By Khan Younis, Gaza, Sept 11 (Askume) – Heba Dawaas, 12, lost her shoes in the chaos while fleeing an Israeli military offensive in Gaza.
So her carpenter father made her slippers with wooden soles so she could walk more safely among tons of rubble, hot sand and twisted metal in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“When we were displaced, we started running and our slippers broke,” said Heba, who lives with her family in a tent camp in Khan Younis, a suburb of southern Gaza City.
“I took them off and started running. Our feet were so hot. So, we had to make slippers out of wood,” she said, walking on the hot sand in her new shoes.
Her father, Sabar Dawaas (39), came up with the idea after finding the cost of sandals too high. Now his daughter won’t have to walk barefoot among the ruins of Gaza.
“I had to make different sizes for each daughter,” she said.
The demand for sandals
Soon, his neighbours saw him making sandals and started asking him to make sandals for their children too.
He said he made them at a “modest cost” using basic carpentry tools.
The sandals have wooden soles and rubber or cloth straps. But finding wood for these is a challenge as Palestinians need it for cooking and lighting fires.
“It’s hard to find everything in Gaza,” said Dawas, rubbing the soles of his slippers as one of his young daughters stood nearby and watched.
Making wooden slippers may offer relief from the stress of war, but life in Gaza remains challenging and more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Health officials in Gaza say nearly 2 million people have been displaced, often repeatedly.
According to Israeli figures, Hamas launched the war on October 7 when the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.
Since then, a humanitarian crisis has emerged in Gaza, with Palestinians struggling to find food, water, fuel and safe shelter.
Despite repeated efforts by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, the ceasefire failed.
The border with Egypt has been closed, preventing the flow of aid and basic supplies such as shoes.
“People now walk around wearing mismatched shoes,” said Momen al-Karra, a Palestinian cobbler who repairs old shoes in a small market in Khan Younis.
“If this continues for two weeks or a maximum of a month without opening the borders, people will walk barefoot.”
