‘Like a horror movie’: What is the future for Gaza’s Christians?
Before 7 October 2023, there were around 1,000 Christians in Gaza. After nine months of fighting, around one third of that number have left or been killed. Rhiannon de Laune, Embrace’s Programmes and Partnerships Manager, reflects on the personal story of one Palestinian Christian in Gaza and asks what the future might look like for this tiny but deeply rooted community. She also shares practical actions that UK Christians can take to support their sisters and brothers in Gaza.
‘I seek to provide all of life’s needs for my newborn child, who has the rights to live as all the children in the world. At the same time, I cannot be unconcerned or reassured. I always have a fear of the situation getting worse – developing into more extreme discomfort, more borders and injustice, and above all more deaths… from the moment I knew my wife was pregnant, I confess I felt conflicted between happiness and anxiety because I do not want to let my child to face and suffer in his future what I have suffered in the past and present.’
These hauntingly prophetic words were written in May 2023 by Ramy Tarazi, a 31-year-old Palestinian Christian in Gaza in a blog for Embrace in which Ramy shared his hopes and fears for the future.
A space of vision and hope in Gaza
I first met Ramy back in 2019 when I visited the Arab Orthodox Cultural and Social Centre (AOCSC) in Gaza City for the first time. The building was unfinished, and Ramy led us over construction rubble around a dark, vacuous building, covered in dust and dust sheets. Yet what I saw as an unfinished building came to life as Ramy laid out his vision. The enormous theatre would host community events and entertainment for children, the lecture hall would host conferences, and the classrooms would be hubs for continuous learning and training. The gym in the basement would provide a safe social space for women and men, while the grounds outside would be a calm and safe place for families to play and socialise. It would be no easy task to fill and fund this space, but Embrace has committed to supporting Christian leadership in the Middle East and Ramy, with his contagious optimism and oodles of pragmatism, was exactly the type of person we wanted to get behind.
Fast-forward to 2023 and I returned to the AOCSC. By this point, Embrace had been supporting the salaries of the leadership team, including Ramy, for nearly a year. I knew that they were exceeding some of the projections in their business plan and I had seen photos of the space, but when I was driven into the compound, I was confronted with the realisation of Ramy’s vision. The garden area was buzzing, there were shaded spaces where people were milling about, and there was a huge stage in front of the building from a women’s conference marking Mother’s Day. The massive lecture hall was crawling with conference delegates and the social spaces and teaching rooms on the first floor were filled with people studying, talking, eating and even praying. It was a multi-generational and multi-faith space, and the young team that were guiding me round were clearly so proud of what they had been able to achieve. As we sat down with coffee, a series of proposals for community programmes were passed my way; more vision, more optimism. Their energy was contagious.
Most of the senior leadership at Embrace’s partner organisations are older, but the AOCSC was different. Everyone was under 35: they were marrying, buying their first homes and having children. Their challenges were different from the people that I normally spoke with. The debts that they held, and the lack of opportunities in Gaza to grow, develop and progress were openly discussed. Their concerns for their parents and young families loomed large. Ramy’s mother has cancer, and he told me of the challenges he faced in getting her the medication and treatment that she needed. Even in peace time, the cancer hospitals in Gaza lacked treatments that we would take for granted in the UK. I heard numerous stories of people waiting for hours in chaotic medical centres, sometimes leaving without the treatment they needed. The team at the AOCSC told me about how much they had borrowed to buy apartments when they married – eye-watering amounts in comparison to their incomes. Yet this group of young men were hopeful and committed to working for the good of their communities despite the vast challenges that they faced.
Then October 7 happened.
Above: The Arab Orthodox Cultural and Social Centre - before and after the strike on 31 October 2023.
‘All our dream was destroyed’
As war began and missiles rained down on Gaza, Ramy and the Christian community continued doing what they have always done: responding to the needs around them. The AOCSC was transformed into a shelter for 3,000 people, while Ramy turned his hand to procuring supplies for the individuals and families sheltering in the Greek Orthodox Church.
As the war rapidly intensified and the situation became increasingly dangerous, Ramy left his home and moved his wife and 9-month-old son into the church. Supplies and food quickly became scarce, as Gaza was put under a full siege with nothing allowed in or out. Ramy would leave the compound almost daily to try and find infant milk for his son and other babies, having to pay up to $20 for one can of powder. He told me: ‘Every week in church my son feels sick because there is no good for him, just milk and cereal food.’
