No spirit of celebration in Gaza
An article on Gaza’s Christians this year by AFP follows the one from Al Jazeera.
A Palestinian protester argues with Israeli border policemen during a demonstration against the Israeli settlements and demand for free movement for Palestinians during Christmas near a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Bethlehem December 23, 2014. Photo by telesur.
Holiday cheer is tough to come by after this summer’s brutal war, which has left Gazans struggling to recover.
Megan O’Toole, Al Jazeera
December 25, 2014
Gaza City – Christmas is hidden upstairs at the Toy Toy shop in the core of Gaza City.
Visitors entering the small, unassuming store must ascend a side staircase before stumbling upon a room full of Christmas goods – rows of red and green candles, shelves adorned with grinning elf dolls, a floor covered in shiny green wrapping paper.
A lone employee, 24-year-old Hussam Abu Shaban, wraps snow-white garlands around a plastic tree and jokingly refers to himself as Gaza’s Santa.
But in a city that has barely started to recover from a crushing summer war, this is no ordinary Christmas.
Indeed, for many Christian residents of the besieged Gaza Strip, there is little to celebrate this holiday season.
“This Christmas is not like last year,” Shaban tells Al Jazeera. “Most Christians just take a small tree for the kids. They’ve lost a lot of family members, some from the war, some not.”
Wreckage from Israel’s 51-day assault on Gaza, which killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and displaced hundreds of thousands more, remains visible everywhere in the densely populated coastal enclave.
Buildings demolished by air strikes still lie in jarring heaps of rubble, unfixed nearly four months after the bombs stopped falling.
Driving through the streets of Gaza on Christmas Eve, it is tough to spot many signs at all of the holiday season.
A few storefronts are festooned with pine boughs and shiny ornaments. But residents – even those who religiously celebrate the holiday – are not putting Christmas on display.
Christmas is inevitably coming with its decoration, its finery and its celebrations, but our inner souls are still affected, in all respects, by the devastating effects of war.
– Nahed al-Dabbagh, Gaza resident
“There were a lot of Christians killed in this war. Christian homes were destroyed,” Nabeel al-Salfiti, 62, tells Al Jazeera. “Every year it’s been tougher [to celebrate].”
A Palestinian man holds a sign as he stands next to another protester dressed in a Santa Claus costume during a demonstration against the Israeli settlements and demanding for free movement for the Palestinians during Christmas, near a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Bethlehem December 23, 2014.
Christmas was already a humble celebration in Gaza. The vast majority of the strip’s 1.8 million residents are Muslim, with less than one percent identifying as Christian. And many of those are Orthodox, meaning they celebrate Christmas on January 7 rather than December 25.
Shaban describes Christmas as a “uniting” force, noting many of the decorations that Toy Toy sells are purchased by Muslims.
Even though the festive spirit has been more lacklustre this year than in ones previous, “we all like the decorations of Christmas”.
But Salfiti, whose home brims with holiday cheer on the inside, says he made a conscious decision to keep Christmas out of public view this year. “This is inside the house,” he explains, adjusting his thick blue corduroy jacket as he gestures around his living room.
Power cuts have left his home temporarily without electricity, but a single strip of battery-powered lights casts a glow over red Christmas place mats with gold tassels, a Santa-themed napkin holder, glittering red candles and, in one corner, the family Christmas tree. “We don’t show it outside in such circumstances after the war.”
His daughter, Elaine al-Salfiti, 18, wanted to go to Bethlehem with her mother this year to celebrate Christmas in the heart of the Holy Land.
But Salfiti, clad in a sweater emblazoned with white snowflakes and reindeer, explains that her mother will be going alone, because she cannot obtain the necessary travel permissions.
A cheerful Palestinian Christian family from Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip head to the Erez border having managed to get some of the few permits to attend Christmas in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, on December 23, 2014. Photo by Mohammed Abed / AFP
“It’s very depressing, because everyone I know travels to celebrate and I’m left alone,” she tells Al Jazeera. The absence of Christmas in much of Gaza is not lost on her, either: “Here we feel isolated. There’s so much missing. It’s not pleasant, like before.”
