Gaza: donkeys help residents to survive the war

Amina Abou Maghassib’s life depends on one animal: her donkey, which faithfully pulls the cart she uses to transport Gazans across the Palestinian territory where war shortages make fuel scarce and overpriced.

“Before the war, I sold milk and yogurt, and the dairy came to collect the milk from me,” she says, reins in one hand, rubber stick in the other, as she maneuvers her team through the streets of Deir al-Balah (center). “Now, I have no other source of income than this donkey and this cart,” she adds, sitting on her vehicle made of a few wooden planks held by a metal frame, all mounted on four car wheels.

Common in the Gaza Strip since before the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, carts pulled by donkeys have become omnipresent there due to the destruction and lack of fuel. Depending on the situation, they serve as a means of livelihood, a mode of public transport or, when the fighting gets too close, a means of saving your life.

Marwa Yess uses them to travel with her family. “I pay 20 shekels (4.9 francs) for the cart to take me from Deir al-Balah to Nousseirat. The price is scandalous but, given the circumstances, everything seems reasonable,” she told AFP. “At the start of the war, I was ashamed to ride in a cart pulled by a donkey, but now there is no other option,” explains this teacher and mother of three children.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 43% of working animals in Gaza, a category that includes donkeys, horses and mules, had died in the war as of last August. Only 2627 of them were still alive on this date.

In addition to the 2,500 shekels (around 600 francs) paid to buy her donkey, Amina Abou Maghassib must pay for fodder, the price of which has soared in Gaza, like that of human food. Customers hop on and off, paying a few coins that allow him to make a net profit of 20 shekels (4.7 francs) per day. “I bought this donkey on credit. The first died in Deir el-Balah during the war, hit by shrapnel,” she said.

Abdel Misbah, a 32-year-old man moved with his family from Gaza City to the south of the Gaza Strip, also became a carter. “I sold vegetables from a cart before the war. Now I work in delivery,” he says. “I make sure to feed him well, even if the price of barley has gone from three to 50 shekels” per bag.

Since Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza at the start of the war against Palestinian Hamas last year, food distribution there has been a headache. As if fighting in densely populated areas and frequent population displacements were not enough, fuel shortages, broken roads and looting add to the difficulties.

The donkey of Youssef Mohammad, a 23-year-old displaced Palestinian, has become his family’s “lifeline.” “When the war started, car travel prices were too high. I had no choice but to rely on my donkey. Thank God he was there when we had to evacuate,” he said.

While evacuation orders from the Israeli army can throw thousands of people onto the roads, carts offer one of the few means of escape. At 62, Hosni Abou Warda had to use this age-old means of transport to leave his demolished house in Jabalia, a town in the north of the Gaza Strip, then in the grip of an Israeli military operation.

After 14 hours of waiting to find a team, he fled with his family, “all packed like sardines”. In such moments, “the donkey is more precious than gold and even more precious than a modern car,” he sums up.