, a narrow patch along the coast that Israel designated as a safe zone — barren land with a chaotically improvised tent camp and no infrastructure.
Regardless of where these women are, they are likely to give birth in an unsafe environment, putting them at risk for infection, uncontrolled hemorrhage and damage to their reproductive systems. Lack of postnatal care increases the risk of brain damage and death for the baby, while the hostile environment can interfere with the mother-infant bond.
In well-loved hymns passed down through the generations, the night of Jesus’ birth was silent, and the sky was filled with brightly shining stars, guiding shepherds and the three wise men to the manger in Bethlehem.
Read more: Opinion: Gaza's health system has collapsed, multiplying the war's toll on children
In Gaza, the night is not silent. The bombs and shelling continue unabated, underscored by the buzzing of drones. The sky is bright with explosions, but toxic smoke obscures the stars. Should wise people such as international human rights monitors wish to check on the conditions of new mothers, they cannot, because Israel has denied them entry. Journalists cannot conduct interviews with such women, either, because they’re forbidden to be in Gaza unless embedded with Israel’s army. Shepherds will not be anywhere near, as they have had to abandon their flocks.
Today, Gazan families are pressed against Egypt’s border. It’s possible Sara and her family could be forced into exile in the Sinai Desert. But she fervently hopes a cease-fire will be called before a mass exodus of Palestinians could happen.
For Sara, her faith in God’s will remains unshakable: “I trust he will always be there for me.”
In this moment of war, may heavenly peace come for the newborns of Gaza.
Catherine Baker is senior editor for We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit project that trains young Palestinians to share their personal stories in English. Shahd Safi is a Gaza-based journalist who trained with WANN.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
‘We are mourning’: This Christmas, Palestinian Christians pray for Gaza
Fatima Abdulkarim
Thu, December 21, 2023
Mary and Marwan, a Palestinian Christian couple living in the West Bank, will not be attending Christmas festivities in Bethlehem next week. Like their co-religionists, they will focus their attention on Gaza.
They are consumed by the situation of brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts and cousins, all currently trapped at the Roman Catholic Church in Gaza City.
The mood across the occupied territories is grim. In place of the towering evergreen that traditionally adorns Manger Square at the entrance of the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem residents have erected instead a monumental figure of the flight of Jesus and the Virgin Mary to Egypt, evoking the biblical escape from King Herod’s violence.
“We are mourning; we can’t celebrate while witnessing the killing and burning of children in our homeland,” says Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Hanania, “so we have decided to cancel all Christmas celebrations this year.”
In the Ramallah apartment where Marwan and Mary live, the usual hymns and carols go unsung. Instead, solemn prayers echo as they pray that their relatives and the rest of Gaza are delivered from danger. Poor communications mean that it has been several days since they last heard from them.
“I’m out of words. I can’t find it in myself to celebrate,” says Marwan, a 54-year-old computer engineer and musician. He and his wife preferred not to use their full names out of fear for their family’s safety in Gaza.
Gone are their traditional Christmas tree and decorations. Small sculptures of the Virgin Mary and a few red ribbons are scattered on side tables in their living room, alongside plastic green wreaths. But there are no new clothes, no gifts, and no colorful wrapped candies, which Mary says are “tasteless this year.”
She opens a photo album of the last Christmas she spent in Gaza years ago with a wistful gaze. The fear and helplessness, she says, is overwhelming.
“We are only turning to prayers; we pray for the war to end, for our people to be safe, to relive our glory days in Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem and all of Palestine,” she says.
This Christmas season is one of particular uncertainty and anxiety for Palestinian Christians, especially in Gaza, where they number around 1,000.
Nearly all Gaza Christians are concentrated in Gaza City, the epicenter of Israel’s military offensive in northern Gaza, and have been holed up for over two months within the walls of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church for safety. Their relatives and fellow Christians across the West Bank remain anxious about their future, praying in somber church services for good news from Gaza.
Provisions are running low in the besieged Roman Catholic Church compound, and the plight intensifies as food, water, and medicine become scarce.
Last Saturday, according to reports confirmed by the Roman Catholic Patriarchate, two women sheltering in the Gaza City Catholic compound were shot dead by an Israeli sniper.
This incident only added to Mary and Marwan’s fears.
“Most of my family members are musicians. We used to love this season, which was a chance to visit Bethlehem, visit friends and family for long nights of playing music and being together,” says Marwan. “This year, I’m only with the memories of my besieged loved ones.”
Mary insists that their decision to abstain from festivities, like those of many Christians across the West Bank and Jerusalem, is not a renunciation of joy, but a testament to “seeking truth and justice in the most difficult war ever lived by Palestinians.”
“I believe in the resilience of the human spirit in the face of adversity,” she says. “So through simple gestures and the sincerity of our prayers, we might find the miracle that allows us to celebrate their survival and leave the war a distant memory.”
“Christians in Gaza are an integral part of the Palestinian community; there is no difference” among Muslims and Christians, Mayor Hanania said in a phone interview, noting that Israeli bombs have hit mosques and church compounds alike. “We are united in pain. We are united under the occupation.”
The Rev. Fadi Diab, rector of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ramallah, oversees Baptist churches in Palestine. Mr. Diab says his hope is that prayers this Christmas season will bring the war to an end.
“The once-revered sanctuaries, which stood as symbols of solace and communal strength, now bear the scars of conflict,” he says. “We pray they will return to being beacons of hope and peace.”
The UN says more than 1 in 4 people in Gaza are starving because of war
NAJIB JOBAIN, JACK JEFFERY and COLLEEN BARRY
Updated Thu, December 21, 2023 at 9:47 PM MST·7 min read
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APTOPIX Israel Palestinians
Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. International aid agencies say Gaza is suffering from shortages of food, medicine and other basic supplies as a result of the two and a half month war between Israel and Hamas.
(AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report Thursday by the United Nations and other agencies, highlighting the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's bombardment and siege on the territory in response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.
The extent of the population's hunger eclipsed even the near-famines in Afghanistan and Yemen of recent years, according to figures in the report. The report warned that the risk of famine is “increasing each day,” blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza.
“It doesn’t get any worse,’’ said Arif Husain, chief economist for the U.N.’s World Food Program. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”
Israel says it is in the final stages of clearing out Hamas militants from northern Gaza, but that months of fighting lie ahead in the south.
The war sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 rampage and hostage-taking in Israel has killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians. Some 1.9 million Gaza residents — more than 80% of the population — have been driven from their homes, and many of them are crammed into U.N. shelters.
The war has also pushed Gaza’s health sector into collapse. Only nine of its 36 health facilities are still partially functioning, all located in the south, according to the World Health Organization. On Thursday, WHO relief workers reported “unbearable” scenes in two hospitals they visited in northern Gaza: Bedridden patients with untreated wounds crying out for water, the few remaining doctors and nurses having no supplies, and bodies being lined up in the courtyard.
Bombardment and fighting continued Thursday, and internet and communications that had been knocked out for several days gradually began to return across the territory.
U.N. Security Council members again delayed a vote on a now-watered down Arab-sponsored resolution for a halt in combat to allow for increased aid deliveries. A vote, initially set for Monday, has been delayed each day since then. The United States now supports the resolution, but other council members said that because of the significant changes, they needed to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected on Friday.
Other countries support a stronger text in the resolution that would include the now-eliminated call for the urgent suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hamas.
Instead, the wording now calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said, if adopted, this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities.
Thursday’s report from the U.N. on the hunger in Gaza underscored the failure of weeks of U.S. efforts to ensure greater aid reaches Palestinians.
At the start of the war, Israel stopped all deliveries of food, water, medicine and fuel into the territory. After U.S. pressure, it allowed a trickle of aid in through Egypt. But U.N. agencies say only 10% of Gaza's food needs has been entering for weeks.
This week, Israel began allowing aid to enter Gaza through its Kerem Shalom crossing, which boosted the number of trucks entering from around 100 a day to around 190 on Wednesday, according to the U.N. But an Israeli strike Thursday morning hit the Palestinian side of the crossing, forcing the U.N. to stop its pickups of aid there, according to Juliette Touma, spokesperson of UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
At least four staff members at the crossing were killed, a nearby hospital reported. The Israeli military said it struck militants in the area.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Israel has been working to increase its inspection of aid trucks to 300 or 400 a day, and blamed the U.N. for failures in delivery. The amount of aid could triple “if the U.N., instead of complaining all day, would do its job,” he said, without elaborating on what more the U.N. should be doing.
Egypt's Rafah crossing has limited capacity for trucks to cross. U.N. officials say delivery of aid within much of Gaza has become difficult or impossible because of fighting, and more than 130 U.N. personnel have been killed.
The report released Thursday by 23 U.N. and nongovernmental agencies found that the entire population in Gaza is in food crisis, with 576,600 at catastrophic or starvation levels. “It is a situation where pretty much everybody in Gaza is hungry," Husain, the World Food Program economist, said.
“People are very, very close to large outbreaks of disease because their immune systems have become so weak because they don’t have enough nourishment,” he said.
Hundreds of people lined up Thursday at a soup kitchen in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, waving cups and pots as they waited for soup to be served from huge vats hanging over wood fires. Rafah, by the Egypt border, is one of the few places that receives regular aid deliveries.
Aya Barbakh, who's been displaced by the war, said she comes every day for food.
“Let us be in comfort like other people. We see people dying every day, and we want to die like them. We have been insulted and humiliated,” she said.
Mahmoud al-Qishawi, with the American charity Pious Projects that runs the kitchen, said there’s no fuel to cook with, so they have to search around the neighborhood for wood to burn. “There’s a huge number of families and we don’t have food that is enough for them.”
Israel has vowed to continue the offensive until it destroys Hamas’ military capabilities and returns scores of hostages captured by Palestinian militants during their Oct. 7 rampage. Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and captured around 240 others.
Hamas fired a barrage of rockets at central Israel Thursday, showing its military capabilities remain formidable. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
The United States has continued to support Israel’s campaign while also urging greater efforts to protect civilians. The U.S. wants Israel to shift to more targeted operations aimed at Hamas leaders and the group's tunnel network.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday the death toll since the start of the war had risen to more than 19,600. It does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.
On Wednesday, the WHO delivered supplies to Ahli and Shifa hospitals in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have demolished vast swaths of the city while fighting Hamas militants.
Israeli forces raided a series of health facilities in the north in recent weeks, detaining men for interrogation and expelling others. On Thursday, troops stormed the Palestinian Red Crescent's ambulance center in the Jabaliya refugee camp, taking away paramedics and ambulance crews, the group said.
In some health facilities, patients who are unable to be moved remain, along with a skeleton staff who can do little beyond first aid, according to U.N. and health officials.
Ahli Hospital is “a place where people are waiting to die,” said Sean Casey, a member of the WHO team that visited the two hospitals Wednesday. Five remaining doctors and five nurses along with around 80 patients remain in Ahli, he said.
All of the hospital buildings are damaged except two, where patients are now kept: the orthopedics ward and a church on the grounds, he said, where “patients were crying out in pain, but were also crying out for us to give them water."
Israel’s military says 137 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. Israel says it has killed some 7,000 militants, without providing evidence. It blames the high number civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying it uses them as human shields when it fights in residential areas.
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Jeffery reported from Cairo, Barry from Milan, Italy. Associated Press writers Lee Keath in Cairo, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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