Above: Ramy’s home after it was destroyed in the bombing
Ramy described living in community as good: ‘I serve you, he or she serves me anything, so we live like a big family’, but it was far from idyllic. On 19 October 2023, the church compound was hit by a missile that killed 18 people instantly, although more died from their injuries in the coming weeks and months. Ramy told us that the levels of trauma people are experiencing causes huge tension: ‘All of the children need psychosocial support,’ he says. ‘Our houses were destroyed, our work was lost, there is nothing.’
Ramy’s own home was destroyed, the master’s degree he was due to complete later this year is lost, and on 31 October the Arab Orthodox Cultural and Social Centre was also tragically destroyed. The Centre, once a testament to the resilience and hope for a better future, even in the midst of oppression, was reduced to rubble by the war –much like the dreams of so many who live in Gaza. Ramy told us: ‘All our dream was destroyed also’.
‘This is like a horror movie for me’
Above: Ramy with his wife and baby son
Looking back at Ramy’s words from May 2023 (‘I felt conflicted between happiness and anxiety because I do not want to let my child face and suffer in his future what I have suffered in the past and present’) helps me to understand how parents in Gaza have felt as they have been hemmed in by violence, thirst and hunger. All of their worst fears have become reality.
As Ramy says: ‘Throughout this war I am afraid if my son has anything, such as feeling sick and needing hospital, but there is no hospital to take him to. This is like horror movie for me.’
This is why, when it became possible to travel south, Ramy and many other young Christian leaders left Gaza with their families, taking up a visa offered by Australia. He told me: ‘We leave everything we have in Gaza, and we are just seeking safety for our children … (the) Gaza strip needs around 10 years at least to rebuild it … We cannot live with this condition.’
A deeply uncertain future
But as Ramy and other leaders leave, who will rebuild Gaza? Ramy is not the only intelligent and visionary young person to leave Gaza. The war has made life unsustainable as a generation have lost their homes, their qualifications, their jobs, and schools for their children to learn in. They now find themselves as refugees and face all the challenges that come with that. Although Ramy’s family are safe in Australia, Ramy tells me that it is expensive and the visa he has does not allow him to work (he must wait for around four months to get that status changed).
Ramy dreams that one day he will return to his homeland, but there is a big question mark over this. Since the blockade on Gaza began, special permissions to enter and exit are required; Gazans can’t come and go as they please, so there are real fears that they will not be able to return home.
In Ramy’s words, ‘there are no choices’. The future is difficult either way. Becoming a refugee means leaving home, possibly never to return. Yet to stay in Gaza is to risk death. Tens of thousands have died since the horrors began to unfold on 7 October 2023, but even once a ceasefire is agreed, millions will continue to pay the heaviest price for this war, for decades and generations to come.
What can we do to help?
As we confront the stark reality facing Christians in Gaza, the question we must ask is: what can we do? In answer, Ramy issues two pleas. First, he says, we must pray for the Christians of Gaza. Through our prayers, we remember that we are all part of the one household of God, committing individuals into God’s care and enabling our hearts to be fuelled by compassion and justice. Second, he adds, we must put our compassion into action by supporting those serving in the rubble and committing to speak up for justice and an end to the war.
The death and destruction that we are witnessing hasn’t arisen out of nowhere. It is the cost of not working for peace, not only during the last nine months but also over many decades. We have been too slow to speak up for the people who have lived under blockade in Gaza since 2007, and slow to support our Christian sisters and brothers there by speaking out against the unjust restrictions placed upon their lives.
There will be a future for Gaza. The question is, what will it look like? Will it be a continuation of the bloodshed of the past nine months, a continuation of the blockade and the damage it has caused to individuals, families and communities? Or a different future in which people in Gaza can live with the full rights they deserve? The answer to this question is uncertain but what we do now as Christians in the UK – how we respond and learn from the mistakes of the past – will help shape Gaza’s future. Our prayers and our actions can make a difference.
PRACTICAL ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE
PRAY
Pray for Palestinian Christians and specifically for Christians from Gaza. We have produced a new prayer you can use to guide your intercessions.
RAISE AWARENESS
Please share the video of Ramy’s story with your church and your friends.
WRITE TO YOUR MP
Use our template to write to your MP and ask them to urge the incoming government to work for peace and justice in Gaza and across the region.
FUNDRAISE
Help sustain the social witness of Christians in the Middle East by donating to Embrace or fundraising to support the work of our Christian partners.