Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months

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A Palestinian shows his damaged shoes in Khan Yunis, on the southern Gaza Strip on July 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant Hamas group. Finding shoes and clothing has become increasingly difficult for the 2.4 million people living in the Palestinian territory besieged by Israel. (AFP)
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Palestinians wait for a cobbler to repair their shoes in the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on July 5, 2024. (AFP)
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A Palestinian walks in damaged shoes in Khan Yunis, on the southern Gaza Strip on July 6, 2024. (AFP)
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Amal al-Robayaa, washes clothes amid the ruins of the family home destroyed in an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on November 7, 2023. (AFP)
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Palestinian women wash their clothes using sea water due to the lack of fresh water and electricity, along the beach in Deir el-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 29, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 18 August 2024
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Besieged Gazans share shoes, wear same clothes for months

GAZA: For months, Safaa Yassin has dressed her child in the same white bodysuit, an all-too-familiar tale in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by 10 months of war.
“When I was pregnant, I dreamed of dressing my daughter in beautiful clothes. Today, I have nothing to put on her,” says Yassin, one of thousands of Palestinians displaced from Gaza City.
“I never thought that one day I wouldn’t be able to dress my children,” says the 38-year-old, now living in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area designated as a humanitarian zone by Israeli forces.
“But the few clothes I found before evacuating to the south were either the wrong size or not suitable for the season,” she adds, as Gaza bakes in summertime temperatures of 30-plus degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) every day.
Finding clothing — any clothing — has become increasingly difficult for the 2.4 million people living in the territory besieged by Israel.
Gaza once had a thriving textiles industry but since the war began on October 7 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, it has received just a trickle of goods.
Faten Juda also struggles to dress her 15-month-old son, Adam, who is squeezed into ill-fitting pyjamas, his bare arms and legs sticking out from the tight fabric.
“He’s growing every day and his clothes don’t fit him anymore, but I can’t find any others,” the 30-year-old tells AFP.
Children are not the only ones suffering from the lack of clothing in the Gaza Strip, which counted 900 textile factories in the industry’s heyday in the early 1990s.
The sector employed 35,000 people and sent four million items to Israel every month. But those numbers have plummeted since 2007, when Hamas took power and Israel blockaded Gaza.
In recent years, Gaza’s workshops had dwindled to about 100, employing about 4,000 people and shipping about 30,000-40,000 items a month to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
By January, three months into the war, the World Bank estimated that 79 percent of Gaza’s private sector establishments had been partially or totally destroyed.
Even the factories that are still standing have ground to a halt, after months without electricity in Gaza. Any fuel that arrives for generators is mainly used for hospitals and United Nations facilities such as warehouses and aid-supply points.
In these conditions, finding new clothes is a rare event.
“Some women have been wearing the same headscarf for the past 10 months,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, posted on X.
Wearing the same clothes all the time is not just unpleasant, it is a health hazard. With limited water to wash them, disease-spreading lice abound.
Ahmed Al-Masri, 29, left his home in the north of Gaza at the start of the war.
Today in Khan Yunis, in the south, he says he does not have any spare shoes or clothes.
“My shoes are extremely damaged. I’ve had them repaired at least 30 times, each time paying 10 times more than before the war,” he says, his gaunt face burnt by the sun.

POVERTY AND DISPLACEMENT
With two-thirds of Gaza’s population living in poverty even before the war, many people were forced to sell their clothes once the conflict broke out and tanked the economy further.
But “there are no more shoes or clothes to sell,” says Omar Abu Hashem, 25, who was displaced from Rafah, on the Egyptian border, to Khan Yunis further north.
Abu Hashem left his home in such a rush that he was unable to take anything with him. He has been wearing the same pair of shoes for five months, but only every other day.
“I share my pair of shoes with my brother-in-law,” he explains.
On the days when he goes barefoot, he fears the worst, tiptoeing around the waste and rubble that carry diseases and contamination of all kinds.
Ahmed Al-Masri, meanwhile, just wants some soap to wash his only T-shirt and pair of trousers.
“I have been wearing the same clothes for nine months. I have nothing else. I quickly wash my T-shirt and then I wait for it to dry,” he says.
“And all this, without soap or detergent.”


Israel’s attorney general tells Netanyahu to reexamine extremist security minister’s role

Updated 8 sec ago
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Israel’s attorney general tells Netanyahu to reexamine extremist security minister’s role

  • National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir criticized for interfering in police matters

JERUSALEM, Nov 14 : Israel’s Attorney General told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reevaluate the tenure of his far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, citing his apparent interference in police matters, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Thursday.
The news channel published a copy of a letter written by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in which she described instances of “illegitimate interventions” in which Ben-Gvir, who is tasked with setting general policy, gave operational instructions that threaten the police’s apolitical status.
“The concern is that the government’s silence will be interpreted as support for the minister’s behavior,” the letter said.
Officials at the Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment and there was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office.
Ben-Gvir, who heads a small ultra-nationalist party in Netanyahu’s coalition, wrote on social media after the letter was published: “The attempted coup by (the Attorney General) has begun. The only dismissal that needs to happen is that of the Attorney General.”


Israeli forces demolish Palestinian Al-Bustan community center in Jerusalem

Updated 56 min 41 sec ago
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Israeli forces demolish Palestinian Al-Bustan community center in Jerusalem

  • Al-Bustan Association functioned as a primary community center in which Silwan’s youth and families ran cultural and social activities

LONDON: Israeli forces demolished the office of the Palestinian Al-Bustan Association in occupied East Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Silwan, whose residents are under threat of Israeli eviction orders. 

