Gazan grandma knits worn-out wool to warm up grandchildren

By Nour Abu Aisha

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – Near the Egyptian border, displaced Palestinian Shahinaz Bakr is busy with knitting a wool hat for one of her granddaughters in their tent set up under the open sky in Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip.

Bakr, who was displaced from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood north of Gaza City to Rafah, obtained wool threads by tearing apart her family's worn-out wool sweaters.

The grandma is also approached by other displaced people in the camp to acquire some of her woolen products as they cannot find clothes for their children or cannot buy them due to the ongoing war and high prices.

Speaking to Anadolu, Bakr said: “Working on a wool crochet hook is one of my favorite hobbies that turned out very useful nowadays in light of the displacement.”

“I get wool from worn-out jackets or damaged and torn clothes that neighbors throw away,” the grandma said.

She pointed out that the displaced people in the camp also asked her to knit some woolen pieces to protect their children from the extreme cold exacerbating their suffering.

On her displacement journey from Gaza City to the south, the Palestinian woman said that her family used to live in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood before the outbreak of war between Israel and Palestinians on Oct. 7.

“With the beginning of the war, the army began targeting the area with violent airstrikes,” she said, adding that the army warned them to evacuate towards the south.

She recounted that her displaced family headed to the south on foot using Al-Bahr Street, amid a state of panic and fear that affected children and adults alike.

- Lack of basic necessities of life

The displaced people in the camps in the city of Rafah lack even the minimum necessities of life, as they were forced to leave their homes without taking any clothes or life necessities.

Most of the displaced people there also find it difficult to buy essentials or new clothes due to the war, lack of money, and the unprecedented rise in prices of those available in the markets.

Since the outbreak of the devastating war on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, Israel has been preventing the entry of goods into the enclave by tightly closing the Gaza Strip’s crossings.

However, on Nov. 24, Israel allowed small amounts of humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing, as part of a week-long humanitarian pause between the resistance factions in Gaza and Israel, which was reached through a Qatari-Egyptian-American mediation.

The Gaza Strip received about 600 trucks daily for health and humanitarian needs before Israel waged its deadly war on Oct. 7. However, the number decreased to about 100 trucks per day at the best conditions.

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas which Tel Aviv says killed 1,200 people.

At least 25,105 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 62,681 injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi