Archive for September 2010
Hungry but Resilient
*photo: Emad Badwan
Sep 29, 2010 (IPS) By Eva Bartlett- “Sometimes, for a day or two we don’t even have bread, nor flour to make bread. There’s a store nearby that, when we are truly desperate, lets us take a bag of bread or something simple, on credit. I owe them a lot of money for the food I’ve brought from them, but I still can’t pay them.”
Umm Khamis Khattab, 52, lives in a single, bare-bones room in central Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp. Khamis, her disabled son, 30, is married but has no source of income. post continues
A zoo without animals
Sep 12, 2010 (IPS) By Eva Bartlett- “We haven’t had a single visit yet through Ramadan, what kind of zoo doesn’t get visitors during holidays?” asks Mahmoud Barghoud, 22, co-creator of the Marha zoo.
The Marha Land zoo and children’s park lies halfway between Gaza and Deir al-Balah on the main north-south highway running Gaza’s length, waiting for customers to visit. In the peak of summer, the park gets a handful of visitors on a good day. During the month of Ramadan and since, there have been none. post continues
Ramadan Goes Down Under Rubble
*cooking over olive branches bulldozed by the Israeli military in one of continuous invasions along Gaza’s borders
JOHR AL-DIK, Eastern Gaza Strip, Sep 4, 2010 (IPS) By Eva Bartlett- With power cuts up to 16 hours to full days, a soaring heat wave and unbearable humidity, the Israeli-led siege on Gaza is but one of many factors leaving Ramadan miserable for the majority of Palestinians in Gaza.
Abu Hani, 54, lives with his wife Umm Hani, 54, and three sons in Johr al-Dik, eastern Gaza, in the rubble of their demolished home, destroyed in the 2008- 2009 Israeli war on Gaza.
“When we returned after the war, everything was destroyed. We have five dunams of land (one dunam is 1,000 square metres), on which we had olive and fruit trees, chickens, sheep and some pigeons,” recalls Abu Hani.
“My children and grandchildren all lived together in our two-storey house. When the Israelis destroyed it, they left nothing standing. Everything was torn up. There was nothing to distinguish our house and land from our neighbours’ land.” post continues
