GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (ABP) — As conflict threatened to plunge Palestine into civil war Feb. 3, a Palestinian Baptist pastor sent out an impassioned plea to supporters around the world to pray for his church, which authorities have seized in the fighting.
Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church in Gaza City, sent an email requesting prayer from Baptist colleagues and supporters. He said that, on the evening of Feb. 2, Palestinian Authority police seized the church's six-story building in central Gaza as an observation post.
The police are controlled by the relatively moderate Fatah political party, which has struggled with the Islamist Hamas party since Palestinian parliamentary elections put Hamas into power last year. In December, the conflict erupted into open violence in the densely populated Gaza Strip. Since then, nearly 100 Palestinians have died in the fighting.
Massad said authorities view the church facility — dedicated in November — as a vital position because of its location adjacent to the main police station in Gaza City.
“If the P.A. [Palestinian Authority] police shoot any gunfire at the Hamas people from our building, Hamas will shoot back, and this will cause lot of damage to the building, as it happened once before,” Hanna wrote. He was referring to a similar incident in May, when police seized the building as a sniper post.
According to American Baptist International Ministries, Gaza Baptist's facility has worship space and the Gaza Strip's largest public library. It houses one of the area's few breast-cancer clinics and includes guest quarters for volunteers who serve at the church and related ministries.
Massad said Gaza City was so perilous Feb. 3 that he could not leave his home to assess the situation at the church. “The situation in Gaza [is] very dangerous,” he wrote. “We [are] not able to leave our homes much. This is the worse [sic] situation we ever went through in Gaza (even more dangerous than any Israeli invasion to Gaza).”
While authorities declared a cease-fire Feb. 4, there is no guarantee it will last any longer than several previous truces made since December.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah's leader, was scheduled to hold peace talks Feb. 6 in Saudi Arabia with his Hamas counterpart, Khaled Mashaal. According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, failure in those negotiations “would mean the deterioration of the internal situation and igniting civil war.”
Open Doors, a United States-based Christian group that calls attention to persecution of Christians around the globe, issued a press release Feb. 5 about the church's situation. According to the group, Massad had to cancel the Feb. 4 morning worship service at Gaza Baptist because of the security situation.
Alan Stanford, a spokesman for the Baptist World Alliance, said the afternoon of Feb. 6 that his organization has received no updates from Gaza Baptists since Massad's Feb. 3 email.
In the Open Doors statement, the group's president, Carl Moeller, decried the situation. “Christians and Muslims in Gaza are caught in the crossfire. And it's getting worse,” he said. “Please pray with me for Pastor Massad. It is so vital that the Gaza Baptist Church remains open so ministry can be carried out to those who are even now more marginalized.”
Massad's email called for divine intervention. “Please pray that there will not be any gunfire around the church building and God will protect this building for his glory,” he wrote. “Please pray for wisdom for the leaders in Gaza to stop this evil fight.”
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