Fourteen masked gunmen burst into Gaza City's YMCA library last week, overpowered two guards and laid explosive charges. One of the bombs later exploded, engulfing the building in fire, destroying most of the library's 10,000 books, which were used mostly by high-school and university students.
The other explosive charge was later safely defused by police while the guards were released unharmed in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The attack on the YMCA, which also provides both Muslim and Christian Gazans with cultural exchange programs, a cultural center and summer camps, has unnerved Gaza's tiny Christian community of approximately 3,500 people living among a Muslim population of 1.5 million.
This small community runs five schools, a hospital and a medical center.
"I am afraid about the future," Ramses Suri, a 29-year-old Palestinian Christian with a degree in business economics, told the Middle East Times in Gaza City, last Thursday.
"I have a brother living in the U.S. and I have a visa to go and live there, but I don't want to go to America. I'm Palestinian, this is my country and these are my people and most of the people here are good. But, I do worry about the extremist elements."
This is not the first time that Christians in Gaza have been attacked by rogue elements, even though relations between Christians and Muslims in Gaza have always been good.
Last year a Christian bookstore was bombed and its Christian owner murdered. Internet cafes, regarded as sinful by some, have also been targeted by a group calling itself, "Swords of Truth."
As the YMCA outrage continued to be the subject of much conspiracy theory talk in Gaza, Hamas police announced the arrest of two suspects on Sunday.
"We have some leads and are following certain clues, but it is too early to say exactly who was behind the YMCA incident," Ahmed Yousef, the senior political adviser to de-facto Hamas Prime Minister Ismael Haniya, told the Middle East Times during an exclusive interview at his office in Gaza City.
"Those who are responsible will be caught and severely punished. They are crossing a red line when it comes to attacking or threatening either Christians or foreigners and we will not tolerate this," said Yousef.
Indeed, empirical evidence and the opinions of many foreign journalists concur that since Hamas took over law and order has been established to a large degree, and it has been far safer for them to travel within the Strip.
When Hamas took over Gaza in June 2007, following fierce clashes with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' secular Fatah movement, many drug dealers and criminals were disarmed and jailed.
Hamas was also behind the freeing of Gaza-based BBC journalist Alan Johnston. Furthermore, Hamas' security men can be found posted outside most hotels where foreigners are staying and have been given strict orders to ensure their safety.
The notorious Momtaz Dugmush, a thug and criminal, who used to be a Hamas member but had a falling out with the Islamic organization, is alleged to have been behind Johnston's kidnapping.
The Dugmush family clan, one of the biggest in Gaza city, is reviled by most residents and regarded as political opportunists, with criminal connections, who have jumped on the al-Qaida bandwagon in an effort to redeem themselves, by skewing Islam for their own ends and trying to embarrass the Hamas government in the process.
Days after the bombing at the YMCA, there was a shootout between members of the Dugmush family and police before several of the Dugmush clan were taken into custody.
And while some commentators have tried to point to attacks on Christians in Gaza as proof of their persecution by Muslims, Yousef went on to explain that Gaza's Muslims and Christians have always enjoyed good neighborly relations.
"A good example of this is the fact that over 80 percent of the pupils at local Christian-run schools are Muslims. We have suffered together for the past 60 years. As Palestinians we are united in our resistance to Israeli occupation," he said.
The secretary general of Gaza's YMCA seemed to confirm this. Issa Saba disputed that the crime was religiously motivated and instead linked it to criminal elements whose aim was to create a state of insecurity and chaos.
Like rogue elements and dissatisfied and disenfranchised Muslim extremists elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia, abandoning former careers as criminals and jumping on the al-Qaida political bandwagon has become increasingly popular.
Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a former commander of al-Qaida in Iraq before he was killed by the Americans, was an ex-criminal who had spent time in jail.
Be that as it may, as the Middle East Times was leaving Gaza to return to Jerusalem, the Christian management of the Gaza beachfront hotel where this reporter had stayed, voiced concern over the Christian wedding celebration that was to take place in his hotel that night.
"They are Christian, this hotel is run by Christians and alcohol will be served. But despite the Hamas security guards posted outside the hotel, we are still nervous."
Front Page Features