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More Palestinian families flee Gaza City as Israel prepares to launch a new offensive, targeting what it describes as Hamas’s last stronghold.
Israel faced international pushback earlier this week for its military attack on a Gaza hospital. Known as a “double tap” for its back-to-back strikes, the attack killed more than 20 people, including several journalists.
Protests took place in Israel yesterday as the families of hostages still held by Hamas demanded their release and called for an end to the war. Vowing to eradicate Hamas’s stronghold in Gaza, Israel is moving forward with plans to conquer Gaza City.
Meanwhile, clergy and nuns from the Greek Orthodox and Catholic churches in Gaza City have made a bold decision: they will stay within their church compounds, refusing to evacuate ahead of the looming offensive. Their mission is clear — to stand alongside and care for those who cannot escape.
Hundreds of Palestinian Christians are still sheltering in churches they fled to at the start of the war in Gaza; it’s too difficult and dangerous to leave. Advocates will soon speak on their behalf, and for Palestinian Christians in general, at an Illinois event organized by Bethlehem Bible College.
Pastor and professor Munther Isaac says these advocates will talk to U.S. believers.
“We want to challenge them, ‘Do you care to listen to Palestinian Christians [about] our plights, our suffering, our perspective?’ This is our beginning point,” Isaac says.
“Listen to Palestinian Christians because you’re talking about our livelihood.”
The college is moving its annual conference from Bethlehem to the U.S. because of the war in Gaza. Typically, the event is called “Christ at the Checkpoint,” but this year’s shift in location and audience has it labeled “Church at the Crossroads.”
Staff at Bethlehem Bible College – located just an hour’s drive from Gaza – have firsthand connections with Christians in the warzone.
“Bethlehem Bible College is a Palestinian Christian higher education theological institute that specializes in training leaders for ministry in the Palestinian context,” Isaac says.
“We believe this is an important role of our calling as an institution in Palestine, in Bethlehem, to advocate for justice and to challenge the approach of many Christians in the West about the land, about Palestinians, about Gaza, about Israel.”
“Church at the Crossroads” will be held September 11-13 at Parkview Community Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Learn more and register here.
“I hope we have a good and honest conversation at that conference because the situation is urgent in Palestine,” Isaac says. “More importantly, we need to have an appropriate, urgent response to the crisis that is unfolding.”
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This story originally appeared at Mission Network News and is republished here with permission.