Gaza City, Gaza - This Eid, Palestinians in Gaza had hoped for a moment of peace—to mark the holiday with what little they have left. Instead, they are once again burying their dead, rationing food, and clinging to memories of the Eids that once were.

Morning Eid prayers will be offered in sombre streets, and for many, the only Eid visits will be made to freshly dug graves.

Since early March, when Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza and broke the terms of a ceasefire agreement brokered in February, the enclave has spiralled further into devastation. The renewed Israeli military campaign killed 180 children in a single day in airstrikes, and ground forces are once again destroying Rafah.

The latest assault has extinguished any glimmer of normalcy. More than 900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since March 18.

Children no longer ask for toys or treats; instead they recite prayers for their dead relatives.

Ahmad Hamdan, 11, lost his father in March when he was killed by an Israeli drone strike. For Ahmad, Eid without his father now means nothing.

“He was the one who bought me my Eid clothes,” he tells TRT World. “He would make Eid for me. Now, I don’t feel anything.”

Broken and vulnerable he adds: “No one looks after me, no one makes me feel safe. It hurts every time I remember that my father is gone forever.”

His sorrow is echoed across Gaza, where grief has become part of the social fabric. Everyone has lost someone. 

In the northern town of Jabaliya, Ranim Mousa, 34, walks through the rubble where her home once stood. “Before the war, I had plans. I was supposed to study Arabic manuscripts abroad. I had a scholarship,” she says, standing beside the twisted metal of her former life.

“When the ceasefire was announced I once again dared to hope that life may somehow return to how it was before this war. But instead life has got worse, my house was bombed in the renewed airstrikes and my younger brother was killed. Now, Eid is just another painful reminder of everything we've lost.”

The March Israeli offensive has come at a devastating cost with Palestinian civilians paying the price. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. Fuel and food are scarce. International aid barely trickles in.

The streets are no longer filled with the sounds of celebration as they once were during the brief truce—they’re now silent, save for the distant rumble of drones and the wails of the mourning.

Grieving instead of celebrating

The rituals of Eid are now relics of the past.

Esra Tartur, 26, sits in what remains of her home in Gaza City, parts of it destroyed by Israeli bombs. “Eid once meant joy—new clothes, sweets, prayer with my family. But this is our third Eid in the war and instead of celebrating, I’m just holding on to hope. Not for a perfect life—just a life where I’m not afraid to sleep.”

The humanitarian crisis has deepened since early March with food becoming ever more scarce and costs soaring. Locally grown vegetables—once a dietary staple—are now unaffordable due to fuel shortages that cripple irrigation and transport. Bakeries are closed. Water is increasingly contaminated or unavailable.

“Eid Al-Fitr usually comes after Ramadan to offer the exhausted body a moment of joy and to bring comfort to both the soul and the hungry stomach,” Sheikh Masoud Al-Rais, the Imam of Al-Qastal Mosque in Gaza tells TRT World.

“But in Gaza, Eid is nothing more than an extension of hunger and deprivation, as the occupation tightens its suffocating siege, stripping people of even their most basic right to food. It pains us that our Eid arrives like this—without the sound of joy, without its usual rituals.”

On Eid morning Mohammed Al-Kafarna, 43, from Gaza City shares a simple meal of tinned fava beans and hummus with his wife and five children as he does on the “lucky days” when he has access to rationed food.  

For Al-Kafarna, this latest round of war has taken away almost everything he says: his friends, his livelihood, and both of his brothers—imprisoned during the latest raids by Israeli forces in Beit Hanoun.

“This Eid, I won’t be visiting family. I’ll be visiting graves of friends killed in Israeli strikes,” he says, his voice heavy. “We used to laugh together at the mosque after morning prayers. Now, I pray alone.”

He hasn’t heard from his brothers in weeks. “I don’t even know it they’re still alive. Eid has become a day of mourning. There’s nothing left to celebrate.”

As the sun rises on another blood-stained Eid, the people of Gaza press on. One day, they believe, the war will end. The graves will be visited with flowers instead of tears. The streets will echo with laughter, not sirens. And Gaza’s children will celebrate Eid the way it was meant to be celebrated: in peace.