Many other Christians in Gaza say they do not wish to discuss Christmas publicly, concerned that speaking to the media could get them in trouble and cause difficulties with obtaining permits to go to Bethlehem – especially amid increasingly brittle relations with Israel.
“Christmas is inevitably coming with its decoration, its finery and its celebrations, but our inner souls are still affected, in all respects, by the devastating effects of war,” Nahed al-Dabbagh, 25, tells Al Jazeera after attending Christmas Eve ceremonies at the Latin Church in central Gaza City.
“We hope that the next Christmas will be a feast of goodness and peace on the Palestinian people.”
With a report from Walaa Ghussein
Before this year, Muslims as well as Christians in Gaza enjoyed the decorations and festivities. Here, in Khan Younis in 2011, a sweet vendor joins in the holiday spirit. Photo by Ruqaya Izzidien
After the war, a bittersweet Christmas in Gaza
By Adel Zaanoun, AFP
December 23, 2014
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – A garland in hand, 11-year-old Sara decorates the family Christmas tree with her parents. But this year, the young Gazan will be spending the rest of the holiday alone.
Her family applied for Israeli permits to leave the Gaza Strip and travel to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas in the not-so-little town in the West Bank where Jesus was born.
Although her parents received them, she and her older brother and sister did not.
This year, Israel granted around 500 permits to Palestinian Christians, allowing them to travel from Gaza to the West Bank so they can visit Bethlehem’s Nativity church and attend the traditional midnight mass.
“Christmas is a happy time but it’s also a bit sad because I didn’t get the permit to go with my parents,” Sara admits.
Her mother, Abeer Mussad, spoke of a “joy tinged with sadness” as she and her husband celebrate Christmas Day in Bethlehem without their children who will on Thursday be “meeting Santa at church in Gaza”.
“He will give us our presents,” says Sara who will stay with her older sister and celebrate Christmas at St Porphyrius Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City.
In Gaza, the adults have done everything they can to ensure the holiday is not spoilt, but nobody can forget the deadly 50-day summer war which killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians and left the densely populated territory in ruins.
“We’re going to celebrate Christmas in order to forget the suffering of the war,” says 60-year-old Umm George, who lost her sister in the conflict and will be one of those travelling to Bethlehem.
In streets which still bear the scars of war, shops are spruced up with Christmas decorations and ornamented trees covered in sweets take pride of place in front windows.
– Heart not in it –
For most of Gaza’s tiny community of some 3,500 Christians, 85 percent of whom are Greek Orthodox, they must make do with celebrating at home after failing to obtain the small slip of paper issued by Israel which would have allowed them to leave the enclave and travel the 70 kilometres (43 miles) to Bethlehem.
Abdullah Jakhan is one of them.
He and his fiancee Janet applied to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem, but they were both turned down. Now they will have to make do in Gaza.
Just four months after the end of the war, it would be inappropriate to engage in too much celebration, Jakhan says.
“We want a joyful celebration, but the blood of the martyrs which flowed during the war is still fresh. Because of this we can’t be completely happy,” he tells AFP.
“We will celebrate mass and have a small, simple party with family and friends in light of the circumstances in Gaza.”
Tony al-Masri, 60, has also just put up a tree at home but his heart isn’t really in it.
“Inside, I feel sad for my people who have suffered a war,” he says.
“The war affected all of us here, Christians and Muslims, so today I am praying for peace and unity.”
But other concerns also feature at the top of their prayer list.
George, 38, who prefers not to give his family name, is praying for an end to Islamic extremism and attacks on Christians.
“Even if there aren’t many of them, like those in the Islamic State movement, they don’t want us to celebrate our Christian feasts,” he says.
“And they wouldn’t hesitate to attack us, as they have already done,” he adds, referring to an incident in February when unidentified attackers left an explosive device inside the compound of the Church of the Latin Convent in Gaza City.