The Palestinians besieged in the south of Gaza, without water, electricity or fuel due to the fierce offensive of the Israeli Army, use ingenuity, imagination and the remains of garbage to try to make their miserable daily life shine with some mirages. of normality.

In a narrow alley in Rafah, a long line of about twenty women, surrounded by their children, smoke and baby cries, prepare the traditional Palestinian shrak bread, which is heated on an oval metal griddle placed directly over the fire: It's like a huge pizza dough, but very thin and malleable.

But they do not do it for pleasure, but because many bakeries have closed due to lack of fuel due to the siege imposed by Israel and, for this reason, women are forced to use all types of flammable waste to cook bread: from papers, magazines and cardboard, even plastic bottles, bags or shreds that cause dense smoke and an unhealthy smell.

“We have nothing, we don't have cardboard or tahini, we don't find food or bread in the bakeries,” one of the women complains to EFE while kneading a shrak surrounded by several children.

The commissioner general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, denounced yesterday from Paris that with Israel's military action “collective punishment is being imposed on the entire population of Gaza” and reiterated his demand for “a humanitarian ceasefire.”

“Where is the mercy of the world, we are hungry,” says the same Palestinian woman, who insists that she spends the day making bread because the children are hungry and do not have any money. He also complains that they live there, surrounded by dirt, threatened by diseases and with their children dirty without being able to wash them, because water is also scarce.

Vegetable oil to fuel car engines

Ramzi Rashuan works as a driver with one of the few cars still circulating in Rafah. He does this because the fuel he uses is from the Al Jial brand, the company that sells vegetable oil for cooking and that Rashuan uses to fuel his Mercedes-Benz 240 D, a classic model of the German brand that began manufacturing in the 1990s. from the 70s of the last century, start walking.

“We put oil in the cars because we don't have fuel, there is nothing,” says the driver, who explains that the only non-horse-drawn vehicles that work are those that accept vegetable oil. Rashuan has changed the tank and placed it in the front, where he empties a bottle of Al Jial before returning to his car and continuing on his way.

Carts pulled by donkeys or the donkeys themselves are now the only alternative, he tells EFE before warning that the newest cars do not accept oil or other products other than gasoline in their engines.

Solar energy provided to charge mobile phones

“We are here, in an area full of displaced people and everyone is in need. There is no electricity, nor do the generators work,” Anás explains to EFE, sitting in front of a labyrinth of cables, an army of plugs and extension cords and a mountain of mobile phones and chargers.

He says that the energy they use to charge the phones of people in the area comes from the solar panels of a pharmacy, which he is grateful for providing a cable to assemble all the equipment with which they recharge the phones.

“Every hour, we charge between one hundred and one hundred and fifty phones,” says Anán, before specifying that there is no alternative and that this is the only way that the displaced and the people of the neighborhood have to charge their phones “somewhat.”