Gaza- In the Gaza Strip, Eid al-Adha falls this year on a more practical question than a festive ritual: Where does the meat go when it arrives? In tents without refrigerators stung by the summer heat, and in homes that treat electricity as a short-term opportunity; Even 3 kilograms of meat turns into an urgent decision: batch cooking, quick distribution, or paid freezing at market traders.
Here the meaning of the holiday changes, and it becomes a restoration of daily life rather than a purchase and consumption, and time, heat, and energy become major parties in the story.
Cooking and distribution… management and charity
In a tent that Maha Abdel Rahman (41 years old) shares with her sister, a single stove turns into the center of an entire day. The fabric stretched around the edges of the tent traps the summer heat, and smoke creeps in slowly, while Maha stands next to a large pot over a fire that has been burning for hours. She watches the meat boil and its scent wafts around.
Maha received an amount of meat not exceeding 3 kilograms from a charitable organization, and it was natural for her to think about her five children first, as her husband was a martyr, and her three brothers were absent in the details of the holiday, and her family was displaced to the south of the Gaza Strip, and the distance between them became more than one road.
She wiped the corners of her eyes from the traces of smoke and tears together, and said in a weak voice that broke as the flames of the fire rose, “I am cooking this amount and I will distribute it. My children need protein after a long period of deprivation, but I have nothing to preserve all this meat.”
The decision then takes a practical form, which is to cook the entire quantity at once, then distribute it to the surrounding families that did not receive the meat, save a cooked portion if possible, and monitor the tent and its surroundings with an eye that knows the details of concern. Insects and rodents are part of the camp’s daily routine, and exposed food means new losses.
Thus, for Maha, the three kilograms become a small feast that is divided among more than one house, so that the feast passes through the camp in the sense of sharing rather than hoarding.
Feast for fear of spoilage
As for Najla Muhammad (40 years old), she received her share of meat with mixed emotions. Almost the same amount (two kilograms) came at a time bearing the name of the holiday, but she knows that the name alone is not enough. She lives without a refrigerator or an electricity line, and the meat in her hand becomes an urgent question about time: How many hours separate a gift that might make the house happy and food that is threatened by mold or eaten by rodents?
Inside her tent, Najla is planning a solution befitting the Eid and appropriate to the circumstances. A quick feast brings her family together. The idea for her is not extravagance, but rather a safe way to finish the meal with dignity. You invite relatives, gather the children around one plate, and treat the meat as if it were a short opportunity for family warmth. Collective eating shortens the problem of preservation and gives the day a social meaning that has long been associated with Eid.
The Palestinian citizen says that she wants to finish the portion among her family instead of leaving it to the heat or to rodents, so that the meal turns into a table of resistance that brings together what is separated, and proves that the Eid can pass in a simpler way, as long as the house – even if it is a tent – has the ability to gather around one pot of food.
Public kitchens are an opportunity
From the tents the pressure begins, and in the kitchens it turns into a working system in minutes; In the kitchen of the “Jood” Foundation, Eid al-Adha turns into a race calculated in minutes. Frozen meat arrives in the evening, knives are fired at dawn, pots are lit before sunrise, and then hot meals go out to the people at noon.
Kitchen director Mohamed Hamdan tells Al Jazeera Net that the usual work pace is 3 days a week, but during Eid, the plan is to cook for two days, depending on the frozen meat available in the market, because donors send money with the intention of charity more than sending it within the framework of the sacrifice.
The service on Eid days is focused on ready-cooked meals only. Delivered hot and ready to eat. Hamdan explains that the availability of fresh sacrifices in Gaza has become very limited, and the price equation explains the reason, as a kilogram of a standing lamb reaches $120, making the cost of an average sacrifice weighing 55 kilograms approximately $6,500.
Frozen meat
Hamdan points out that frozen and canned sacrificial meat may arrive later, usually about two weeks after Eid. Therefore, work is being done during the current Eid by purchasing frozen meat from merchants with funding from the initiators and relief institutions.
When the meat arrives at eight in the evening, the production line begins meticulously. First, sorting according to the type of meat cut (shoulder, banana, skewer, etc.), then cutting at night and dawn so that it completely defrosts in the morning, and then cooking begins early so that the meals are ready for distribution at noon.
Hamdan estimates the time between the arrival of the meat and the delivery of the meals to the beneficiaries at about 14 hours. A maximum of two hours for distribution after cooking is complete, because the summer heat imposes a strict rhythm, and the meals need quick arrival in order to maintain their safety and quality.
Mechanism of work and challenges of Eid
This fast pace is reflected in the operating system across batches; 1,000 meals are cooked and distributed immediately, then another 1,000 are cooked and moved directly to the beneficiaries, so that distribution turns into a direct extension of the cooking line.
As for fuel, it’s another story. The kitchen, Hamdan says, currently relies on vegetable oil as an alternative fuel through the “babur al-serj” (oil burner). The fire is lit and air is pumped to it to become strong and continuous. The cost of a liter of cooking gas is about $3, and each hour of cooking consumes about 3 liters, and this amount is enough to cook 20 kilograms of rice alone, then comes meat and other cooking quantities, adding to the burden on the budget and time.
