For Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza, Eid brings no prospect of joy under the shadow of war

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On the day before Eid al-Fitr, the day he would normally be buying sweets, meats and toys for the children, Akram Abu Dayyeh struggled to contemplate even the idea of a festive end to Ramadan.

In Jabalia, the Gaza refugee camp where he is living, “people eat the food of animals,” he said. “They eat hay. They eat barley.”

Food has been in such short supply that the rituals of Ramadan brought little change. “With or without Ramadan, we fast. We eat only one meal a day.” He has lost 40 kilograms since the war began.

The advent of Eid, which means “feast,” brought no prospect of joy.

In Gaza, he said, “there is no such thing as a feast.”

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Palestinians will observe Eid on Wednesday, but it is a celebration few will celebrate, arriving the same week as the six-month mark of war in Gaza. There, the death count continues to mount as people pull bodies from the rubble of Khan Younis after the withdrawal of Israeli forces on Sunday. Palestinian authorities have counted more than 33,000 people killed in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and other militants.

In Palestinian territories outside Gaza, an atmosphere of sombre solidarity has surrounded Ramadan and Eid.

In years past, families in the West Bank’s Am’ari refugee camp would prepare banquets of nuts and pastries, cookies and appetizers and all sorts of meat.

This year, Basima Hamad will serve dried fish, she said, in quantities sufficient only to sate hunger.

The West Bank lies physically distant from the immense destruction of Gaza. But here, too, death hangs heavy. Families have kept their children close, worried about deadly attacks from Israeli drones that often loiter above. “There is no sense of security whatsoever,” she said.

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At the outset of the war, Israeli security services arrested two of Khadija Badra’s grandsons. Despite months of effort, the family has been unable to learn their whereabouts, or even confirm they are still alive. Ms. Badra also counts dozens of relatives killed in Gaza.

“How can we celebrate Eid when there are people who are getting butchered, and who don’t have a crumb of bread to put in their mouths?” she asked.

The streets that lead to her Am’ari camp home would typically be noisy with preparations for Eid. On Tuesday, the hushed quiet suggested grim reflection. Nowhere visible were the twinkling lights that usually mark the season. Instead, the neighbourhood’s concrete walls displayed colour from the black, red and green of scrawled Palestinian flags.

Shopkeepers on a nearby high street gazed out over bare sidewalks where, in other years, queues of buyers would assemble.

Sales were down more than 70 per cent at the meat shop where Haji Mustafa has worked since 1982. The freezers were stocked with Brazilian beef and New Zealand lamb, but few people came to buy. “Israel has deprived Palestinians of any kind of joy,” he said.

The sprawling feasts of mansaf in Eid celebrations past – platters mounded high with lamb, yogurt, rice and nuts – will be supplanted this year by simpler fare.

“There will be no meat tomorrow,” said Rafei Rumaneh, a pastry maker in Am’ari. “If someone celebrates, they will be told, ‘shame upon you.’”

He opened his Rumaneh Sweets shop on Tuesday afternoon to prepare a limited number of treats for sale, cutting thin spreads of pastry into squares for two types of mutabbaq. Some he mounded with a mix of chopped walnuts, cinnamon and sugar. Others he topped with balls of pudding before folding them into packets.

Sales were less than half previous years. Customers who might previously have come in for two kilograms of pastries came in asking for just half a kilo.

“There are no parties. People are not holding family gatherings,” Mr. Rumaneh said.

Ten of his cousins died in Gaza when their house was bombed.

Deference to the dead has mixed with economic anxiety. Israel has barred entry to more than 140,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank since the war began, cutting off their sources of income.

A joyless Eid “is an expression of respect,” said Amjad Shaf’ee, who runs a Ramallah shop with shelves of toys and decorations. “But it’s also that the economic situation does not allow people to afford buying things.”

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This year, Mr. Shaf’ee’s family will forgo pastries in favour of dates and bitter coffee. The children, too, will go without the toys their parents once bought from his shop.

Last year, his eight-year-old son, Abdulra’uf received a firetruck. This year, he expects nothing. “Because I love Gaza,” he says, in English.