By Abdallah Aljamal – Gaza

Editor’s Note: The Palestine Chronicle thanks its staff in Gaza for suggesting and independently organizing this initiative, which made many refugee children happy, even if for just one day. 

The need in Gaza is great. Not only for food, clean water and medicine, but for everything else that people usually take for granted. 

The destruction of over 75 percent of all of Gaza means that the vast majority of what Gaza had to offer to the inhabitants of the Strip ceased to exist. 

Bakeries were bombed as a matter of course, to starve the population. Football fields were shelled, bombed or bulldozed, leaving no space for youngsters to expend their energies and overcome deep anxieties. Even barber shops were bombed, and when a haircut was available, many families simply could not afford the expense of paying for a haircut.

100 Haircuts 

On Thursday, May 16, Palestine Chronicle in Gaza organized a charitable initiative to provide haircuts for children living in shelters at Nuseirat Camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The Gaza-based members of the team coordinated with the management of the shelter to implement the initiative. 

“While visiting shelters in the Gaza Strip, we felt the need for various charitable initiatives to alleviate the suffering of the displaced,” Fatima Aljamal, the initiative coordinator, said. 

“We collaborated with the management of the shelter center in the heart of Nuseirat to organize a free haircut initiative for displaced children,” she explained.

Displaced hairdressers living in the center provided haircuts for over 100 children in the shelter.

“This is just the first step, and we will continue in the coming days. There is a large number of children living in shelters and haircuts are important for hygiene,” Aljamal continued.

The hygiene situation is particularly dire in Gaza, due to the lack of water and Israel’s ban on the entry of cleaning materials since the beginning of the war. 

‘Supporting My Family’ 

One of the hairdressers is Mohammed al-Taweel, a young university student who temporarily interrupted his studies due to the war.

“I am pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English language at the Al-Aqsa University in Gaza City, but everything has been suspended since the first day of the Israeli war on Gaza,” al-Taweel told the Palestine Chronicle.

“After the occupation forces stormed the camps in central Gaza, my family and I fled from our home, in the Bureij refugee camp, to Deir al-Balah City, then to Nuseirat. The occupation destroyed our house and now we live in a shelter center run by the UNRWA in Nuseirat,”  he continued.

Aside from being a student, al-Taweel used to work as a barber. In fact, he owned several barber shops. A few weeks ago, he decided to cut hair for displaced people in the school.”

“I want to help my family and provide some money for them. The financial situation is very difficult. In the centers, we lack food, drink, and many other things,” he explained.

“The families of these children cannot afford haircuts. I live among them and I see and experience their suffering everyday.” 

First Haircut in Months 

Yazan Khaled is a Palestinian child who has been living in a shelter in Nuseirat since the beginning of the war. 

“We don’t have water, we don’t have anything,” he told the Palestine Chronicle. 

“But today, I was able to get my haircut. It has not happened since the beginning of the war”.

Yazan al-Helo is another child with special needs, He cannot walk. He has been living in shelter centers for several months, almost immediately after the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. 

“It is not easy to live here, we don’t have anything. But it was nice to have my hair cut today,” he said. 

‘Thank You’ 

Hajja Sameera al-Hawajari is another resident of the shelter center. She came here with her family from northern Gaza. 

“We don’t even have the money to buy food, we are living in extremely difficult conditions,” she told the Palestine Chronicle.

“We thank the supporters of this initiative. We care about the cleanliness of our children, but we don’t have the money to cut their hair.” 

Note: Funds used to organize this initiative were raised from personal donations by Palestine Chronicle editors.