If you thought the palestinians who cut off their own electricity and disrupted their own supplies deserve the Numbskulls of the Day appellation, a new contender has emerged.
Meet the palestinian who is protesting his lack of food…by going on a hunger strike.
Siege up close: desperate father declares hunger strike “until something changes”
Fatima Ayaad is five-years-old, she lives in the Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza city and on Saturday she asked her mother what chicken tasted like, because she had forgotten.
Fatima has eleven brothers and sisters; her father Jumaa has been unemployed since the first Intifadah in 1987. He wanders the streets of Gaza City night and day looking for work, odd jobs, anything to put food in front of his family.
On Sunday Jumaa announced to the world that he was going on a hunger strike until “something changes” he said.
Fatima’s mother, Maha, describes daily life as “living on hell’s edge,” and described the failure she felt when Fatima asked her what chicken tasted like. “I couldn’t even remember the last time we had fish!” she said, “it’s all so expensive!”
The Ayyad family lives less than five kilometers away from the sea, and cannot afford the fish that come out of it.
Maha opened her refrigerator, which works only intermittently since the power cuts started on Wednesday evening, which was bare but for scraps of bread leftover from the previous week’s meals.
Looking at the empty shelves, Jumaa wondered out loud, “What have we done?”
“We’ve had our good times,” he reflected, “but I guess they are gone now. I just don’t know what I’ve done wrong! I’ve done my best to look for work, but during the siege everyone has the same answer; the siege is killing everything and the economic situation just keeps going downhill. It’s come now so that there is not place I can go to escape the disappointed looks of my children, they haunt me everywhere.”
Jumaa admitted that he had thought about leaving, but said he didn’t even have anywhere to go. He said he felt there was no escaping the life he felt doomed to.
So Jumaa decided to go on a hunger strike. “Something has to change in this pathetic situation,” he shouted, “I’d do anything to get my family out of this.”
