The Electronic Intifada 31 January 2025
Palestinians move their belongings in a flooded camp for displaced persons in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 31 December 2024.
ActiveStillsFifteen-year-old Mahmoud Saleh never imagined that he would one day pull a cart intended for a donkey to earn income for his family.
But after his father was killed in an Israeli military attack on his carpentry workshop in Gaza City in August 2023 and Saleh’s donkey died in a subsequent shelling, he felt he had no other options.
Saleh had been forced to flee with his mother, two younger brothers and two sisters to the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, carrying with him memories of loss and the burdens of poverty.
He did not want his mother earning money by washing other people’s clothes by hand, as she had been doing due to the power outages since the Israeli attacks began on 7 October 2023.
Saleh borrowed money from an uncle to buy a donkey-drawn cart and used it to transport water to the camps for around $11 a day.
With the donkey now dead, Saleh ties a rope around his waist every morning around 7 and pulls the cart, loaded with water, to the camps for the displaced.
“The young men and passersby often take pity on me and help me push the cart from the back,” Saleh said during a short break from his work on 11 January.
“I wish I could be in school with my friends now, but I have become a man before my time,” he said. “I don’t have the luxury of dreams. All I think about is how to feed my mother and my younger siblings.”
But due to the destruction caused by the Israeli attacks, it is doubtful that there would be a non-home-based school for Saleh and his friends to go to even if he had the time to attend classes.
At least 625,000 students in the Gaza Strip have been deprived of resuming their education, according to UN experts, as more than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed or damaged in the Israeli attacks.
“The horse used to save me this suffering”
Issa al-Khatib, a displaced resident in Nuseirat, also pulls a cart with his hands to earn money. He transports goods and passengers in and around the town’s main market in the central Gaza Strip.
Al-Khatib said he used to work in construction in the north, but after the Israeli attacks began, he and his family were displaced in May 2023, and he needed new work.
With his savings, al-Khatib bought a horse and a cart and began transporting passengers and goods in Nuseirat. However, the death of his horse in a traffic accident forced him to take its place.
“The horse used to save me this suffering,” al-Khatib told The Electronic Intifada. “Now I feel like I am slowly dying every day while pulling this cart.”
He said he could not afford to buy another horse.
“Before the war, a horse cost about $600, and today its price has reached $3,000,” al-Khatib said.
Business is slow, he said, in part because many people see his taking the place of a horse as degrading, but he insisted he had little choice.
“Sometimes passersby take pity on me and give me some money for free,” al-Khatib said.
Israel’s fuel blockade drives misery
The unemployment rate in Gaza had risen to nearly 80 percent during the Israeli genocide, and the gross domestic product has been reduced by almost 85 percent, according to an October 2024 report issued by the International Labor Organization.
“Israel’s prevention of fuel from entering Gaza has caused a comprehensive humanitarian disaster,” Ismail Thawabta, director of the Government Media Office, told The Electronic Intifada.
He said that this humanitarian disaster has taken the form of “the breakdown of vehicles, forcing residents to resort to primitive means such as carts” as primary means of transportation.
“What is even more painful is that this war has forced many young men and children to work pulling these carts after losing their animals due to repeated Israeli raids,” he said. This, in turn, “increases their physical and psychological suffering.”
Thawabta called on the international community to pressure Israel “to stop its aggressive policies and allow the urgent entry of fuel to avoid further deterioration in the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Abdullah Younis is a journalist in the Gaza Strip.
