By Nicole Jansezian
Gaza Baptist pastor Hanna Massad
Caught amid the infighting between Hamas and Fatah and Israel's retaliation for rockets launched at its southern towns lies an easily overlooked segment of the population: Christians number only 2,000 among 1.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – less than 1 percent of the population.
Evangelical Christians are even fewer.
"We are a minority of minorities," Hanna Massad, pastor of Gaza Baptist Church, told Israel Today. "It is really difficult. The Christian community here is 2,000 including Catholic, Greek Orthodox and evangelical Christians."
Gaza Baptist Church, the only evangelical church in the Strip, ministers to 150 to 200 people.
In recent fighting, an Israeli missile landed on a Hamas office, shattering all the windows in Massad's house just 300 feet away. No one was injured, but the consequences of a war they are not involved in are continually getting closer to home.
Frequently, one faction or the other commandeers the church's buildings to use as a lookout point. Once a library worker was caught in the crossfire and shot in the back. He has since recovered.
The church driver wasn't as fortunate. The 22-year-old newlywed was shot and killed in a ...   more »

Gaza-based Muslim groups affiliated with Hamas and possibly Al Qaeda have warned local Christians that Hamas' military conquest of the volatile coastal strip means they must now fully submit to Islamic ritual law.
In an interview with WorldNetDaily, Sheikh Abu Saqer, leader of the group Jihadia Salafiya, said that Gaza's Muslims “expect our Christian neighbors to understand the new Hamas rule means real changes. They must be ready for Islamic rule if they want to live in peace in Gaza.”
“Missionary activity” will no longer be tolerated, and those suspected of trying to covert local Muslims to Christianity will be “harshly punished,” said Abu Saqer. Additionally, the consumption of alcohol is now prohibited in Gaza, and all women must fully cover themselves in public.
In order to ensure compliance with these regulations, Abu Saqer announced the formation of a new “military wing” that will a close eye on the subjects of “Hamastan.”
Following last week's unprovoked assault on a Catholic church and school in Gaza City, most are unconvinced that even full submission to Gaza's new conservative Muslim overlords will afford any degree of peace and security to the area's tiny Christian population.
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By Joel C. Rosenberg
(WASHINGTON, D.C., June 18, 2007) -- The situation in Gaza is going from bad to worse as Hamas and Fatah fight a vicious civil war for control.
More than 160 Palestinians have been killed in just the past week, with more than 800 wounded. Hamas operatives have been executing Fatah leaders in the streets in full view of their wives of children. Hamas has captured some 50,000 Fatah machine guns and pistols, making the prospect of more internecine violence as well as more violence against Israel even more likely.
Palestinian Christians find themselves caught in the crossfire. Hamas operatives have blown up a church, attacked a Christian school and set Bibles on fire.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has finally sacked Defense Minister Amir Peretz, architect of last summer's disastrous war with Hezbollah. But Olmert has replaced him with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak who was the architect of Israel's disastrous unilateral surrender from southern Lebanon in 2000. Barak says he will invade Gaza in the next few weeks. A humanitarian crisis is developing in Gaza. What's more, there are fears that a full blown civil war between Hamas and Fatah could soon erupt in the ...   more »

Israel is concerned about reported Russian deliveries of advanced MiG-31 fighter planes to its enemy Syria as part of an armaments drive, the top-selling Hebrew daily reported on Tuesday.
The MiG-31, considered one of the best fighters in the world, can carry guided missiles with a range of more than 200 kilometres (125 miles) and is capable of striking 24 different targets simultaneously, Yediot Aharonot said.
"This information is more concerning when put in the context of massive armaments purchases made recently by the Syrians," Yuval Steinitz, an MP from Israel's right-wing opposition Likud party, was quoted as telling the daily.
"If Syria acquires the MiG-31 we can no longer rule out the idea that this country is preparing for war," said Steinitz, a former chairman of Israel's defence and foreign affairs parliamentary committee.
A Russian newspaper reported on Tuesday that Russia has begun delivering five MiG-31E interceptors to Syria as part of an agreement reached this year, and that Moscow also plans to sell Damascus its MiG-29M/M2 dual role fighters.
The Israeli media has recently carried alarmist reports that a war with Syria could erupt as early as this summer, following Israeli intelligence reports that Damascus was preparing for ...   more »

