Papal visit inspires Gaza Catholics

Next week's visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel and the Palestinian territories has aroused conflicting emotions among Christians, Muslims and Jews in the region. To the small Catholic community in the Gaza Strip, his arrival offers the rare chance to escape, if only for a day, the misery of the war-ravaged territory.

Like most of the Strip's 286 Catholics, Jabrah alNajjar, a 61-year-old who lives with his wife in Gaza City, has applied for an Israeli permit to attend the Pope's mass in Bethlehem next Wednesday. The Israeli government has promised to lift the normally stringent travel ban on Gazans for the occasion, but church leaders expect there will be at most 250 permits, not all of which will go to Catholics.

For Mr Najjar, sitting in his small living room surrounded by Easter decorations and with a large wooden cross above the front door, it is proving a tantalising wait. He is still waiting for Israeli permission to leave Gaza. But he says: "I am extremely happy that the Pope is coming. For me it means peace, love and brotherhood."

The Pope's visit offers a rare moment of joy for the small - and dwindling - Catholic communities living in Israel and the Palestinian territories. By far the smallest is the one in the Gaza Strip, where 50 Catholic families form a minority within a minority, making up only a fraction of a 3,000-strong Christian community dominated by members of the Greek Orthodox church.

For the Pope, the plight of Gaza Catholics is one of many thorny issues he will face as he embarks on a visit laced with controversy and political pitfalls. The recent Israeli offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip means some Christians are looking to him for words of condemnation and protest. At the very least, they want him to highlight the desperate situation facing both Christians and Muslims in the Gaza Strip.

But the Pope, who started his visit to the region in Jordan yesterday, will have to tread carefully. Relations between the Vatican and Israel have been strained in recent months, not least as a result of his decision to rehabilitate a renegade bishop who cast doubt over the Holocaust (the Pope later said he had been unaware of the bishop's views). His visit will also be clouded by longsimmering Jewish anger over Pope Pius XII's role during the second world war and doubts over whether he did enough to help Jews escape Nazi persecution.

On the other side of the Middle Eastern divide, Palestinian Muslims have not forgotten the Pope's controversial 2006 speech, which included a quote describing Islam as a "cruel and inhuman" religion. Some Muslim residents of Nazareth, the birthplace of Jesus and the setting for a papal mass on Thursday, this week put up a banner suggesting Benedict deserved punishment for harming God and the Prophet.

The small band of Gaza Catholics - living among 1.5m Muslims and governed by the Islamist Hamas group - insist the two communities currently live side by side largely without tensions, in spite of sporadic extremist attacks on Christian institutions.

Mr Najjar points out that Gaza Christians do not have to work on Sunday mornings - a normal working day in the region - so they can attend mass. The community can bring wine into the Gaza Strip for communion, and Christian women still walk outside their homes without headscarves. "My Muslim friends come and visit me on the holy days, and we celebrate together," he says.

Hussam al-Taweel, a leader of the Greek-Orthodox community and the only Christian member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Gaza, paints a similar picture: "We [Christians and Muslims] share everything - we share the history, we share the future and we share the struggle against the occupation."

Much to the disappointment of Gaza's Christians, the Pope will not come in person to visit their small, embattled community. But at the very least, says Mr Taweel, Gazans now expect him to give a "strong, political speech in order to assure our [the Palestinians] rights of independence".

This sliver of land, of all places, he adds, "is in need of his care and patronage". link...