No identical pieces were found
Ahmed Shwaiki feeds the pigeons at his stopover at the Al Aqsa compound.
For Muslims around the world, Ramadan is a time of prayer, mirroring and joyful evening dinners, but all Gazans need this year is an end to five months of war and suffering.
It’s a widely shared hope in the Islamic world, where many are thinking of Gaza as the month of fasting, which begins with the sighting of the crescent moon on Sunday or Monday, approaches.
The war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and unleashed violence in the Middle East, from Lebanon to the seas off Yemen.
Amid the ruins of southern Gaza, Nevin al-Siksek recently sat outside in his makeshift tent, distracting his young daughter from the carnage surrounding them with a plastic Ramadan flashlight.
Worshippers break their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Cairo, Egypt.
The colorful lanterns are an iconic symbol of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar marked by fasting from dawn to dusk and, at most important times, festive evening meals with family and friends.
This year, across the Gaza Strip, lamps are among the few symptoms that herald the arrival of the holy month, amid dire warnings of mass starvation.
Although foreign mediators had hoped for a truce in time for Ramadan, no progress was made on Friday.
Much of the territory, which is home to 2. 4 million people, has a hellish landscape of bombed-out neighborhoods, emaciated youths and mass graves dug into the sand.
Siksek and his family, who dined on lamb and chocolates at the house they had to flee in northern Gaza, will rest in the rudimentary tent they share with other displaced civilians.
If they can eat something, that is.
“We don’t have food to prepare,” Siksek said as her husband, Mohammed Yasser Rayhan, nodded.
Muslim women on the Mount of Olives, before Ramadan, overlooking the Dome of the Rock at Al Aqsa Mosque.
In the past, Ramadan, which commemorates the beginning of the Quranic revelation to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, “there was life, joy, spirit, decorations and an enchanting atmosphere,” Rayhan said.
“Now Ramadan is coming and we have war, oppression and famine. “
A Prayer for Our Brothers and Sisters
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel, he told AFP.
The Israeli army’s retaliatory crusade has killed at least 30,800 people, the vast majority of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Public Health.
Other parts of the Islamic world may be grappling with their own challenges, ranging from conflict to peak inflation. But many Muslims say their minds are with the Palestinians this year.
“Every time I pray, I send a prayer for our brothers and sisters in the Palestinian territory,” said Nurunnisa, a 61-year-old Indonesian housewife from the western province of Aceh, which has the world’s largest Muslim population.
“I can’t handle anything, so I can only do it with prayer. I pray that the war will end soon. The other people are suffering a lot. “
Tired and exhausted
Muslims in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem are concerned about violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint.
An Iraqi checks the classic lanterns known in Arabic as “Fanous Ramadan” at the Shorja market in central Baghdad.
It is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest in Judaism, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
During Ramadan, tens or even thousands of Muslims pray at the resort’s iconic Dome of the Rock.
But in February, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Palestinian citizens from the occupied West Bank “should not be allowed” to enter Jerusalem during Ramadan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that worshippers would be allowed to enter the mosque “in similar numbers” to previous years.
This reassured Ahlam Shaheen, 32, who works at a networking center near Al-Aqsa.
When Israeli police stormed the mosque in 2021, Shaheen saw women praying next to her being shot with rubber bullets, and she fears this could happen again.
“We’ve been living in war for five months,” he said. We’re tired and exhausted. “
In Cairo, the most festive city of Ramadan, a student from Gaza who asked to be identified feared this year’s holy month would be unbearable.
“For the first time in my life, I can’t stand the concept of Ramadan,” he said. “It hurts every time I see a fanous,” he says of the street lamps that adorn the city’s streets.
“My siblings can’t even eat once a day and we have to eat fast as if everything is normal?”
Agence France-Presse