In the absence of regular internal refrigeration, the institution relies on the market solution, which is to preserve meat and refrigerate it in meat merchants’ refrigerators. This raises the cost per kilogram by about one dollar, and allows storage for a period of approximately two weeks.
Selling to charity
For his part, Bilal Obaid, the owner of the Obaid farm in Jabalia – the eastern line, says that the sacrificial season this year took place at a different rhythm. He owned about 15 heads of livestock that he had bought from the local market, from Bedouin families who maintained their herds throughout the months of war, and then he went to sell them entirely to a charitable organization after the ability of community members to purchase had decreased.
Today, Obaid lives as a displaced person in the Al-Wusta Governorate, recalling his heavier loss than the loss of the farm and its approximately 1,000 heads, including 500 calves and 500 sheep, during the war. He bitterly recalls the scenes of his livestock being injured, some of them dying, and others fleeing under bombardment.
Between selling a few heads to an association in order to reach people, and losing an entire herd that was his source of livelihood, his story is intensified as a title for the transformation of sacrifice in Gaza from a general season in which markets move to a season managed by associations, scarcity, and displacement.
Alternatives to low demand
For his part, butcher Fouad Shawa says that this Eid brings people through a harsh reality that has even affected the share of meat that was bought without hesitation. Customers are approaching refrigerators with caution, and buying an ounce or less to pack food and nothing more, while demand for kilograms is clearly declining.
With weak demand, the quantities prepared by butchers become a daily burden: meat is purchased for trade and then waits for someone to buy it, so it is forcibly pushed into the freezing path inside the butcher’s refrigerators.
Inside the place, refrigerators are distributed with a limited capacity, 8 refrigerators each holding about 300 kilograms, or about 3,000 kilograms in total, but the actual operation today is only about 5, according to Shawa, under the pressure of the cost of electricity, which exceeds 30 shekels (a dollar = about 3 shekels) per kilowatt, compared to a price that was around 3 shekels before the war, when it was worth 1,500 shekels per month.
Shawa is trying to search for employment alternatives that will save the profession from exhaustion. He turned to grilling to reduce dependence on gas, and found that coal jumped to 15 shekels after it was less than 5 shekels, while a kilo of meat at the merchant reached 38 shekels, and he sold it for 47 shekels, with a profit margin that narrowed even more with the cost of storage and operation.
The equation becomes more complicated with daily work obligations: wages for workers whom the butcher Shawa describes as the mainstay of the profession, and transportation whose cost rises to an extent that makes getting to work a burden in itself. Therefore, he tries to revive the butchery by introducing multiple types of meat to cover the high expenses, and he spends long days away from his family to keep up with the work during the season of livelihood as it used to be, and today has become a season of careful calculations between buying meat, freezing it, and the cost of keeping it fit for sale.
“A truncated season”
Adham Abu Hasira, who supervises the management of Abu Hasira Farm, describes this year’s sacrificial season as “truncated” for farm owners. Instead of filling the barns with livestock, as is the case every Eid, the farm’s work was limited to selling limited quantities of frozen meat, which were stored in special refrigerators that were operated for specific hours daily, and then sold to entrepreneurs and associations to distribute to people.
With bitterness, he says – to Al Jazeera Net – that the Eid passed this year from a completely different angle, explaining, “I, as a farm owner, have nothing to sacrifice this year, and all I have is quantities of meat to sell,” a sentence that sums up how sacrifice has transformed for many from a ritual into a commodity linked to availability and storage more than its connection to the Eid ritual.
Abu Hasira estimates the volume of slaughter on Eid al-Adha at only about 1%, and attributes this to the absence of calves in the Gaza Strip, compared to the presence of sheep in small numbers from local breeding.
Electricity…the collapse of the most important sector
This pressure on refrigerators and cooking is explained by the electricity situation; The spokesman for the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company, Muhammad Thabet, says that this sector has entered a stage of deep collapse, the effects of which have accumulated in recent years, with the disconnection of electrical feeders from all of Gaza and the cessation of the basic sources of nutrition.
According to the company’s data, the damage rate exceeded 85%, while more than 5,080 kilometers of network wires were destroyed, and the residents of Gaza were deprived of more than two billion kilowatt hours that covered part of their needs.
He added to Al Jazeera Net that the destruction affected the company’s stores and facilities extensively. More than 90% of the warehouses, including wires and poles, were damaged, and more than 75% of the buildings and facilities were exposed to major damage. The company also lost more than 85% of its fleet of vehicles, trucks, and operational equipment, and the distribution sector losses were estimated at more than $128 million.
Thabit links this image directly to the reality of people during the Eid season, explaining that purchasing electricity from generators has become an increasing burden on families, and that solar energy solutions work within narrow limits with the difficulty of the Israeli occupation introducing energy storage batteries, which weakens the ability of families to operate refrigerators at night and preserve food.
He pointed out that meat and foodstuffs remain under pressure of time and temperature as energy sources fluctuate, which makes maintaining food safety a daily challenge that accompanies homes, markets and kitchens, especially on days when the need for refrigeration, cooking and rapid distribution increases.
