“37 mothers are killed every day in Gaza Strip”. To remember this, on the occasion of Mother’s Day which in the Middle East falls on March 21st, is the Palestinian Red Crescent. “For this celebration – he says About nobility speaking with the correspondent of the Turkish agency Anadolu – my son gave me a dress or flowers. I was happy”. But today, she says, “there is no Mother’s Day because we need God’s mercy and end of the war”.
For Um Adel, 77 years old, who took refuge with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians in Rafahcity on the border with Egypt, there is only the desire to “return to one’s home, which has now become a pile of rubble and sand, and to see the conflict end”. For her too, the sense of disorientation, given by her forced displacement, is strong. “This place doesn’t belong to me – she underlines, sitting in one of the numerous refugee tents –, I want to go back to my village!”.
It’s also a reminder of what Mother’s Day was like before the war One Mohamed, 55 years old. “It was a beautiful party and I captured the memory of this celebration in the photos I kept at home.” From the tent next door he also echoes her words Anaam Abu Wadi, 61 years old, while she is busy washing clothes as best she can. “Today this celebration is different from the celebrations of previous years – she declared to the correspondent of the Turkish agency – Our children came to our house, bringing us gifts”, while now this is not the case. The Palestinian mother, she explains, “deserves only good things because she is different from any other woman in the world. She is patient with herself and others, capable, in the face of pain, of consoling while she continues to live in deprivation and waiting for peace”.
On Mother’s Day, a young woman stays away from her daughters, Ghada al-Kurd, 36 years old. “I have two little girls who are far from me, they are in the north of the Gaza Strip and I am in the south, communication with them is difficult due to the war.”
Embittered by the forced distance, she confides: “Unfortunately my daughters are not close to me, I wish I had been with them today and spent a nice day.”
According to the latest estimates released by the Gaza government press office, the Israeli army has killed 9,220 women Palestinians in the Strip, where around 2.3 million people live.
The situation is not the best even for the women who remain alive. On Thursday, the Commission for Prisoners’ and Former Prisoners’ Affairs, together with the Palestinian prisoners’ association, released a statement declaring that out of 67 female prisoners, 28 are mothers and are languishing in Israeli prisons deprived of the opportunity to see “their families and their children”.
In total, the Israeli offensive against the Strip caused tens of thousands of victims civilians, mainly children and women, massive destruction it’s a food crisis which resulted in the death of some minors and elderly people, as reported by the United Nations.
In parallel with the war against Gaza, the Israeli army has intensified its actions in West Bank it’s at Gerusalemme East. These operations resulted in the killing of 446 Palestinians, the wounding of around 4,700 and led to the arrest of 7,700 people, according to data provided by thePalestinian National Authority.