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On the morning of Eid Al Adha, while many Muslims were gathering for festive meals, Al Motaz Kafarna was running for his life on a quest to feed his family.
Mr Kafarna, 38, had walked for eight hours through the night in search of a box of food, hoping, like many Palestinians, to beat the crowds at food banks run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Its operations have been marred by violence, and this night was no exception.
Mr Kafarna recalled to The National reaching a barricade near the aid centre in Rafah at 2.30am after failing to find a ride south. An Israeli loudspeaker warned the crowd there would be no aid and urged them to leave. But some among them whispered: “Don’t go. This is a trick to scatter us.”
Hours passed as hungry Gazans waited and about 5,000 people tried to get closer to the food bank. After loudspeaker warnings, Israeli forces opened fire, Mr Kafarna said.
“Bullets rained down on us,” he said. “People screamed, bled, died. I saw them fall, young men, fathers like me, who just wanted to bring food home. No one could raise their head to help. We were paralysed.”
Eventually a hush fell and Gazans went back on their way with heads lowered, carrying fear, sadness and pain, the father of five recalled. “Some who had stood beside us in line were now either wounded or gone forever, on Eid morning. This black Eid forced us, out of hunger, to seek food from the hands of our enemy, food wrapped in humiliation and disgrace.”
Israel denies wrongdoing over shootings and deaths near the aid sites, saying it has fired warning shots to control crowds. After an 11-week blockade of the territory, it says the controversial GHF is a way of cutting Hamas out of the loop in aid distribution.
Displaced and desperate
Displaced eight times since his home in Beit Hanoun was destroyed, Mr Kafarna now lives with his wife and five children in a shelter in Gaza city. Like hundreds of thousands of others in Gaza, he has lost his house and the very idea of safety.
After the burst of gunfire, he tried to sleep on the bare ground near Rafah's beach, hoping eventually to be allowed into the aid centre. At about 6.45am the gunfire resumed, he said, prompting people to lie flat on their stomachs or curl up in the foetal position.
“Your whole life flashes before your eyes. You think of those who love you,” he said. “You say, 'Woe to me, death isn’t my only worry today. It’s how I can die without returning to my children with food to ease their hunger.' They wait for me in the shelter, starving, hoping I’ll come back alive, with something to eat.”
When the gunfire stopped “they told us it was our chance”, he said. “So we ran.” The escape route took him over 2km of open ground scattered with the dead and injured. “You run like an animal,” he said. “Your hands up, your bag raised, trying to say: 'I'm not a fighter, I just want food'.”
Then came another checkpoint, where soldiers issued orders with guns aimed at people's chests. “They retreated slowly,” Mr Kafarna said. “As if releasing bulls in a rodeo. But we are not bulls. We are human beings, starving, humiliated, desperate.”
He finally reached a hill where supplies had been dumped and managed to grab a box before fleeing in panic. The contents were meagre: 2kg of lentils, a little flour, a bottle of oil and a few cans of beans.
Still, as he opened the bag, tears ran down his face. “Was this what I risked my life for? Was this why I stepped over the injured, ran past the dead? Was this why people around me died?”
He returned to his family trembling and exhausted. “As soon as I walked in, my children ran to me. Their eyes lit up. They said, ‘Finally, we will eat, Dad.’”
That sentence, simple, innocent, full of hunger and hope, broke him more than the gunfire ever could.
This Eid in Gaza, there were no new clothes, no meat, no sweets. Only gunfire, dust and children hoping their father would return with enough food to make it through to the next day.
