Gaza Genocide03 July, 20263 min read
Palestinians Hold Eid Al-Adha Prayers Near Destroyed Al-Huda Mosque in Gaza
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Palestinians in Gaza held Eid al-Adha prayers on mosque rubble and displacement tents. Prayers occurred atop the remains of mosques destroyed by Israeli aggression.
Eid on Ruins
For the third consecutive year, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were barred from performing Eid al-Adha rites, with no pilgrims left to perform the rituals and no sacrifices entering the besieged Gaza Strip. Hundreds gathered to perform Eid al-Adha prayer near the destroyed Al-Huda Mosque in the Al-Joura Al-Aqd area north of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, less than a kilometer from the Yellow Line, as security and living conditions remained difficult because of the war on Gaza. In livestock markets, activity was almost non-existent, and one livestock seller said: 'The turnout for livestock in the market today does not exceed 5%,' adding that 'the Palestinian citizen today lives in very difficult living conditions, amid a lack of liquidity, alongside exorbitant prices.'
He said that 'Today, if I want to sacrifice, I would need between $7,000 and $8,000 to buy a sheep weighing 40 kilograms.' The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture in the Gaza Strip said depriving more than two million Palestinians of Eid sacrifices for the third consecutive year reflects the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe left by the Israeli war.
Mosques Under Fire
An Anadolu Ajansı report described Eid al-Adha prayers held on Wednesday in open squares, temporary prayer spaces, and destroyed mosques across the Gaza Strip, with Eid takbeers blending with grief for victims of ongoing Israeli bombing. It said that on the eve of Eid al-Adha, 11 Palestinians were killed and others injured in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, including an attack targeting a residential building housing shops in the al-Rimal area in western Gaza City. In Gaza City, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor investigated an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Hassan Mosque during dawn prayers on November 16, 2023, concluding that no evidence was found of military targets inside the mosque or in its surrounding area at the time of the attack.
Euro-Med Monitor reported that the attack occurred around 4:45 a.m. and that the Israeli airstrike destroyed the mosque within seconds, collapsing onto the worshippers inside. Ezz Al-Din Maher Kraim, an 18-year-old resident, told the Euro-Med Monitor team: 'Everything was torn to pieces; there was no trace of anyone.'
Rebuilding and Risk
L’Humanité reported that since May 2024, the Gaza History project has been striving to inventory, document, and safeguard Gaza’s historical and cultural heritage, as mosques, markets, museums, and universities are methodically destroyed. CNRS historian Fabrice Virgili, a member of the project, said: "there is a deliberate will to erase this past," and he added that international conventions, notably the 1954 Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, are clear that these intentional destructions are violations of the law. Le Figaro said that Heritage for Peace, working since October, published a first report on November 7 listing ten sites whose fate is uncertain and estimating about one hundred culturally significant sites damaged by bombings.
It also cited Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor saying more than 150 places of worship have been damaged to date. In Nuseirat, Al-Jazeera Net described how residents of the New Camp stand to perform their five daily prayers in a modest prayer space made by residents with their own hands, after four of six central mosques in the New Camp were completely destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.