Gaza residents on aid airdrops: Hunger is more dignified
4 Min Read
The scene showing some 50,000 people rushing to grab aid that had been dropped by a parachute, totaling only 30 parcels of food, was harsher than dozens of massacres committed by Israeli warplanes.
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Children in Gaza sit holding pots and pans, hoping to get some food for their families (Al Mayadeen Net)
One can tell that the joy felt by the people of Gaza looking up at the sky, watching planes airdropping aid, has little to do with what they expect to procure from them, as the result is predominantly predetermined: Nothing. Their actual joy has to do with the fact that this was the first time when a plane flying over their heads would throw something beside bombs or missiles. This fact, in and of itself, breaks the boredom and routine; after all, everyone likes a novel sight.
Dozens of large C-130 cargo transport aircraft performed airdrops for aid in Gaza, starting with Jordanian aircraft and ending with US aircraft.
This scene and its reverberations in the soul are not restricted to the moment when parachutes open in the sky heading downward, because that is when people begin a game of guessing, trying to see where they might land: on their lands or inside the occupied territory? On land or in the sea? And so, thousands watching the scene voice their speculations in this amusing spectacle, and some even resort to hints by the youth, experienced as they are in chasing drops in PUBG, while tens of thousands engage in an arduous run, chasing the wind. After a disappointing return, they wake up to what they are doing.
Raed Abdel Aziz, a programmer living in a house he built in the Andalusian style, dashed, competing with thousands of others to win a parcel of food thrown by planes over the Tal al-Zaatar neighborhood. He was lucky, as the parachute fell a few hundred meters away from him:
“I found myself running, competing with thousands of poor people, and when I grabbed a bag of macaroni and a pound of dates, I found that another hand had grabbed them too… That’s when I came to.” The father of five went back home empty-handed.
“The other hand grabbing the food was that of the poorest man in our neighborhood, the same person I give my charity to in Ramadan every year… I let go of the bag, wishing that the earth would swallow me wholly [out of shame],” he told Al Mayadeen Net.
“I am a government employee, my wife’s a teacher, and I run my own profitable business. After I built the house, I lived a life of luxury and spent my monthly income on luxuries. Yes, I don’t even have a kilo of flour in my house now. But I’m ashamed of my conduct… I haven’t fully grasped what I’m living through now," he added.
As far as the locals are concerned, there are many less humiliating ways to deliver aid. Quinquagenarian Ahmad Ayesh says, “The mere fact that you’re accepting aid is difficult, even more difficult when it reaches your doorstep. It forces on you to withstand being broken; it’s even worse when you have to compete with people, running dozens of kilometers chasing parachutes… God will surely provide, brother, hunger is more dignified.”
Abou Oday al-Malahi took us on a trip down the memory lane to pre-1948 times, as he recounted, “When Gulf countries were still deserts, Palestine had universities, coffee houses, large markets, and libraries. Ask all Arabs who was it that taught them in their schools, who were the engineers that built their houses up to the early 90s (…) What’s happening now is humiliating, it’s an attempt to wipe the floor with us, and this is the image some are trying to show to the world, that we’re nothing more than hungry creatures (…) No we’re not hungry and have never been hungry. We’re the most generous and bravest of people."
"We’re being punished for refusing to leave our homes and choosing to die here, we chose to resist and take back our land," he tersely stated.
This writer can say that the scene showing 50,000 people clamoring for aid dropped by a parachute holding 30 parcels of food was a harsh sight, harsher even than dozens of massacres committed by Israeli aircraft.
I went back from that area, wishing for the first time that this miserable planet would burn and to keep what I saw there to myself and that no one would see these dignified people as I saw them.
