Images from the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and its aftermath are forever seared in the mind of Israel Pochtar.
Pochtar, a pastor at Congregation Beit Hallel in the city of Ashdod, Israel, recalled the early-morning sirens that jolted him awake and sent him peering through the windows of his apartment on the 30th floor. He watched rocket after rocket fire from Gaza, 23 miles to the south. Smoke billowed from buildings in nearby Ashkelon.
He turned to social media and saw videos of Hamas terrorists killing Israeli police officers. He thought it was fake news.
Only after seeing news reports of Hamas brutally murdering more than a dozen elderly Israelis who had gathered for a trip to the Dead Sea did he comprehend the unfolding horror: 1,200 dead and 251 taken hostage, with evidence of rape, torture, and entire families burned alive.
As he drove one of his sons to a nearby military base to report for duty as part of a massive call-up, he saw fear and confusion in the eyes of soldiers. “No one was smiling, and no one was making jokes,” Pochtar noted. He prayed for his son, said goodbye, and burst into tears.
Then he began identifying ways his church could serve a fearful and broken population.
Four months later, Fawzi Khalil, the director of relief ministries at Cairo’s Kasr el-Dobara Church, visited Egypt’s border with Gaza, where he encountered the suffering of Palestinian refugees.
Palestinians caught in the cross hairs of Israel’s retaliation on Gaza crossed the border into the Egyptian town of Sheikh Zuweid and filled a sports center that had been converted into a field hospital. An estimated 300 wounded people lined the floor of the stadium, many with missing limbs. The scene reminded Khalil of a scene in Gone with Wind where hundreds of injured Civil War soldiers filled a train station floor.
Khalil heard people moaning and crying out in pain, and he lamented that he had no medical training. “Then the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart and said, ‘Just give them food to eat,’” Khalil said.
He returned to Kasr el-Dobara, the largest Protestant church in the Middle East, with more than 9,000 members, and launched a ministry to Palestinian refugees.
Two years later, Gaza is in ruins. Dozens of Israeli hostages—20 of them believed to be alive—remain in captivity. More than 67,000 Palestinians have died throughout the course of the war, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its death toll. On the world stage, Israel’s isolation has deepened as more Western countries recognize a Palestinian state.
Last week during Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, US president Donald Trump laid out a 20-point peace plan and gave Hamas “three or four days” to accept it or face “a very sad end.”
The plan, which Israel immediately accepted, requires the release of all hostages within 72 hours of Hamas’s approval, followed by the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Palestinians detained in the wake of the October 7 attacks. As part of the plan, Arab and Muslim countries agreed to help disarm Hamas, a condition the terrorist group has repeatedly refused. A board of foreign officials, headed by Trump, would oversee the establishment of a transitional government.
On Friday, Hamas accepted some elements of the plan, including the release of all hostages and the termination of its power structure in Gaza, but said other points required further discussion. On Monday, Israel and Hamas held indirect negotiations in Egypt in an attempt to iron out their disagreements.
Amid the uncertainty, Christians in the region continue to share a message of hope. Both Pochtar and Khalil said they have witnessed God at work through the suffering.
After securing funding through World Relief in early 2024, Khalil began making weekly trips to northern Sinai with teams from his church in Cairo. They delivered food, blankets, clothes, and medicine to Palestinians who arrived in Egypt with few resources.
A journalist from Gaza told Khalil about five Palestinians in Cairo who needed assistance. The church provided them with food and helped them with rent. From there, the word spread.
“Those five people told 50 others about this crazy church that came and visited with them and cried with them and gave them food,” Khalil said. “And then the 50 told another 500.” Today, 600 members of the church make weekly visits to 5,000 Palestinian residences in Cairo.
Estimates from 2024 placed the number of Palestinian refugees in Egypt at around 100,000, but Khalil believes the current number is double that. Most lack the proper documentation to work or enroll their children in school, he noted.
In one of Kasr el-Dobara’s conference rooms, Khalil welcomed Imam Saad, a Palestinian woman who worked in women’s health for 25 years at a Gaza City hospital. Her eyes reflected the sorrow she has carried for the past two years as a refugee, worried about her family in Gaza and surviving in Cairo without income.
A contact in Gaza connected her to the church for support. “You respected us as Palestinians,” she said to Khalil, extending her gratitude.
The church avoids mass distribution of aid. “We know that deep in their hearts they need prayer and they need you to cry with them,” Khalil explained. “They don’t cry when they are in a big room, but once you visit them in their home, they cry and cry, and you hear a lot of their stories.”
During one recent home visit, Khalil met a man from Gaza who had taken a bullet to the neck that paralyzed him. He made it across the border and was living in Cairo with his grandfather, who began weeping when Khalil arrived. The grandfather said he was afraid his grandson would be left alone after his death, and was glad to see someone willing to help.
“I told him, ‘The church is your home,’” Khalil said as tears streamed down his cheeks. The church provided a specialized wheelchair to help him in daily life.
During the past two years of ministry to Palestinian refugees, most of whom are Muslim, no one has refused the help of the church, Khalil said.
Meanwhile, in Israel volunteers from Congregation Beit Hallel, which Pochtar founded 17 years ago, also visit people in their homes. During the first year of the war, a group of 120 people from the church assisted the elderly and young mothers whose husbands were called to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Donning helmets and military vests, the ministry teams delivered food, water, and other necessities when it was too dangerous for people to leave their homes or bomb shelters. Over the past 24 months, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the regime in Tehran have launched tens of thousands of rockets, missiles, and drones into civilian centers in Israel.
“The difficulty is waking up in the night and running with your kids to the bomb shelter and especially [for] those who have less means and are living in the cheaper apartments,” Pochtar said in the early months of the war. “We try to visit them during the day and bring them food, prayers, [and] encouragement.”
More recently, the ministry has delivered food, bulletproof vests, mattresses, and other supplies to soldiers serving across the country. More than 1,000 Israeli security personnel have died during the past two years, including an elder’s son from Pochtar’s congregation who died during Hamas’s initial attack.
Pochtar said that since the war began, Israelis have started to seek God. “Many were disappointed in the government, in our military, because the military wasn’t ready to protect them,” he explained. “But it caused people to seek heavenly help.”
Pochtar has seen an increase in people coming to his congregation with questions about faith. Growth is also happening in other ways. More young people in his congregation are getting married—a trend he’s observed across the country.
“This war has helped many to reevaluate their lives, and many are actually proposing to their girlfriends and getting married,” Pochtar said. “And now we have a baby boom.”
Today when Pochtar gazes at Gaza through his window, he rarely sees rockets firing from the enclave. Fewer lights twinkle in the nighttime horizon, as Israel’s offensive has destroyed two-thirds of Gaza’s infrastructure.
He prays for his two sons who continue to serve in the IDF and for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
As the future of Trump’s peace plan is yet to be seen, both Pochtar and Khalil are praying for changed hearts in the region.
“If the Jewish become Christians and the Muslims become Christians, then the peace of God will reign,” Khalil said. “I want the leader of Hamas to live in peace and to know Christ. And the most radical right Jewish leader, I want him to know Christ and to live in peace.”
