The Palestinian Christians in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem have marked a second grim Passover under punishing conditions and the Israel war against Gaza.
In the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli army has not allowed food or help for almost 50 days, people observed Easter in the Greek Orthodox Church of San Porfiro de Gaza in the city of Gaza in the midst of death and destruction.
Easter celebrations were limited to religious rituals, since families canceled other meetings that fear that Israeli combat aircraft would launch more bombs, which killed deans of people in the anclave besieged on Sunday.
The Israeli forces bombed the Santo Porphyrius complex in October 2023, a few days after the war began after the attacks led by Hamas against Israel. Israel said he was pointing to “terrorists.”
That attack killed at least 18 displaced Palestinians who had sought refuge in the church. The Israeli army has killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since the beginning of the war.
Duration A letter appearance Before thousands of Catholic pilgrims met in the Plaza de San Pedro for the Easter Mass in the open air of the Vatican, Pope Francis renewed his call to a high fire in Gaza.
He also asked the Palestinian armed group Hamas and other groups that release the recurring captives held in Gaza.
Strong restrictions in occupied West Bank
Israeli authorities prevented many Christians, including Palestinians from accessing sacred sites for Easter in occupied West Bank.
The Israeli police faced Christian worshipers and even a priest while trying to access the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the busy Jerusalem of the East.
The ancient city of Jerusalem was in force by the Israeli authorities in an advanced military position, said Fathi Nimer, a member of the Palestine policy in the group of experts from Al-Shabaka.
“Some would say that there are now more soldiers, security officers and police than chargers around the Holy Sepulcher,” Al Ramallah told the West in the West Bank on Sunday.
“There are control points within the city, and the thesis limitations have not only impacted the Palestinian Christians of the West Bank, but also of Jerusalem and within the territories of 1948”.
Nimer said people were beaten, and Israeli officers and spectators directed insults and insults towards Christians.
Only about 6,000 Palestinians from the West Bank received permits to attend Easter services this year, and even the Vatican representative in Palestine was denied the entrance to the church.
Nimer said that an Israeli strangulator about sacred places in recent years has led to an increasing number of worms or Palestinian origin.
“All this is part of the broader war against Palestinian culture and identity. Israel is saying that they have an exclusive claim of Jerusalem and all Palestine,” he said.
‘I don’t have a permission to go like a shepherd’
Mitri Raheh, a Palestinian pastor and theologian and founder and president of the Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem, competed that current Israeli restrictions are among the difficult ones.
“I myself, as a pastor, do not have a permission to go to Holy Week, which is the most important week for Christians during the year because Jesus was crucified and increased in Jerusalem,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The Palestinian-Christian community that has been there for 2,000 years cannot go there to celebrate and mark this where everything happened.”
Raheheb said the incitement against Palestinian Christians, as members of the clergy, has also been increasing with the incident dishes of attacks of Israeli settlers informed this year.
“One of the first things you read in the Church about Jesus is that He was like a lamb led to laughter. But when you hear this today as Palestinian Christians, you think that is all our people of the people, who considers what is happening in Gaza.”
Israeli settlers and politicians, backed by the Armed Police and the soldiers, have also increasingly assaulted the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex to perform Talmudic rituals and challenge their status quo.
Non -Muslims are not allowed to worship in the complex of the third most sacred site in Islam, which is the location in East Jerusalem, as part of the status quo agreement to which the Israeli government affirms that it remains committed.
Pope Tawadros II, head of the Orthodox Copta Church of Egypt, strongly condemned the Israeli attack in Gaza.
“The Palestinians are subject to the most horrible forms of injustice in their daily lives amid the destruction of their homeland,” he told Easter celebrations of state television.