Gaza City – As Samira Touman moves between trays of kock and Mamoul cookies, putting the finishing touches on them before baking, delicious aromas waft inside a partially damaged home in northern Gaza.
Samira, a 60-year-old mother of seven, is busy working with her daughters and daughter-in-law in the final days of Ramadan, preparing for the arrival of Eid – the first Eid experienced by residents of the Gaza Strip since the October ceasefire.
Recommended stories
List of 3 itemsEnd of list
The mother carefully kneads the dough and then begins to carefully shape it, while her daughter rolls balls of date paste mixed with sesame seeds to fill the dough.
Repeat the steps until the baking step is reached, then count the finished pieces.
In front of a wood-fired stove, Sameera and her daughters take turns cooking. He says this is the hardest part of the task due to the lack of cooking gas, yet he is absorbed in completing his work.
“It’s the Eid season, the season of blessings. It’s true that we’re not going as big as the celebrations before the war, I’ll be working and baking until dawn on Eid,” Samira tells Al Jazeera, wiping sweat from her forehead in front of the fire.
The family is preparing cookies this year not only for their own household, but also includes additional orders from customers and neighbors around them, giving the family a little extra cash ahead of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival that follows the holy month of Ramadan.
“Thank God, the demand is very good despite the high cost of food items. But people want to relive and relive the taste of Eid a little bit,” says Samira.
Recent events have complicated Sameera’s preparations. Just as she was planning to buy her ingredients in late February, the United States and Israel began attacking Iran. Israel was quick to use it as justification for closing the border crossing to Gaza for a period that has repeatedly extended since the war on the Palestinian territory began in October 2023.
The shutdown doubled the prices of the ingredients Sameera was planning to buy: flour, semolina, date paste, ghee and sugar. Crossings have partially reopened, but prices remain high.
“There are always things that spoil the happiness … There is always happiness in Gaza, but it is never complete,” he says.
“I was happy at the beginning of Ramadan…but my happiness faded after seeing how expensive the expensive ingredients were,” says Samira. Muslims usually prepare dishes during Ramadan to enjoy after breaking their fast.
Samira adds more wood to the fire to use as firewood pieces of furniture her son has collected from houses destroyed by Israel’s bombing campaign.
“We have forgotten what it means to work in the kitchen with order, dignity and cleanliness,” he said while tending the flame with a metal rod. “Now cooking and working are all about soot and fire.”
Samira recalls the pre-war period when she ran her home-based business through a social media page and received orders from customers.
“Every day I have a menu and excellent demand. I was able to support my household. I have two kitchens equipped with appliances, electric mixers, blenders, ovens, cooking and baking utensils and raw ingredients,” he says.
“During the war all that disappeared and became just a memory,” he adds sadly. “Now we’re starting from scratch again. We’re doing everything by hand and without any of the resources we had before. The raw materials are also more expensive.”
Price hikes and border closures
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, residents of the Palestinian enclave have had to live in extremely difficult conditions, many of them in makeshift shelters and unable to afford basic goods.
Even when goods are available, their high prices often mean they are inaccessible.
However, the events of the past few weeks have added another layer of difficulty.
Following the outbreak of war between Israel and the United States on one side and Iran on the other in February, most of Gaza’s border crossings were closed to the entry of goods and food supplies. This led to a severe shortage of available produce and a rapid rise in prices in local markets.
The shortage highlights the precariousness of living in Gaza. Conditions have improved since the October ceasefire, with limited amounts of food, aid and fuel allowed into Gaza.
But, as long as Israel remains in control of the crossing to Gaza, the flow of goods could turn off as quickly as it turns on.
And the price hike has left families now facing a difficult dilemma, whether to pay higher prices to preserve their Eid traditions or fund their daily household budgets, especially as purchasing power declines and poverty and unemployment rates rise.
A reluctant return
Like many families in Gaza, Samira and her relatives have suffered their share during the war, facing repeated displacement, movement and loss of basic necessities of life.
“We just returned a month ago from our last move in Khan Younis,” says Samira.
“We moved to al-Mawasi area in Khan Yunis after the second ground invasion (of northern Gaza) in September, but when the war ended, I didn’t want to go back, so I stayed in our tent.”
Pressured by her family and children to return, Samira eventually relented and returned to northern Gaza with the rest of her family.
“When you return to your home and your place it’s beautiful and it’s livable, not when you live in rubble covered with rubble, without any means of life like water or infrastructure,” says Samira, pointing to her partially destroyed house, surrounded by completely destroyed houses.
She explains that one of the reasons for her delay in returning home is fear that Israel will not fulfill any of the commitments and agreements made when it signed a “ceasefire” in October, including allowing large-scale humanitarian aid access to Gaza and ceasing Israeli attacks. Instead, Israel continues to attack periodically, killing hundreds of Palestinians, and continues to impose regular restrictions on imports into Gaza.
“It is true that the intensity of bombings has dropped significantly, but there are still violations, and the crossings and the flow of goods remain unstable. We feel that we are left at ground zero without progress,” says Samira.
Her daughter interrupts her, asking her to remain optimistic to celebrate Eid and stop talking about politics.
Samira laughs that every time she chooses not to talk about the war, circumstances force her to talk about it again.
“This year, we hope that Eid will bring better days, that our businesses and lives will improve and stabilize, that prices will go down and that raw materials and construction materials will enter Gaza,” he says with a sad smile. “We are tired of this difficult situation for so long.”
(tags to translate) Features
