The bombing of Gaza’s Holy Family Church this week has sent a chilling message to the region’s already fragile Christian community. Once a symbol of refuge amid the rubble, the church was struck as civilians sought safety behind its walls. The attack killed three people and wounded several others, including the parish priest, adding yet another chapter to Gaza’s expanding ledger of devastation.

This strike is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of targeting religious sanctuaries, schools, hospitals and shelters, all while Israel claims it avoids civilian harm. For Gaza’s Christians, now numbering fewer than a thousand, survival has become a question not only of physical safety but of existential threat. When even churches are bombed, and clergy injured, it becomes difficult to ignore the whispers growing louder among Palestinians: this is a campaign to erase more than just buildings.

Years ago, Israeli lawmakers proposed criminalising Christian preaching and even casual religious dialogue. Now, these same currents of intolerance appear to have translated into violence on the ground. What many had dismissed as rhetorical extremism is becoming a lived reality for communities caught between warplanes and silence.

The destruction of one of Gaza’s oldest places of worship strikes not only at bricks and mortar but at identity, memory and the belief that sacred spaces should remain untouched by war. It leaves the faithful questioning how much longer they will be able to live, pray, and exist in the land their families have called home for centuries. For them, the promise of religious freedom has never felt so hollow.

As bombs fall and world leaders call for restraint with no results, the war inches closer to what Palestinians now fear is not just a military onslaught but a deliberate cleansing, religious, cultural, and human. And in Gaza, even God’s house no longer offers sanctuary.