Israeli Air Strikes Damaged Gaza’s Greek Orthodox Church Of Saint Porphyre, Middle East Eye Reports

The Middle East Eye says that since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, the Israeli army has targeted and destroyed dozens of heritage sites, including historic churches and mosques, museums and millennia-old archaeological structures.

It reports that on October 18, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyre was damaged by an Israeli air strike targeting the oldest hospital in the Gaza Strip, the Al-Ahli Al-Arabi Baptist Hospital, 141 years old.

Al-Jarida al-Dustoor

Two days later, Middle East Eye says the church was directly hit by a strike that killed at least sixteen people and injured dozens of others among the families who had taken refuge there.

Randa Arteen, a Christian living in Gaza, said the church was one of the few religious sites where she and her community could pray and celebrate religious holidays, adding, "since Israel does not grant them permission to travel to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank via the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing each year."

Middle East Eye also says that "at least 114 mosques have been destroyed and 200 others damaged in Gaza" and cites the Othman Bin Qashqar Mosque in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood and the medieval al-Omari Mosque in the heart of the old city in eastern Gaza.

Al-Jazeera Net reports that former United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, accused the Israeli government of wanting to erase the Palestinians, including Christians, and warned of a rise in attacks carried out by Israeli settlers against Palestinian Christians.

Lynk told Anadolu Agency that the targeting of Christians in Palestine is primarily linked to their being Palestinians, and he said, "the targeting of Christians in Palestine is primarily linked to their being Palestinians."

Al-Jazeera Net

The same article says Jerusalem witnessed this year, for the first time in centuries, the prevention of one of the rites of the Christian community, referring to the denial of Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

It adds that since February 28 of this year, Israel closed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre along with the Al-Aqsa Mosque for 40 days, under the pretext of preventing gatherings during the military confrontation with Iran, before reopening them after the announcement of a two-week truce on April 8.

Al-Jazeera Net also says Lynk linked the pattern to efforts to deepen occupation without international accountability, and it states that he said Israel has not implemented resolutions relating to the right of Palestinians to return despite joining the United Nations in 1949.

Aleteia describes fires lit on July 7 and July 11 by Israeli settlers as a "weapon of terror" intended to drive away the few hundred inhabitants of Taybeh, the last Christian Arab community in the West Bank.

“The fields are burned, the fire's sparks have licked a few houses, even threatening to destroy Saint George's Church, a 5th-century Byzantine church”

Aleteia

It says the town is about fifty kilometers from Jerusalem and adds that the fires threatened to destroy Saint George's Church, a 5th-century Byzantine church.

Aleteia reports that fires were lit in places where vegetation is dry and water is scarce to cause maximum damage, forcing villagers to do regular rounds and subjecting them to daily stress.

It says the army lets it happen and closes its eyes, creating a situation where Christians of the West Bank are forced into exile, and it quotes the framing that the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pizzabella, traveled to Taybeh on July 14 with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch and several diplomats, including the French consul.

Aleteia also cites Pope Leo XIV saying, "today, belligerent violence seems to strike the territories of the Christian East with a diabolic vehemence never seen before," and it links that language to the idea of forcing villagers to leave their lands by violence so that others can seize them.