No Women’s Day in Gaza, say mothers of hungry children

Women’s Day? At a tent in Rafah where Um Zaki says she is boiling porridge on an open flame to stave off the hunger of her six children, the holiday passes as a cruel joke.

“Now, all our days look the same. The days of feasts, happy occasions, nice food, laughter and hope, are all gone because of the war,” she told Reuters by phone. “What is Women’s Day? We are deprived of the minimal rights, we are deprived of living. Every day women die by Israeli bombs.”

International Women’s Day, March 8, is typically a major public holiday in the Palestinian territories, when Gaza families put on their finest clothes and flock to hotels and restaurants to celebrate their mothers, daughters and sisters.

Now, with Gaza’s 2.3 million residents nearly all homeless and all struggling for survival, it was painful even to think of such things.

On a day she would normally wear makeup, her face is now streaked with soot from open-air cooking fires, Um Zaki says. She started to tell of how her intimate laundry was strung outside the tent on a line for all to see. Another woman near her cried into the phone: “Women’s Day! There is no Women’s Day in Gaza. In Gaza we are close to Doomsday because of Israel!”