The remains of a fifth-century Byzantine church were on Monday unveiled in Gaza following a three-year restoration project, with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas officials touting an embrace of their “Christian brothers.”
The remains of a church and monastery were first discovered in Jabalia, a city in northern Gaza, in 1997. Spanning an area about 800m2, the church’s floor is adorned with what officials said are “rare” mosaics, including depictions of animals, hunting scenes and palm trees.
Visitors can gaze at the mosaics from elevated wooden walkways.
Photo: AFP
The Gaza Ministry of Tourism said the church’s original walls were adorned with religious texts written in ancient Greek dating from the era of Emperor Theodosius II, who ruled Byzantium from 408 to 450.
At a ceremony marking the site’s reopening, the most senior Christian cleric in Gaza, Archbishop Alexios of Tiberias, talked about Christianity’s long history in the coastal territory, saying that “monasticism began in the Gaza strip in the year 280.”
However, the number of Christians in Gaza has been falling for years, many of them having emigrated, particularly after the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in 2007.
Photo: AFP
Local church officials said only about 1,000 Christians remain in the enclave, down from 7,000 in 2007.
Issam al-Daalis, president of the Governing Committee for the Management of Gaza Issues, said that the site’s restoration is an example of Hamas’ “embracing” of its “Christian brothers in Gaza.”
The restoration was carried out by French organization Premiere Urgence Internationale at a cost of nearly US$250,000. The British Council also supported the work.
About 2.3 million people live in Gaza, which has been blockaded by Israel since 2007.
The images of a besuited Ferdinand Marcos Jr, clad in a top hat and leaning nonchalantly on a Rolls-Royce, dating from his time in Britain in the 1970s, are as you might expect from the playboy scion of a kleptocratic dictator. Yet as the Marcos family returns to power in the Philippines after a landslide presidential victory by Marcos Jr, he is facing calls to stop misrepresenting the circumstances of his studies at the University of Oxford. The university has confirmed that he did not complete his degree in philosophy, politics and economics after enrolling in 1975. “According to our records, he did
CALIBRATED RESPONSE: The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants to assess the situation and the risks, the transport minister said Singapore will strive to keep its borders open and stay connected to the rest of world even if a new variant of COVID-19 emerges, Singaporean Minister for Transport S. Iswaran said on Wednesday. The city-state has learned from its past experiences of dealing with COVID-19 variants, Iswaran said in an interview with Bloomberg News. When the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 hit, Singapore did not backtrack on its reopening plans, but rather decided to wait and see how things panned out, he said, adding that the response was different versus the Delta outbreak. “We’ve all learned to adapt,” Iswaran said on the sidelines
Administrators at an elite Beijing university have backed down from plans to further tighten restrictions on students as part of China’s “zero COVID-19” strategy after a weekend protest at the school, students said on Tuesday. Graduate students at Peking University staged the protest on Sunday over the school’s decision to erect a sheet-metal wall to keep them further sequestered on campus, while allowing faculty to come and go freely. Discontent had already been simmering over regulations prohibiting them from ordering in food or having visitors, and daily COVID-19 testing. A citywide lockdown of Shanghai and expanded restrictions in Beijing in the past few
‘EATING UP SPRING’: Temperatures are 10oC to 15oC above the seasonal average and a city northwest of Madrid experienced its first ‘tropical’ May night on Friday Parts of Spain are experiencing their hottest May since records began, as a mass of hot, dry air blows in from Africa, bringing with it dusty skies and temperatures of more than 40°C. Spain’s state meteorological agency, Aemet, has warned of a weekend heat wave of an “extraordinary intensity,” with temperatures between 10°C and 15°C above the seasonal average and more akin to high summer than mid-May. “The early hours of 21 May have been extraordinarily hot for the time of year across a good part of the center and south of the peninsula,” Aemet said on Saturday. “In many places the
RSS