Israel faces the greatest crisis since the partition scheme was pushed through the United Nations in November 1947 and the declaration of an Israeli state in May 1948.
The Cold War was only a year away from freezing American-European relations with the Soviet Union and the governments of eastern Europe. The historian Paul Johnson has argued that, had the Cold War started before November 1947, there may never have been an Israeli state. The new state immediately had to face five Arab armies provided by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon and defeated them. The hot war in the Middle East had started.
Today, the situation is worse than ever. The "war" between the forces of outgoing Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh and the internal security forces led by the al-Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been going on for nearly a week. Yesterday, the Hamas forces had more or less overwhelmed al-Fatah in Gaza. The dissolution of the Hamas-Fatah government by Mr Abbas had a surreal ring about it; not so his declaration of a state of emergency.
The buzzword is that an Islamic state Hamas-stan will come into being and al-Fatah would reassemble in the West ...   more »

The Hamas victory over Fatah in Gaza on June 14 has great importance for Palestinians, for the Islamist movement, and for the United States. It has rather less significance for Israel.
Tensions between Fatah and Hamas are likely to endure and with them, the split between the West Bank and Gaza. The emergence of two rival entities, "Hamastan" and "Fatahland," culminates a long-submerged conflict; noting the two regions' fissiparous tendencies in 2001, Jonathan Schanzer predicted it "would not be all that surprising" were the Palestinian Authority (PA) to divide geographically. Subsequent events did indeed pulled them apart:
The anarchy that began in early 2004 spewed forth Palestinian clan chieftains and criminal warlords.
Yasir Arafat's death in November 2004 removed the transcendentally evil figure who alone could bridge the two regions.
Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in mid-2005 deprived Gaza of its one stabilizing element.
Hamas's victory in the PA elections of January 2006 provided a strong base from which to challenge Fatah.
Assuming Fatah remains in charge on the West Bank (where it is arresting 1,500 Hamas operatives), two rival factions have replaced the single Palestinian Authority. Given the expedient nature of Palestinian nationalism and its recent origins (it dates specifically ...   more »

(IsraelNN.com) Syria’s Ambassador to London, Dr. Sami Khiyami, invited Jewish residents of the Golan Heights to consider living under Syrian rule. “Syria is a safe haven for all its neighbors – a secular country that respects all faiths and whose citizens have always enjoyed equal rights,” said Dr. Khiyami at a conference held at the University of London on Saturday. The ambassador suggested Golan residents remain in their communities if the region is taken over by Syria, “rather than return, as they will have to do in accordance with international law, to Israel,” which he called an apartheid state with “false pretenses to democracy.” The conference, entitled “The Golan: Ending Occupation, Establishing Peace,” was sponsored by the Syrian Media Center. Two Israelis also attended the conference; Dimi Rider, a university student and David Sasson of the Forum of the Peace Initiative with Syria
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By Nadav Shragai  
It is almost politically incorrect, practically heresy, to claim today that the Golan is not Syrian in the least nor a deposit or bargaining chip for negotiations. But it is precisely time to say so to the Israeli leaders who are trying to blunt the public's awareness.
The Golan is a lot more "Israeli" than "Syrian." It has been Israeli for 40 years, double the time it was in Syria's hands. It has been under Israeli sovereignty for 26 years. It has neither a foreign people nor a demographic problem. The Golan has become a part of Israeli life. It is the most frequently visited part of the country, dotted with dozens of Jewish communities, agricultural fields, industrial areas and tourist resorts, nature reserves and wild landscape.
The roots laid down there are no mere cliche. For the past two generations at least, the Golan became ingrained in our consciousness as an inseparable part of the state. It is not only part of the national home. Most of us also consider its vistas, and even its produce, as components of our Israeliness, whether we're talking about Eden mineral water, Golan wines or bed-and-breakfast accommodations, or whether ...   more »