Residents of the al-Shujaiyya neighborhood in the Gaza Strip enter Eid al-Fitr celebrations this year reminded of the heavy losses sustained just before the holiday began last year. Gaza resident Um Mumen Skafi lost both her son and her home after an attack by Israeli forces took place shortly before the holy month of Ramadan came to a close last year, in what would later be known as the Shujaiyya massacre.

Um Mumen stands next to her son’s picture in sorrow and says the Eid al-Fitr holiday comes this year bringing painful memories of last year’s holiday that began amidst the 50-day between Israel and Hamas that left over 2,200 Palestinians dead and thousands injured from Israeli attacks.

“This is the most difficult Eid in my life without my son Issam and my brother Ibrahim who were killed as martyrs,” Um Mumen says.

Her son Issam Skafi, 27, was killed with eight of his cousins in an Israeli attack that was carried out by F-16 warplanes in the al-Shujaiyya neighborhood near Gaza City on July 20, 2014. Around seventy Palestinians were killed that day alone in the neighborhood.

Intense fighting between Hamas forces and Israeli military caused thousands of residents to flee by foot as heavy shelling left casualties laying in the streets.
Um Mumen says that her son and relatives were hit despite a ceasefire that had been agreed in order to allow the evacuation of Palestinians from the densely populated neighborhood.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health later listed the Skafi family as one of several targeted by Israeli shelling during the war. A UN Commission of Inquiry reported last month that “there are strong indications that the IDF’s Shuja’iya operation on 19 and 20 July was conducted in violation of the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks and may amount to a war crime.”

Meanwhile, another al-Shujaiyya resident Khalid Jundiyyeh is celebrating the Eid holiday this year outside of the neighborhood for the first time in nearly thirty years.
Jundiyyeh’s home, built in 1996, along with another family home built in 1986, were destroyed during the war.

“Eid is different this year. It’s the first year I won’t be celebrating at home or even in my neighborhood, but life goes on,” Jundiyyeh says.

Jundiyyeh and Um Mumen are one of the thousands of Gazans that remain homeless from last summer’s war, that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian

Affairs says resulted in the largest displacement recorded in Gaza since 1967.

“Our house being destroyed will not prevent us from enjoying and celebrating Eid al-Fitr,” Jundiyye adds. MAAN