KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza: Twelve-year-old Heba Dawas lost her footwear in the chaos while fleeing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
So, her carpenter father made wooden-soled sandals for her so she can tread more safely through the tons of rubble, hot sand and twisted metal of the besieged Palestinian enclave.
“When we were displaced, we started running and the sandals broke,” said Heba, who lives in a tent camp with her family in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
“I threw them off and started running. Our feet became very hot. So, we had to make sandals from wood,” she said, walking on hot sand with her new footwear.
Her father Saber Dawas, 39, came up with the idea after finding the price of sandals too expensive. Now his daughter does not have to go barefoot amid the ruins of Gaza.
“I had to make a tailored size for each daughter,” he said.
SANDALS IN DEMAND
Soon enough, his neighbors noticed him making the sandals and started asking him to make some for their children.
Using basic carpentry tools, he made them for “a symbolic price,” he says.
The sandals have a wooden sole and a strap made of a rubber strip or fabric. But there was a challenge in finding more wood because Palestinians needed it for cooking and fires.
“Everything here in Gaza is difficult to find,” Dawas said, rubbing the base of a sandal with one of his young daughters watching by his side.
Making wooden sandals may ease the pressure of the war but life is still fraught with challenges in Gaza, where the Israeli offensive against Hamas has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Nearly 2 million people have been displaced, often repeatedly, Gazan health officials say.
Hamas triggered the war on Oct. 7 when the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
A humanitarian crisis has gripped Gaza since then with Palestinians struggling to find food, water and fuel as they move up and down the territory seeking a safe place to shelter.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have failed to secure a ceasefire through mediation after many attempts.
The border crossing with Egypt has been shut, bringing the flow of aid and basic goods such as shoes to a halt.
“People now are walking around with mismatched shoes,” said Momen Al-Qarra, a Palestinian cobbler repairing old shoes in a little market in Khan Younis.
“If the situation continues like this for two weeks or a month at the most, without the opening of the border, people will be barefoot.”
Gaza carpenter crafts wooden sandals for daughters as war rages
https://arab.news/2uqaq
Gaza carpenter crafts wooden sandals for daughters as war rages
- “When we were displaced, we started running and the sandals broke,” said Heba
- “I threw them off and started running. Our feet became very hot. So, we had to make sandals from wood,” she said, walking on hot sand with her new footwear
Syria’s Kurds hail ‘positive impact’ of Turkiye peace talks
- “The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad
- “We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria”
ISTANBUL: Efforts to broker peace between Turkiye and the Kurdish militant group PKK have had a “positive impact” on Syria’s Kurds who also want dialogue with Ankara, one of its top officials said Saturday.
Earlier this year, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ended its four-decade armed struggle against Turkiye at the urging of its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, shifting its focus to a democratic political struggle for the rights of Turkiye’s Kurdish minority.
The ongoing process has raised hopes among Kurds across the region, notably in Syria where the Kurds control swathes of territory in the north and northeast.
“The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast.
“We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria... We want the borders between us to be opened,” she said, speaking by video link to an Istanbul peace conference organized by Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party.
Speaking in Kurdish, she hailed Turkiye for initiating the peace moves, but said releasing Ocalan — who has led the process from his cell on Imrali prison island near Istanbul where he has been serving life in solitary since 1999 — would speed things up.
“We believe that Abdullah Ocalan being released will let him play a much greater role... that this peace and resolution process will happen faster and better.”
She also hailed Ankara for its sensitive approach to dialogue with the new regime in Damascus that emerged after the ousting of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a year ago.
“The Turkish government has a dialogue and a relationship with the Syrian government. They also have open channels with us. We see that there is a careful approach to this matter,” she said.
Turkiye has long been hostile to the Kurdish SDF force that controls swathes of northeastern Syria, seeing it as an extension of PKK, and pushing for the US-backed force to integrate into the Syrian military and security apparatus.
Although a deal was reached to that end in March, its terms were never implemented.
“In this historic process, as the Middle East is being reorganized, Turkiye has a very important role. Peace in both countries — within Turkish society, Kurdish society and Arab society.. will impact the entire Middle East,” Ahmad said.
Syria’s Kurdish community believed coexistence was “fundamental” and did not want to see the nation divided, she said.
“We do not support the division of Syria or any other country. Such divisions pave the way for new wars. That is why we advocate for peace.”
