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GAZA CITY: As Muslims across the world celebrate Eid al-Adha with
the ritual slaughter of animals, charity, and joyous feasting, the
weary residents of the Gaza Strip brace for more sacrifices.
Six months after the Islamist movement Hamas
seized power, the territory remains in the grip of Israeli and
international sanctions, battered by near-daily military strikes
aimed at Palestinian militants.
“The Islamic world celebrates Eid Al-Adha with
joy and happiness, with family visits and travel... but we in
Palestine celebrate the Eid with martyrs and blood,” Hamas leader
Ismail Haniya told a crowd of thousands on Wednesday.
On December 18, 12 militants were killed across
Gaza in a wave of Israeli air strikes, including a top leader of
Islamic Jihad, a radical group behind many of the rocket attacks on
Israel.
“We sacrifice, not only meat for our Eid, but
ourselves, our lives, our hopes, our young men and our leaders, all
for God,” Haniya, prime minister in the sacked Hamas-led
government said after leading prayers in a Gaza stadium.
In a normal year the streets of Gaza would be
doused with blood as Muslims remember Prophet Abraham’s
near-sacrifice of his son Prophet Ishmael by slaughtering animals
and sharing the meat with poor neighbours and loved ones.
But again this year few people can afford the
ritual.
Since the takeover of Gaza by Hamas, a group
pledged to Israel’s destruction, the Jewish state has brought the
economy to a grinding halt by limiting imports to little but
essential humanitarian aid.
The measures are aimed at putting pressure on
Hamas and curbing rocket attacks launched at Israeli communities
near the Gaza border.
“We had to buy a smaller cow, because that was
all they had. The price of a kilo has gone from 11 shekels last year
to 20 this year,” says Eyman, a 38-year-old police officer, as he
slices chunks of meat off a hanging carcass.
He will share the meat with his five brothers
and their families—some 60 people—and according to Islamic
tradition will donate a third of the meat to the needy. In past
years he purchased much larger animals.
On another normally crowded street a group of
men stands in the cold early morning, a giant skinned cow at their
feet, hosing blood into a narrow river running past empty sidewalks
and shuttered shops.
Tuesday’s air strikes—in which a car filled
with militants was struck by an Israeli missile just a few blocks
away—were still on everyone’s mind.
“Every year the Jews commit some kind of
massacre and turn our joy into sadness. We want to enjoy the
holiday, but we think of the martyrs and their families,” says
Azmi, 33, as he holds his bloody hands away from his shirt.
The cow’s head rests a few feet away on the
sidewalk, its eyes open, its slack tongue hanging from
blood-encrusted lips.
Hamas has called on Gazans to reject the
recently revived peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian
government in the occupied West Bank and to redouble their efforts
to resist the Israelis by any means.
Haniya called on Gazans to remember Abraham’s
example, to “surrender to God, seize the knife, and be willing to
sacrifice your son,” but this year the message fell on the ears of
people weary from the struggle.
“We can sacrifice, we are able to, but for how
much longer? We do not see anything ahead of us, any future for our
children,” says Azmi’s brother Nail, 30, a shopkeeper with two
children. “How will this end?”
-- AFP
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