A woman covers her face from people turns right and left and waits for the chicken shop near her house in Gaza City to be empty of shoppers and quickly approaches the remaining garbage on the ground to search for chicken’s legs so that she could offer her fasting kids a meal. They already have not eaten meat for over a month.
The woman who identified herself by the first initials M. A. to whom one of the officials at the social committee in a Gaza neighborhood has introduced us to supports her four children and her husband who suffers from many diseases. She lives in a rented house where benevolent people pay for her rent sometimes which makes her the risk of being kicked out of the house anytime.
Tea with bread
A. S. a civil servant collapsed in tears begging the official at the social committee to provide anything to his family of 11 members swearing to him that since the first day of the month of Ramadan his family is fasting on bread and tea without sugar.
The civil servant told the PIC that his condition had turned upside down with salary cuts as his salary was already insufficient to meet the basic needs of his family members.
When we asked him about the items served on his family’s break fasting table he replied with tears trickling down his cheeks: “They eat beans provided to them by benevolent people.” He continues “We eat beans without the basic spices of lemon green peppers onions as the price of a kilo of lemon in Gaza is five shekels.”
The official at the social committee in the neighborhood who refused to reveal his name or even the name of the neighborhood because of the frequent calls and requests that does not stop not only by the poor in his neighborhood but also by hundreds of employees who became under the poverty line. Their proportion has risen in the neighborhood in a frightening manner since the Palestinian Authority began cutting down the salaries of Gaza’s civil servants.
Sharing the little they have
The story of the family of M. N. was no better than that of others. The food stamp he received estimated at 50 shekels given to him by the social committee in the neighborhood had to be shared with two of his married brothers and parents.
The official in the social committee swears that a father called him before the time of the Suhoor (final meal before the fasting) asking him for a few loafs of bread to feed his children.
The official complains that most merchants and rich people avoid providing assistance to the poor as they do every year not because they refuse to help but because the crisis has affected them so much that many of them have managed to sell one out of ten or less of what they used to sell during the holy month of Ramadan.
All Gaza Strip’s neighborhoods are similar to this neighborhood. Economic experts confirm that the costal enclave has entered an unprecedented economic collapse with 80% of people living in poverty while more than 70% rely on aid.
