The 500 members of the small Christian community in the Gaza Strip to enter Israel and the West Bank, where the place where Jesus was born, is to celebrate Christmas, the Israeli authorities have said.
The Israeli authorities announced that they will grant permits to Christians to leave the Gaza Strip, a territory blocked by Israeli forces for almost 13 years, for the Christmas holidays, the AP agency noted.
With this allocation of announcements, the Christians of Gaza will be able to visit their families and frequent the holy places that are located in Israel and the West Bank; in the latter is Bethlehem, where Christ was born.
The Gaza Strip is home to about two million people, of which only a thousand are Christians, most of whom belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. In 2019, Father Gabriel Romanelli, pastor of the only Catholic church in Gaza, said that Catholics numbered just 117, a quarter of the total Christian community.
The priest explained that Gazans Catholics are “very scattered”, because “they have families in other parts of the West Bank, in Israel and Palestine” and said that the need to obtain permits from Israel is a difficulty for the Catholic community.
The number of Christians has dramatically decreased over the years. It could be said that today they are less than half of what they were 10 years ago. According to CNA, in 2012 there were about 4,500 inhabitants in the Gaza Strip.