GAZA, (PIC)
“Better to ride on your limping donkey and not ask a mean person to lend you their ride.”
A Palestinian proverb that strikes deep, and it can be fully applied to the situation in the Gaza Strip, especially to Ammar and his wife, amid the ongoing aggression for ten months with a total closure of the crossings and a suffocating siege that deprived the people of the Strip of the entry of basic necessities, foremost of which is fuel. This has forced the people of the Strip to resort to using animals, especially donkeys, mules and horses, to carry their belongings and travel in the endless displacement journeys.
The world’s silence and their abandonment of the people of Gaza, which reached the point of inability to import food and fuel, has forced the people of the Strip to often transport the martyrs and the wounded to hospitals through (the Kara/Al-Hantour), which is a cart pulled by a donkey or a horse, after many ambulances stopped due to being targeted or the lack of fuel to operate them.
Ammar and his wife own a simple Hantour, through which they presented a bright image and great services to support the Palestinian people in Gaza, and they decided to use it to respond to distress calls, which international institutions have failed to respond to as long as they have claimed the danger of war and fear for their staff in the face of the duty imposed on them to transport the wounded and martyrs and preserve their dignity, which the criminal Israeli occupation army violates with its aggression day and night.
Ammar and his wife, who turned their Hantour into an ambulance to transport the martyrs, and retrieve them from the areas evacuated by the occupation army, have become an object of admiration for the people of Gaza who saw in them a savior and relief in the most difficult moments during the bombardment, the ascension of the martyrs, and the occurrence of injuries. They are always present without the need for a distress call.
Ammar’s wife walks beside him, helping him lift the martyrs and transport them on the cart, and he utters words that expose the hypocrisy of international institutions and the hypocrisy of the world’s countries in their silence on the heinous crime, “Look, world… look, world…” with his hoarse voice that has been exhausted by the intensity of the pain and anguish over the blood of his people shed on the ground every day.
Returning to the Palestinian proverb “Better to ride on your limping donkey and not ask a mean person to lend you their ride,” it is embodied in a living example that some people, even if they are weak and do not have great power, but in times of need, their value is priceless and they are highly useful, and they save one from seeking help from the unjust, negligent, and conspiring world.
Media activist Khaled Safi says, “Ammar and his wife served better than all the United Nations institutions working in Gaza, volunteering despite the danger without coordination with the occupation to transport the bodies of the martyrs from the targeted areas to bury them, after those organizations failed to provide a cart or even a donkey to honor the martyrs by burying them.”
A well-deserved award
As for the blogger Ahmed Hijazi, he says, “Such people should be granted awards.”
He points out that from the very first moments of the start of the genocide, Ammar and his wife decided to take the initiative in a humanitarian act that governments may have failed to do, they decided to take the initiative in rescuing the bodies of the martyrs and victims from the areas invaded by the occupation.
Hijazi continues, “This role was supposed to be the responsibility of health institutions or the International Red Cross. Ammar has served Gaza from the far north to the center of Gaza City.”
He noted that since the beginning of the genocide, the International Red Cross has not responded to any humanitarian appeals from families to rescue families trapped under heavy bombardment and rubble.
Najwa Dhaher, another media activist, says, “The volunteers, Ammar and his wife, since the beginning of the war of extermination, could not bear the violation of the sanctity of death on the streets. They vowed to Allah to collect the bodies of the martyrs from the areas where the occupation is present, despite the risks, without waiting for permission from the enemy, or the excuses of the conspiring institutions like the Red Cross and their vain justifications.”
Since the beginning of the aggression and the announcement by the Zionist enemy’s leaders of the start of their crime in imposing a complete siege on Gaza, the people of Gaza had to replace ambulances with Hantour and others to transport the martyrs and the wounded, as an alternative means that proved effective after the interruption of fuel due to the aggression and the siege.
Systematic Targeting
Even these primitive means that the people of Gaza resorted to meet their urgent need did not escape the targeting of the Zionist enemy, who left nothing in Gaza that it did not seek to exterminate, whether they were human, tree, stone, or animals.
Video clips circulating during the aggression show moments of Israeli criminality, where an Israeli sniper from his tank targets purebred horses in Gaza seeking to kill them.
In the latest scene of targeting Hantour vehicles in Gaza, activist-shared footage documents the moment an Israeli drone targeted civilians in Gaza while they were traveling on this primitive means.
