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“They Deprived Themselves To Help Us”
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Palestinians help priests to clean the Church of the Nativity by throwing out mattresses and rubbish |
Report By Mustafa Al Sawaf, IOL Palestine Correspondent
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, May 11 (IslamOnline) – “They were very happy with us. They took pictures of us as we prayed and we could see that they respected us for carrying out our religious duties. They deprived themselves from the pieces of bread to give it to us and gave us complete freedom inside the church.”
With these words, Nagy Mohammad Abayat, a Hamas activist described to IslamOnline the relationship between the Muslims and Christian priests who were both under siege inside the Church of Nativity.
Abayat, who was transferred to Gaza after the end of the church’s crisis said, “they [the priests] suffered just like us. They respected us and we respected them. We saw them cry over the martyrs and injured and were probably hurting more than us. We shall always be indebted to the priests of the church. They could have easily fed themselves and left us, but on the contrary, they deprived themselves to help us.”
Abayat said that the occupation forces tried several times to forcefully enter the church without giving any regards to its religious position. “We confirm killing four of their soldiers and the rest escaped leaving behind four pieces of weaponry. The only thing that they feared was risking their lives and they were not keen on preserving the sacredness of the place.”
“We have called upon the entire world and said that a massacre was about to take place but in vain. We were united in this,” he said.
Regarding the weapons that they had, Abayat added that they included Kalashnikov rifles, which belonged to the Palestinian Authority, and that those under siege did not leave the weapons for a single moment during the siege.
Abayat said that he was proud of his struggling family, which offered several martyrs during the years of the occupation. “My brother Hussein Abayat was first martyred by Apache planes at the beginning of the Intifada, my brother Ibrahim was exiled to Cyprus, five of those exiled to Gaza are from our family and two of my cousins were also martyred,” he said.
Firas Mohamad Awda agrees with his friend and said that the Christian priests tried to help them stay strong and resist. “They helped us to find high places in the church so that we can find out if there was any attempt to break into the church.”
He said that they demonstrated religious forgiveness and did not feel angry with Muslims’ prayers inside the church. “ I remember once one of the youth was reading out Quran loudly near one of the martyrs and I felt embarrassed because we were inside the church and told him to put down his voice a little. But one of the priests quickly responded ‘no no, don’t put your voice down, raise it and continue your reading.”
Awda, who is also a Hamas member, said that the forces continuously attempted to enter the church on a daily basis especially at night.
Samed Khalil, from the Ayda refugee camp, said that there was a strong relationship built between the Muslim men and the priests inside the church. “We used to exchange jokes and they used to stay up with us and take pictures of us. We had personal relationships with them,” he said.
“We used to call for prayers and pray without any discomfort. I remember during the first 15 days of the siege, I slept with one of the injured inside the nativity cave where Jesus Christ was born and none of them was upset, they were actually happy about it,” said Samed Al Nasheet, from the Fath movement.
“It was very difficult. At times we were compelled to go out to drink or take out the garbage and we were exposed to Israeli gunfire, so the priests helped us and found an alternative for all this,” he said.
Raed Mousa, a member of Hamas, said that the resistance was strong and this is what caused the failure of breaking into the church. “After the death of the four soldiers, they changed their tactics and started to use advanced cameras to aim at the resistance fighters inside the church and they did succeed in killing eight of them.”
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