THE Anglican-run Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza is to receive support to the tune of $3.4 million from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Palestinian American Medical Association, it was announced last week.
An agreement with the two organisations was signed by the Archbishop in Jerusalem, Dr Hosam Naoum, on Tuesday of last week. A release from UNDP said that the funding, to be delivered over two years, would focus on “rehabilitating and operationalizing” the intensive care unit and operating rooms, and building staff capacity.
In October last year, less than two weeks after the outbreak of the current Israel-Gaza war, an explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital was reported by local health officials to have killed 471 people (News, 20 October 2023).
Exact casualty numbers and the cause of the explosion remain disputed. Israeli government assertions that misfiring Hamas rockets caused the blast have been disputed in investigations by several international news outlets.
In July, the diocese of Jerusalem said that the hospital had been forced to close by the Israeli army, amid fighting in Gaza City. Dr Naoum protested against the closure “in the strongest possible terms”, and was joined in his criticism by the Archbishop of Canterbury (News, 12 July).
On Sunday, a commentary on the conflict in the Middle East to which Archbishop Welby contributed was published on the news website Politico. It warns that it is “dangerously misleading” to assume that the conflict in the Middle East “is too complex and entrenched to resolve”.
Archbishop Welby is listed as an author alongside a former director of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), John Ging, and the founder of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, Professor Miroslav Volf.
The commentary had also been produced “in consultation with Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican families of the Holy Land”, the introduction says.
“War is the manifestation of political failure. The price of that failure is paid in the loss of innocent lives and appalling human suffering,” the authors write, before outlining possible routes to peace.
“Political will” was necessary to enforce UN Security Council resolutions, and the “biggest obstacle to peace is the almost complete absence of mutual confidence, trust and security”. Faith groups are “well positioned” to play a part in rebuilding trust, they write, as they have “done such work for centuries”.
The authors call on the members of the Security Council — which includes the UK — to “unify and mobilize the political will to implement” ceasefire resolutions.
“Peace begins with a cessation of violence, for only then can the clarity of thinking take place to reimagine the future,” they conclude.
Richard SewellDr Martin Gainsborough with members of Layan Nasir’s family in Birzeit, in the West Bank
The Bishop of Kingston, in Southwark diocese, Dr Martin Gainsborough, returned this week from a ten-day visit to Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. He met Anglican congregations in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and visited schools and colleges run by the diocese.
“Everywhere we went, we heard of the hardships that Christians in the Holy Land are facing,” he writes in an article on the Church Times website, referring to “the cruelties of occupation, both small and great; the lack of opportunity; the desire for a better life for one’s children; the concern that one day, not far from now, there may not be a living Christian church left in the lands that Jesus walked”.
Despite these hardships, there is “an energy to the Anglican community”, manifested in its work caring for the marginalised.
He draws attention to the continued incarceration, without charge or trial, of Layan Nasir: a member of the Anglican congregation in Birzeit, on the West Bank, who has been held in “administrative detention” by Israel since April (News, 12 April).
Besides meeting Ms Nasir’s family, Dr Gainsborough spoke with Palestinian Christians whose land had been confiscated by Israeli settlers, despite legal documentation.
One of those he met, Alice Kisiya, was arrested by Israeli forces on Sunday, after a confrontation with a settler near her family’s land in the Al-Makhrour valley, near Bethlehem. She told the Church Times that she was released with a restraining order preventing her from returning to the land for 15 days.
In September, Ms Kisiya said that the campaign to protect the area for Palestinian habitation was “about the protection we ask for the Christians of Bethlehem” (News, 13 September).
Read the Bishop of Kingston’s full article here