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Culture condemned on Thursday the demolition of Al-Bustan by Israeli bulldozers and a military police force. 

The ministry said that “(Israeli) occupation’s arrogant practices against cultural and community institutions in Palestine, and specifically in Jerusalem, are targeting the Palestinian identity, in an attempt to obliterate it.” 

Founded in 2004, the Al-Bustan Association functioned as a primary community center in which Silwan’s youth and families ran cultural and social activities alongside hosting meetings for diplomatic delegations and Western journalists who came to learn about controversial Israeli policies in the area. 

Al-Bustan said in a statement that it served 1,500 people in Silwan, most of them children, who enrolled in educational, cultural and artistic workshops. In addition to the Al-Bustan office, Israeli forces also demolished a home in the neighborhood belonging to the Al-Qadi family. 

Located less than a mile from Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem’s southern ancient wall, Silwan has a population of 65,000 Palestinians, some of them under threat of Israeli eviction orders.  

In past years, Israeli authorities have been carrying out archaeological digging under Palestinian homes in Silwan, resulting in damage to these buildings, in search of the three-millennial “City of David.” 


Israeli strike kills 12 after hitting civil defense center in Lebanon’s Baalbek, governor tells Reuters

Updated 14 November 2024
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Israeli strike kills 12 after hitting civil defense center in Lebanon’s Baalbek, governor tells Reuters

  • Eight others, including five women, were also killed and 27 wounded in another Israeli attack

CAIRO: An Israeli strike killed 12 people after it hit a civil defense center in Lebanon’s city of Baalbek on Thursday, the regional governor told Reuters adding that rescue operations were ongoing.
Eight others, including five women, were also killed and 27 wounded in another Israeli attack on the Lebanese city, health ministry reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Lebanese civil defense official Samir Chakia said: “The Civil Defense Center in Baalbek has been targeted, five Civil Defense rescuers were killed.”
Bachir Khodr the regional governor said more than 20 rescuers had been at the facility at the time of the strike.


‘A symbol of resilience’ — workers in Iraq complete reconstruction of famous Mosul minaret

Updated 14 November 2024
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‘A symbol of resilience’ — workers in Iraq complete reconstruction of famous Mosul minaret

  • Workers complete reconstruction of 12th-century minaret of Al-Nuri Mosque
  • Tower and mosque were blown by Daesh extremists in 2017

High above the narrow streets and low-rise buildings of Mosul’s old city, beaming workers hoist an Iraqi flag into the sky atop one of the nation’s most famous symbols of resilience.

Perched precariously on scaffolding in high-vis jackets and hard hats, the workers celebrate a milestone in Iraq’s recovery from the traumatic destruction and bloodshed that once engulfed the city.

On Wednesday, the workers placed the last brick that marked the completed reconstruction of the 12th-century minaret of Al-Nuri Mosque. The landmark was destroyed by Daesh in June 2017 shortly before Iraqi forces drove the extremist group from the city.

Known as Al-Hadba, or “the hunchback,” the 45-meter-tall minaret, which famously leant to one side, dominated the Mosul skyline for centuries. The tower has been painstakingly rebuilt as part of a UNESCO project, matching the traditional stone and brick masonry and incorporating the famous lean.

“Today UNESCO celebrates a landmark achievement,” the UN cultural agency’s Iraq office said. “The completion of the shaft of the Al-Hadba Minaret marks a new milestone in the revival of the city, with and for the people of Mosul. 

“UNESCO is grateful for the incredible teamwork that made this vision a reality. Together, we’ve created a powerful symbol of resilience, a true testament to international cooperation. Thank you to everyone involved in this journey.”

The restoration of the mosque is part of UNESCO’s Revive the Spirit of Mosul project, which includes the rebuilding of two churches and other historic sites. The UAE donated $50 million to the project and UNESCO said that the overall Al-Nuri Mosque complex restoration will be finished by the end of the year.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay celebrated the completion of the minaret by posting “We did it!” on social media site X.

She thanked donors, national and local authorities in Iraq and the experts and professionals, “many of whom are Moslawis,” who worked to rebuild the minaret.

“Can’t wait to return to Mosul to celebrate the full completion of our work,” she said.

The Al-Nuri mosque was built in the second half of the 12th century by the Seljuk ruler Nur Al-Din. 

After Daesh seized control of large parts of Iraq in 2014, the group’s leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, declared the establishment of its so-called caliphate from inside the mosque.

Three years later, the extremists detonated explosives to destroy the mosque and minaret as Iraqi forces battled to expel them from the city. Thousands of civilians were killed in the fighting and much of Mosul was left in ruins.


US hands Lebanon draft truce proposal -two political sources

Updated 14 November 2024
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US hands Lebanon draft truce proposal -two political sources

  • The US has sought to broker a ceasefire that would end hostilities between its ally Israel and Hezbollah

BEIRUT: The US ambassador to Lebanon submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri on Thursday to halt fighting between armed group Hezbollah and Israel, two political sources told Reuters, without revealing details.
The US has sought to broker a ceasefire that would end hostilities between its ally Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, but efforts have yet to yield a result. Israel launched a stepped-up air and ground campaign in late September after cross-border clashes in parallel with the Gaza war.