Ladies prepare dough for thyme manakish (Anatolia)

Inside a displacement tent in the city of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip, the family of Palestinian Jihad Ashour is busy preparing circular pieces of pizza pies and thyme manakish, as part of a small project they recently started to earn a living in light of the deteriorating economic conditions of the population, due to the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Strip since October 7. Last October.

In order to complete the work at a rapid pace, the family members, inside this tent that they set up on one of the streets of the city, distribute the stages of making pies among each other. One of the women works on preparing the dough and the other works on rolling it out so that it becomes a flat surface.

As for Ashour, he helps arrange the simple pizza ingredients on these pies, which include tomato sauce, very small pieces of meat (mortadella), a few slices of sweet pepper, and some mayonnaise.

Ashour hardly succeeds in finding these simple ingredients in the markets, so he buys them at double the price, as this pizza is missing its most important ingredient, which is cheese, because the demand for buying it is limited, and because the displaced people are unable to buy its ingredients or bread.

Ashour bakes these pies in an oven that runs on wood and charcoal instead of cooking gas due to its lack of availability, on a public street, to attract customers to buy these pies that come out hot.

The majority of the displaced depend on canned food for their food, as hundreds of thousands of them miss hot food, and these hot pies are an opportunity for them to break the daily food routine and get some warmth.

In separate interviews with Anatolia, some displaced people said that they spend weeks without eating any hot food, due to the lack of cooking supplies they have (pots or firewood), or due to the depletion of the amounts of food they receive as aid and their inability to buy it due to their lack of financial liquidity.

Since the outbreak of the Israeli war, Israel has cut off supplies of water, food, medicine, electricity, and fuel to the residents of Gaza, who are about 2.3 million Palestinians, and closed the crossings, except to allow the entry of a very small number of aid and the exit of some sick individuals and those with foreign passports.

According to UNRWA, the humanitarian aid entering the sector in general does not meet 7% of the population’s needs for all food and relief supplies.

Cooking gas is a rare commodity and there is no fuel except firewood (Anatolia).

 For a living

Despite the continuous attacks launched by the Israeli occupation army, the thirty-year-old Ashour, who was displaced from the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City, to Rafah, did not surrender to the conditions resulting from the hardships of this journey, and began to think about sources for obtaining a living.

He told Anatolia that the idea of ​​preparing pizza and manakish pies arose out of suffering, as these foods are only scarcely available, and in areas far from the area of ​​his displacement, in addition to the scarcity of availability of ingredients and the difficulty of obtaining them.

He explained that he found himself forced to get a job to provide a living to feed his family, amid the scarcity of food aid reaching them and the lack of alternative sources of income.

He pointed out that he sells one piece of pie for up to two shekels (one dollar equals 3.60 shekels). He said that this amount is barely proportional to the cost of the pie ingredients, while the day ends with a small amount that contributes to providing the minimum requirements.

During the war, the prices of scarce foodstuffs in the Gaza Strip witnessed an increase, due to their scarcity due to the closure of the crossings and Israel’s prevention of their entry.

Displacement trips

Ashour says that he was displaced from the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, after Israeli warplanes bombed his house there, and “we went through several difficult displacement journeys, and we ended up in the far south of the Strip in the city of Rafah.”

In turn, his twenty-year-old wife, Fida Siyam, says that they were displaced to the Shifa Medical Complex after their house was immediately destroyed. After a period that the family spent there, they were displaced again to a shelter center in Gaza City, where it was targeted at the time, and a number of martyrs fell, as she told Anadolu.

This targeting forced them to flee to the city of Khan Yunis, which they recently fled after the Israeli invasion and headed towards Rafah, she said.

Since January 22, the Israeli occupation army has launched a series of intense air and artillery raids on Khan Yunis, and in the vicinity of the hospitals there, amid a ground advance of its vehicles in the southern and western areas of the city, which prompted thousands of Palestinians to flee from it.

Siyam describes life during the war and amid multiple displacement trips as “difficult and arduous,” and pointed out that the family, due to repeated displacement, arrived in Rafah without supplies, clothes, or money.

She pointed out that the displaced people who left their homes "carried all the money they had with them, and after 4 months of war, their money ran out in light of the high prices they were experiencing."

This project represents a lifeline for the Ashour family from falling into the mire of hunger, as Siam says that their living situation barely witnessed a slight improvement after this sale of pies.

She explained - as she baked some loaves of bread to feed her family - life is difficult, and humanitarian and food aid is missing and nothing is reaching us. Thinking about opening small economic projects, despite the war, saves families from hunger and destitution.

She stated that this project contributed to providing a living for her children, in light of the lack of means of life, the prevention of the entry of food supplies, and the continued siege.

In mid-November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced that all residents of the Gaza Strip suffer from food insecurity, due to the Israeli blockade imposed on them since October 7.

Source: Anadolu Agency