GAZA CITY: He smiles when his flock calls him “the pope of Gaza” but father Manuel Musallan, who heads the territory’s tiny community of around 200 Catholics, says his primary job is to be a “man of suffering”.

The stout, talkative 68-year-old was named parish priest of the Church of the Saint Family in Gaza City in 1995.

Since then, Israel has only twice authorised him to leave the narrow coastal strip from where he has tirelessly waged a fight against policies restricting the freedom of movement in and out of the “open-aired prison”.

“It’s difficult, but I am not afraid,” he smiles as he sits in his office, its walls adorned with portraits of long-time Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Pope Benedict XVI and Mother Teresa.

“I obey as a soldier of Christ. A prisoner with my people. The world in which we live is hard, very unfair,” sighs Musallan. “Europe and America have decided to enclose the Palestinian people. To say that we are dangerous, violent terrorists. They decided, with Israel, to isolate us.” He was referring to a freeze on direct foreign aid to the Palestinian government after the Hamas movement formed a cabinet in March and a near complete closing of Gaza’s borders by Israel since it withdrew soldiers and settlers from the territory in September 2005, ending a 38-year occupation.

Musallan’s flock is a tiny minority in the mostly Muslim Gaza Strip, where around 3,000 people out of a population of 1.4 million residents are Christians, and 200 of them Catholic.

But despite their small numbers, the Catholics have no problems with their Muslim neighbours, he says.

“We do not suffer from the Muslims ... We suffer with them. There is no Christian ghetto here.” Born in the West Bank town of Birzeit and ordained in 1963, Musallan spent 25 years in a parish close to the northern West Bank town of Jenin before being asked to come to Gaza, cut off from the diocese and the world.

“Many refused, the patriarch could not find anyone. I accepted because I am courageous. I have confidence in my people,” he says, pride sparkling in his eyes.

He says the other priests in the West Bank consider him a bit crazy for coming to live in the impoverished and increasingly lawless coastal strip.

“Those who tell the truth, who find the daring to say to evil ‘you are evil’, to the wicked ‘you are wicked’, they are not well regarded. That’s why I am not allowed to leave Gaza.” Father Musallan has stoically lived through recent factional Palestinian clashes -- such as a drive-by shooting near a school that killed three young sons of a senior Fatah official in late December.

“We had a school bus next to the place where the children were mowed down,” he says.

—AFP