Animal rescuer in Gaza Strip defies taboos on sterilization

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In the impoverished Gaza Strip, where most people struggle to make ends meet under a crippling blockade, the suffering of stray dogs and cats often goes unnoticed.

Said el-Er, who founded the territory’s only animal-rescue organization in 2006, has been trying to change that. He and other volunteers rescue dogs and cats that have been struck by cars or abused and nurse them back to health — but there are too many.

So in recent weeks they have started Gaza’s first spay-andneuter program. It goes against taboos in the conservative Palestinian territory, where feral dogs and cats are widely seen as pests and many view spaying and neutering as forbidden by Islam.

“Because the society is Muslim, they talk about halal [allowed] and haram [forbidden],” el-Er said. “We know what halal is and what haram is, and it’s haram [for the animals] to be widespread in the streets where they can be run over, shot or poisoned.”

Islam teaches kindness toward animals, but Muslim scholars are divided on whether spaying and neutering causes harm. Across the Arab world, dogs are widely shunned as unclean and potentially dangerous, and cats do not fare much better.

El-Er has spent years trying to organize a spay-and-neuter campaign but met with resistance from authorities and vets, who said it was forbidden. He eventually secured a fatwa, or religious ruling, stating that it is more humane to sterilize animals than to consign an ever-growing population to misery and abuse.

Once the fatwa was issued, el-Er said authorities did not object to the campaign as a way of promoting public health and safety. The Hamas-run health and agriculture ministries allowed veterinarians to carry out operations and purchase supplies and medicine, he said.

The Gaza City municipality provided land for a shelter earlier this year. Before that, El-Er kept the rescued animals at his home and on two small tracts of land that he leased.

The new shelter currently houses around 200 dogs, many of them blind, bearing scars from abuse or missing limbs from being hit by cars.

The group tries to find homes for the animals, but here too it faces both economic and cultural challenges. Very few Gazans would keep a dog as a pet, and there’s little demand for cats. Some people adopt the animals from abroad, sending money for their food and care.