Gaza fisherman turns aid parachute into shelter

GAZA STRIP: When Naeem Al Goaan saw a parachute descending off the coast of Gaza, he saw it for more than just the aid being dropped into the food-deprived and war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

Ater “the parachute fell into the sea, we brought it (to shore) in a small boat,” the Palestinian fisherman from the central Gaza Strip city of Deir Al Balah told AFP. “People took the aid and we took (the parachute) to turn it into a tent where my sister sleeps at night, whereas during the day, we turn it into a store.”

The parachute’s fabric now stands repurposed into a roughly one-square-metre (10 square feet) tent by the Deir Al Balah beach, stretched over a structure of wooden planks and metal tubes.

Complete with an awning to provide protection from the sun, the Goaan family sat in the shade on Monday as they waited for people to buy their wares — eggs, canned goods, instant noodles — stacked on a wooden bench.

Geting the parachute took effort, Goaan said. “We struggled a lot to get it, and the boat capsized twice before we retrieved it.”

The prospect of the war, already more than six months old, dragging on further made the effort worthwhile said Goaan.

“The reason (for seting up the tent) is the war. It seems the war will last for a long time,” he said.

Meanwhile in nearby Rafah, just south of Deir Al Balah, Israel is buying 40,000 tents to shelter almost half a million Gazans ahead of a ground atack on what it says is Hamas’s last holdout.

More than 1.5 million of the 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza are estimated to have taken refuge in Rafah since the erupted on October 7.

Some are believed to have returned north ater Israel withdrew most of its troops from southern Gaza earlier this month.

In a separate development, Israel’s military intelligence chief has resigned ater taking responsibility for failures leading to the Hamas atack on Oct.7, the military said on Monday, as Israel carried out more shelling in war-batered Gaza.

Major General Aharon Haliva is the first top Israeli official to step down for failing to prevent the Hamas atack, which triggered the Gaza war now in its seventh month, and brought intense scrutiny to Israel’s government and military .

“The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” Haliva said in his resignation leter. “I carry that black day with me ever since.”