Gaza /Jerusalem / PNN /by Monjed Jadou 

Despite the pain, we haven't given up hope... This is how our Palestinian people celebrated their religious rituals on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr this year, after the end of the blessed month of Ramadan, which passed amid a genocide war witnessed by the city of Gaza and a deadly siege on Jerusalem and the cities of the West Bank.

In the grieving Gaza, bleeding with the pain of its fallen martyrs, mourning the wounds of the injured, the destruction of buildings, and the suffering of displacement in desert tents, its inhabitants performed the Eid prayer in shelter centers amidst the rubble of homes, schools, and universities. They chanted the Eid takbirs, awaiting the hour of response that must come to them after this historical injustice that has been inflicted upon them for seventy-five years, as the pain is renewed by the ongoing genocide war since the seventh of October.

The voice of Gaza on Eid is the sight of dozens of children carrying empty pots, chanting and magnifying the Eid takbirs, in a scene that burns the soul, waiting for the peoples around the world to hear the call and break their silence towards the war of starvation, oppression, displacement, and dispersal. Despite its harshness, its people have not forsaken their resilience, chanting: “We will remain here.”

The women of Gaza, who have lost their loved ones - husbands, sons, and relatives - and been displaced from their homes to live in displacement tents, have not broken their spirits. Many of them have brought joy to their children's hearts by preparing Eid sweets inside the tents, affirming that they remain rooted like the roots, clinging to the soil of this land despite the pain they carry within them and the targeting they have endured.

As for the brave men of Gaza, the owners of dignity and honor, they have not abandoned their resilience. With all determination, they echo, saying: "We will rebuild Gaza anew." Despite the aggression attempting to rob them of their freedoms, displace them with their families, kill their children, and demolish their homes, they have not been able to rob them of their dignity, aspirations, determination, and the smile of optimism for a better tomorrow.

Eid in the cities of the West Bank is not in a better condition, as the siege and Israeli incursions have not ceased, and the operations of killing, arrest, and land confiscation have increased amid the silence of this world regarding the massacres and violations of human rights committed by the occupation, disregarding all international agreements. This silence, which the Palestinian people have become accustomed to for years and years, as they turned a blind eye to the crimes of the first Nakba and now to the genocide war that has resulted in more than 33,000 Palestinian martyrs and continues to escalate daily, heading towards a new catastrophe in an era of modernity and development that boasts of ethics and calls for freedoms.

Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem are models of Palestinian suffering, where Israel imposes racist policies attempting to isolate it from its Palestinian surroundings by preventing our people from performing the dawn and Eid prayers, and before that, preventing hundreds, if not thousands, of our people from reaching the Friday prayers during Ramadan.

The number of martyrs in the cities of the West Bank has exceeded five hundred martyrs since the beginning of the October War, leaving thousands of injuries and arrests in prisons and torture camps. Israeli invasions, looting, destruction of properties, killings, and arrests continue until the dawn of Eid. These soldiers, who arrived in their armored vehicles to the camps and cities of the West Bank, their mission was not only arrests of some citizens but also to strip them of joy, impose domination, threaten, and intimidate with a coming cruelty and pain.

All these examples are remembered and experienced by Palestinians on Eid to make it a celebration of resilience and staying on the land of ancestors, which their love will never be taken from the hearts of Palestinians despite settlement campaigns and crimes of settlers.

The message of Palestinians on Eid is: Despite all the pain and suffering we have experienced, we will remain steadfast, standing firm against the enemy like a solid dam. We know and are sure that our victory and freedom are near, reaping the rewards of justice from the heavens, as we believe