‘Aliaa al-Bahtiti

A 41-year-old mother of nine from a-Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City

My husband is unemployed. He suffers from a disability in his right leg and is unable to work at all. We get benefits from the Ministry of Welfare, and apart from that, we have no other income. In the last two years, we only got 800 NIS per month (NIS 1 = USD 0.28), and that’s what we survived on. Now we also get food vouchers from UNRWA, but it is not enough for everyone. I wish they would add more products. We buy meat only once a month, and sometimes on Fridays, people donate to us. We can’t even afford fruit. 

We all live in my brother-in-law’s house. I dream of having our own house and our girls having their own room because they’re uncomfortable sleeping next to the boys. Sometimes I send the boys to sleep in the living room. The house we live in looks like an animal pen, or actually not even suitable for animals. I dream of having normal beds and chairs you can sit on.  

I also dream of a normal kitchen with cookware and electrical appliances. Fruit is also too expensive, and we cannot afford it. Because we don’t have a tap at home, we get water from my uncle’s house using a hose. I dream of a tap with hot water. I’m exhausted from heating the water on the stovetop and washing by hand. 

I dream of having a regular income and not having to ask anyone for help, maybe for the children to have extracurricular activities, or even go to university. But I have trouble imagining any of that happening. I mostly dream of being able to pay back all the debts we have accumulated, NIS 30,000. We owe family members, neighbors and stores, which refuse to give us credit anymore.  

I dream of being able to give my children pocket money when they go to school. Musa, my youngest, who’s five years old, doesn’t go to kindergarten because we can’t pay tuition. I dream of buying clothes for the children at the market, like other mothers. We all wear clothes we got from friends and neighbors. All our possessions are in bags and cardboard boxes. I dream of having a closet to put all the clothes in. It frustrates me that I can’t even take the children to spend time on the boardwalk and enjoy the beach, because I don’t have money for travel and things they will probably want to buy there. I don’t know when things will change and when we’ll finally be able to be happy. I hope to one day get to see the children get married. 

I don’t have a passport, and I’ve never left the Strip. If Israel lifts the blockade from Gaza, maybe we could travel freely, without obstacles. That’s my dream. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to make it come true. I have no hope.  

* Testimony given to B'Tselem Field Researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 31 October 2022.