Last game for children near an oven… a tragic story in Gaza

SANAA, April 07 (YPA) – Palestinian children grow up in a spiral of violence, displacement, and deprivation of the most basic rights of childhood, such as playing, education, medicine, and even a bread crumb.

In Gaza, where a loaf of bread has become a rare commodity amid the blockade and food scarcity, queues at bakeries have become a daily occurrence. A group of children stood near a bakery in a densely populated neighborhood in southern Gaza City, waiting their turn to get bread to fill their stomachs.

While the loaves were delayed, the children stole moments of childhood innocence to alleviate the pressure of waiting and the pangs of hunger, they played in the narrow street, filling the empty space with the sounds of their laughter, unaware that those minutes of play would be their last remaining moments of life.

Death instead of bread

“That waiting was not written to end with bread, but rather death.”

 

Suddenly, Israeli occupation aircraft surprised them and bombed the crowded gathering of civilians, using American-made bombs.

These bombs fell on the children’s heads, preventing them from getting the loaf of bread they had dreamed of for hours.

There were no military targets, only children playing with their thin bodies, waiting for something to satisfy their hunger, mothers waiting, and fathers hoping.

There were dozens of martyrs, including children under the age of ten. Their emaciated bodies were cut up, and their small toys were scattered among the rubble and blood.

Full tragedy

“A cry that shortened a complete tragedy for a people who are slaughtered from vein to vein”

In a scene that is difficult to describe and documented by the lenses of journalists and activists on social media platforms, a father hugs the body of his little girl, screaming angrily, “Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.. They are all children.. They were playing in the street!”

A cry that summed up the entire tragedy of a people being slaughtered from vein to vein and embodied a pain that was too great to describe. A cry that summed up the magnitude of the tragedy and summed up a crime committed against childhood in broad daylight.

The recent massacre of childhood innocence in Gaza was not the first, and it appears it will not be the last. However, its details were shocking: a direct targeting of a place that holds nothing but hunger and innocence, a place where children gathered for bread only to end up in pieces on the sidewalk.

The policy of siege and starvation has left no room for mercy; rather, it has become one of the pillars of the policy of forced displacement, which the occupation seeks to impose by force.

While the voices of the victims and the tears of their parents remain damning evidence of a tragedy unparalleled in the twenty-first century and living testimony to a crime that must not be forgotten, the conscience of the world remains eerily silent, encouraging the occupation to continue committing genocidal war crimes.

YPA