Musallam's peace-keeping activities had won the approval of the
Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, and one of the tasks set him by
Michel Sabbah when appointing Musallam Pastor at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City in 1995 was to mediate between Hamas and Fatah by working out, beyond their irreconcilable differences, the key issues on which they could agree. For the first two years, he lacked the appropriate identity papers. The mission took a personal toll: his parents accompanied him to Gaza, and died there, and the Israeli authorities denied him a permit to accompany them when they were buried in Bir Zeit. For 14 years Israel mostly denied him reentry back into the
West Bank to visit family and friends, an exception being a 3 month visa conceded over 2007-8, which however coincided with Israeli obstacles placed before priests endeavouring to replace him during his absence. These included
Fouad Twal whose convoy was delayed for many hours at the
Erez Crossing, delays which effectively disrupted the possibility of their celebrating Christmas with the Gaza Christian community. One of Twal's cars, with gifts of chocolate, was denied transit. In Musallam's view, the Palestinians are "a nation kept in chains," and the Gaza Strip is one big prison, not a metaphor, but a reflection of the reality that, in his estimate,
one half of the population has experienced detention in Israeli gaols. He regards his stay there as a 14-year detention in prison. The Catholic parish in Gaza goes back to 1747. The Christian community there is mainly
Greek Orthodox, roughly 3,000, with 200 Catholics and a handful of
Baptists. ] The Catholic presence is attested by 5
Sisters of the Rosary, 3 of whom run a school that caters to 500 pupils. Overall, the 2 schools run by the Catholic church employs 80 teachers and provides co-ed education for 1,200 pupils from every denomination, including from the families of
Islamic fundamentalists. Of these students, a mere 147 were from Catholic families( 2006) The Church is also present with 4
Little Sisters of the Père de Foucauld and 6 missionaries of
Mother Teresa's
Sisters of Charity. Musallam founded the Christian-Islamic Forum of Gaza. In 2006, the year he was appointed
monsignor, he provided in an email to a journal directed by
Giulio Andreotti, a detailed description of the bleak life in Gaza. Electricity is lacking, sometimes with only 4 hours of light, and children are raised in fear of the dark, the haunt in their culture of ghosts, the devil and fear. One cannot relax together as a family or receive guests after a day's work: food is scarce, many are reduced to begging from those who have nothing and what little water is available must be drawn from wells, and drones overhead often interrupt what little television reception is possible. Salaries remain unpaid for months, children must trudge for miles to school, unable to furnish themselves with books, while missile strikes are frequent, and children are exposed to endless violence. It is not rare for teenagers to go out and commit suicide by attacking an Israeli border post, in one case, in order to relieve a boy's parents of an extra mouth to feed. The international community disdains speaking with Palestinians in their plight. To him, it looks as though the whole world looks on Palestinians as enemies. The case of
Gilad Shalit, the one Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas is spoken of as if it were a potential
casus belli for world war, and yet Israel, he argues, which
devastated Lebanon because
Hezbollah had taken 2
IDF soldiers hostage. detains tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Pope Benedict XVI's
Regensburg lecture, delivered on 12 September 2006, in which criticisms of Islam were made, had repercussions in Gaza where, as elsewhere, its diffusion gave rise to expressions of hostility from the pulpits of some mosques. Musallam managed to gain guarantees from the Mufti of Gaza,
Ismail Haniyeh, Fatah and the Hamas-run Gaza branch of the
Interior Minister to smooth over misunderstandings, and police guards were dispatched to watch over Christian institutions. The following year, unknown elements attacked the Sisters of Rosary convent as the
civil war between Fatah and Hamas raged in 2007. The doors were blown down by mortars, and icons were destroyed, religious books burnt, and the church ransacked. Musallam deplored it as a barbaric act by unknown people trying to seed tensions between the Islamic and Christian Communities, and both Fatah and Hamas condemned the act, with the latter undertaking to repair the damage. From 2007 to 2014, the youth in Gaza, he noted, had endured 4 wars, which made teaching them not to hate Israel difficult. Absolute poverty destroyed the customary attendance at festive events. Water was so scarce menstruating women could not clean themselves, nor labouring fathers wash after a day's work. The children were reduced to playing war games: :The children continued to play games, as usual, but the games they kept on playing systematically, were those of war. They would divide themselves into two sides, and shot at each other...The Nassar family had 7 children who, on those occasions when they could leave their home, would organize a battle, a game below their house. In the streets, they would paint themselves red and attack anyone passing by. They were well furnished with arms, and had an intimate knowledge of the tactics of attack and defense. They picked up their wounded, created situations, and transpoerted the dying to hospital. Then they conducted funerals, in which they simulated despair for the dead. When the length and breadth of Gaza was
subject to intense Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire during Operation Cast Lead in 2008, in what Musallam terms "the Christmas War". The roof of his home was destroyed by a missile; the school run by the Sisters of the Rosary was struck by several Israeli missiles, and with phosphorus bombs. Musallam sent out a comuniqué from the smoking rubble protesting the way the people of Gaza were being "treated like animals in a zoo", suffering from malnutrition, trauma, with thousands of wounded lacking elementary first aid The basic supply of necessities required the transit of 700 trucks per diem, while only 20 were allowed through. ==Use of Biblical imagery==