Eid Prayers Conducted Amid Ruins of Demolished Mosques in Gaza Strip

The call to prayer echoed through Gaza’s ruins on Eid morning—not from minarets, but from the skeletons of bombed-out mosques. Where children should have raced through streets in new clothes, barefoot families picked through debris for scraps of food. Where the air should have been rich with the scent of maamoul pastries, it carried instead the acrid sting of smoke from last night’s airstrikes.

This was Eid al-Fitr in Gaza 2024: no feasts, no gifts, no hope.

“We Bury Our Dead Before Dawn Prayers”
In Deir al-Balah, men knelt for Eid prayers on bloodstained carpets laid over broken concrete. Among them stood Adel al-Shaer, a teacher whose classroom now shelters displaced families. “Twenty of my relatives are gone—my sister’s boys vaporized in their sleep three nights ago,” he said, wiping his face with a UN ration bag. “Today we recite verses over graves before we recite them for Eid.”

Nearby, Saed al-Kourd adjusted his glasses—cracked in a November bombardment—as he watched boys kick a ball made of trash bags. “This is their Eid toy,” he spat. “Israel even took our children’s joy hostage.”

The Numbers Behind the Nightmare

• 50,000+ dead – Gaza’s Health Ministry reports entire bloodlines erased
• 90% displaced – Many now live in “tents” of plastic and corpse-wrapping shrouds
• 4 weeks without aid – Israel’s blockade has reduced adults to eating animal feed
• 1 meal every 3 days – UNICEF’s current ration for most families
  The holiday came as:

1. Israel rejected a Hamas ceasefire proposal hours earlier
2. The last functioning bakery in Rafah burned to the ground
3. Doctors reported the first starvation deaths in children under 2

At Al-Aqsa Hospital’s malnutrition ward, nurse Fadwa Mahmoud described Eid “gifts” for infants: “We wrap their tiny bodies in donated prayer rugs when they die at dawn.”

While Hamas still holds 59 Israeli hostages (only 24 likely alive), Israel’s Pyrrhic campaign has:

• Failed to eliminate Hamas leadership
• Turned global opinion against it
• Created a generation of Gazans who’ve lost everything but their rage

As dusk fell, the traditional Eid fireworks were replaced by tracer lights of drones. In the darkness, Adel al-Shaer’s surviving nephews asked why Allah allowed this. Their uncle had no answer—only the 37 names he now recites instead of Eid blessings.

At midnight, as Muslims worldwide enjoyed sweets, Gaza’s remaining bakeries received evacuation orders—Israel had marked them as “Hamas sites.” The last sacks of flour went up in flames before morning prayers.

This wasn’t just a joyless Eid. It was Gaza’s funeral for normalcy.