GAZA (OSV News): Father Gabriel Romanelli, the pastor of Gaza City’s Catholic parish, said the entire enclave has experienced a “tsunami” of destruction, even as tens of thousands of Palestinians started to make their way back to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, following the start of the first phase of a peace deal between Israel and Gaza. People returned to see only mostly rubble left.
Hundreds of aid trucks slowly made their way out of a gigantic Rafah crossing queaue into Gaza in the early morning of October 12—a territory exhausted, starving and flattened after a two-year war that started after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group ruling Gaza, carried out a surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people in massacres perpetrated in southern Israeli communities on 7 October 2023. The ensuing war has led to an estimated 67,000 Palestinian dead and 170,000 injured, the vast majority believed to be civilians.
In an October 11 video, Father Romanelli, said, “Today we pray united to the Patriarch of Jerusalem and to the Holy Father and to all Christians of the world; and we offer penance, sacrifice and fasting for peace, especially by praying the rosary and Mass.”
The peace deal comes at a point where people on both sides have expressed exhaustion with the war: Israelis waiting to see their loved ones, among them the 20 remaining hostages said to still be alive, and Palestinians overwhelmed by the scale of death and destruction in Gaza.
Do you remember when we saw the photos, the live images of the tsunami many times? How everything was utterly crushed, right? It’s literally like that
Father Gabriel Romanelli
At the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV said, “Disarm your hands and, even more importantly, your hearts. As I have said before, peace is unarmed and disarming.”
Pope Leo said, “It is not deterrence, but fraternity; it is not an ultimatum, but dialogue. Peace will not come as the result of victories over the enemy, but as the fruit of sowing justice and courageous forgiveness.”
Father Romanelli, who was lightly injured in the leg during the Israeli military strike on the Holy Family Parish compound on July 17, attempted to put the scale of Gaza’s tragedy into words.
“What’s happened here is something analogous [to] a tsunami,” he said in a video posted on his YouTube and X social media feeds.
“Do you remember when we saw the photos, the live images of the tsunami many times? How everything was utterly crushed, right? It’s literally like that” in Gaza, he said.
“There are entire neighbourhoods like that; and in every neighbourhood there are many houses like that,” he said, adding that just as with a natural disaster there are fears of subsequent waves, the same feeling is palpable among Palestinians.
“There’s fear that there will be other waves, and that fear is there. I mean, there’s the fear that war will return, there’s the fear that the parties won’t respect them, even those who have made commitments,” Father Romanelli said.
He said the peace deal is a clear sign that “something has changed” and “everyone is fed up with the war.”
There’s fear that there will be other waves, and that fear is there. I mean, there’s the fear that war will return, there’s the fear that the parties won’t respect them, even those who have made commitments
Father Romanelli
The priest added, “For the first time in at least many years, many countries that … disagree on politics, foreign policy, domestic policy … have agreed to say that, in addition to freedom, they must release the hostages and prisoners, that Gaza must be rebuilt, that people must live on their land, that Palestinians can live here in the strip … it’s absolutely essential.”
Father Romanelli said the big question now for the diminished Palestinian Catholic community in Gaza—of whom around 500 sheltered in the Holy Family Parish—is “OK, now what do we do? How do we do it?” now that initial peace deal is agreed upon.
“We have always tried to help them and continue to help, to pray, to encourage them,” Father Romanelli said and emphasized that the priests and religious in the parish were assisting the faithful “by celebrating the liturgy, prayer, adoration; always being ready for spiritual direction, for confession, for groups.”
He said, “ Now, it’s perhaps the most important thing, because these days, people are going back to where their homes were. Even some—who still knew their homes or parts of their homes were still there—have now returned and found nothing.”
He said, “You can see the pain in people’s expressions. There are so many orphans everywhere, so many childless parents.” But he said he still remained hopeful that “with the help of God and so many men and women of good will … this can be done.”
Many pressing questions remain to be answered, from how Gaza will be governed, how humanitarian aid will be distributed, to “reconstruction, cleaning the streets, bulldozers, diesel … gasoline, electricity, drinking water, the possibility of going to the sea,” he said.
“May there be peace in everything … that we can enjoy a long period of peace between Palestine and Israel is not impossible,” he said, adding, “It will take a long time.”
