A Palestinian child walks barefoot along a street riddled with rubbish and rubble in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant Hamas group. Finding shoes and clothing has become increasingly difficult for the 2.4 million people living in the Palestinian territory besieged by Israel.
(Photo by Bashar TALEB / AFP) PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — For months, Safaa Yassin has dressed her child in the same white bodysuit, an all-too-familiar tale in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by 10 months of war. “When I was pregnant, I dreamed of dressing my daughter in beautiful clothes. Today, I have nothing to put on her,” says Yassin, one of thousands of Palestinians displaced from Gaza City.
“I never thought that one day I wouldn’t be able to dress my children,” says the 38-year-old, now living in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area designated as a humanitarian zone by Israeli forces. “But the few clothes I found before evacuating to the south were either the wrong size or not suitable for the season,” she adds, as Gaza bakes in summertime temperatures of 30-plus degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) every day. Finding clothing — any clothing — has become increasingly difficult for the 2.
4 million people living in the territory besieged by Israel. Gaza once had a thriving textiles industry but since the war began on October 7 with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, it has rec.