IN the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, Fouad Abu Youssef, 34, wears a tattered, worn-out shirt as he sifts through a heap of salvaged clothes, remnants of what had been his home, hoping to find a change of clothes for his five-year-old daughter, Layla.
In the past two years of Israel’s war on Gaza, Fouad, a member of Gaza’s small Christian minority, has buried his sister after an air strike and seen his own home and his family’s house in Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood collapse.
Conditions grew so dire that Fouad, his elderly parents and five siblings with their families were forced to live in a nearby cemetery before finally finding refuge in the church.
For more than a year, the Abu Youssef family has lived within the church’s quarters in the Zeitoun neighbourhood. They survived a close call with death when an Israeli tank shell struck the church in July, killing three people and wounding several others.
And now, after Israel declared it was preparing for a major assault on Gaza City and called it a “dangerous combat zone” last week, the family cannot help but fear losing the roof over their heads once more and going back onto the streets, where it is even more dangerous.
Although the Holy Family Church was not placed by Israel in the zones marked for expulsions, the other churches in Gaza City, including the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius and the Anglican St Philip’s Church, were.
But the nearly 550 displaced people sheltering in the Holy Family Church still mistrust the Israeli military. The church has been attacked so many times before despite Israeli guarantees that it does not target places of worship.
Most of the people there, including Fouad, are refusing to leave, even if Israel orders them to evacuate in the next few days. This sentiment is shared in the other churches, where the majority of occupants have decided to stay despite being told by Israel to move south.
Leaders of Gaza’s Christian community said in a joint statement released on August 26 that the forced displacement would amount to “nothing less than a death sentence”.
“Among those who have sought shelter within the walls of the compounds, many are weakened and malnourished due to the hardships of the last months,” the patriarchs wrote. “For this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds.”
“This decision came with complete freedom,” Farid Gibran, the Holy Family Church’s spokesperson, explained, saying those sheltering at the church have the liberty to leave if they want to.
The decision of the church leaders to stay in Gaza City has inspired many of those residing at the Holy Family Church to remain despite growing fears of Israeli attacks. Many, like Moussa Saad Ayyad, 41, a father of four children aged six to 14, believe the church’s relationship with the Vatican could guarantee relative safety.
“We came to the church because it feels like the only safe place left, a place where we can be together and find help. Its ties abroad give us some protection,” he told Al Jazeera. “But if the danger gets worse, each of us may have no choice but to flee south on their own.”
For others like Fouad, the prospect of a second displacement and the strain it would place on his daughter and elderly parents are what keep him from leaving. But he also believes that staying is an act of faith and a form of resistance against the Israeli occupation, which has already cost him so much.
“They took my home and my loved ones, but they won’t take my right to remain here on my land no matter how dark it gets,” Fouad told Al Jazeera as he watched his daughter sleep.