People in Gaza Preparing for Eid Al-Adha amid Dire Conditions
People in the Gaza Strip will mark this year’s Eid Al-Adha holiday for the fifteenth time under the Israeli blockade. Eid Al-Adha or the Feast of Sacrifice marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Preparations in Gaza were marred once again by the land, sea and aerial blockade in addition to the Israeli onslaught last May. People usually shop around during this holy occasion for new clothes for themselves and their loved ones but in this blockaded and impoverished coastal enclave purchasing power is near zero.
For most people in this tiny coastal sliver, Eid Al-Adha this year will only be another sad occasion under the watchful eye of the international community.
For Gazans the occasion of Eid Al-Adha will undoubtedly fall short of being a celebration in full. Some two million Palestinians in Gaza are preparing for Eid al-Adha holiday under difficult conditions. This joyous occasion comes only two months after Tel-Aviv waged a deadly war against the tiny coastal sliver.
The holiday begins on Tuesday and Muslims traditionally mark the occasion by slaughtering sheep or cows and exchanging gifts.
For this year's four-day festival, Mahmoud Issa, a 73-year-old retired teacher, bought new clothes for his grandchildren and took them to a farm to choose an animal to slaughter.
But he mourns the death of his daughter Manar, 39, and her daughter, Lina 13, who were killed by an Israeli missile that destroyed their house in the Bureij refugee camp on May 13. Manar's husband and three other children survived.
“As adults, we are still haunted by pain, but we must get the children out of this atmosphere and make them live the atmosphere of Eid, so that they forget the pain of losing their mother and their eldest sister,”Issa said, sitting next to a large mural of Manar, according to Reuters.
Gaza's Hamas resistance movement says 2,200 homes were destroyed and 37,000 damaged by Israeli bombing during the 11 days of cross-border fighting in May.
More than 250 Palestinians were killed in hundreds of Israeli air strikes against Gaza.
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