Amid Gaza’s blockade, a mother crochets dolls to give children a glimpse of Eid al-Fitr joy

As families across the Muslim world prepare to celebrate Eid al-Fitr today — a holiday defined by gifts for children, new clothes and fairground visits — Gaza’s displaced families face a different reality. There is no Eid money. There are no toy shops. And, for the second consecutive year, there are no toys to buy, even for those who could afford them.

Against this backdrop, Shireen al-Kurdi did not set out to start a business. She was simply trying to make her children smile.

A 36-year-old mother of five, Shireen had practised crochet as a quiet hobby since 2003, something to fill the gaps between daily life. When Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, those gaps collapsed into something else entirely. She and her family fled their home in Beit Hanoun in the first days of the assault, carrying almost nothing — not enough clothes, and no toys for the children.

"When we were displaced from our home, we left with nothing," she said. "That’s when I decided to make dolls by hand, just so my children would have something to play with."

What began as a private act of motherhood has since become something more. Shireen now sells her crocheted dolls to families across displaced communities in Gaza, becoming, in the process, the sole breadwinner for her household after her husband lost his work as a driver when the war began.

A calculated absence

The shortage of toys is not incidental. Israel has banned the import of children’s toys into Gaza, through commercial channels and humanitarian ones alike, since October 2023, according to Maher al-Tabba, director of the Gaza Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The ban covers toys of all kinds: fabric, plastic, paper and electronic.

A narrow exception was made recently, Maher said, when UNICEF was permitted to bring in a single, limited shipment of toys alongside stationery materials. Otherwise, the shelves are bare, and what remains commands prices that most families cannot come close to affording.

"Imagine these price increases," Maher said, "alongside unemployment over 80 percent and poverty above 90 percent. How can a family that struggles to find food afford toys that now cost several times more?"

Maher added that the price spikes are not random, but a direct result of scarcity caused by the blockade. Israel allows only food items to enter, and even then, the quantities are insufficient to meet demand. Prices for basic goods, such as frozen meat, have already risen several hundred percent above pre-war levels. Other items, including toys, enter Gaza only through smuggling or informal channels, if at all.

Maher explained, “Even when goods are available, many people in Gaza still go hungry because most cannot afford them. Starvation now stems not from a lack of supply, but from a lack of access.”

Small profits, big impact 

In these conditions, Shireen’s tent has become a small workshop. She works with modest balls of wool, crocheting dolls around 30 centimetres tall, which she sells for 30 shekels (about $9.50) each — a price she has deliberately kept low, even as the cost of raw materials has climbed.

"I want every child to have a doll," she said. "Children have been deprived of so much. The least we can do is give them a bit of joy. I’m convinced: small profit, large impact."

After posting photographs on social media a few months ago, requests came faster than she expected. Families wanted what the market could not offer: something for their children to hold.

Her own path to the tent in Al Bureij camp, where she now lives, traces a map of the war’s displacement. From Beit Hanoun, she moved to Beit Lahiya, then to the south of the strip, and later back north when displaced families began returning. She found part of her home still standing, repaired it, and lived there for one month before it was bombed again when the war resumed. Another displacement. Another start.

Through it all, the crochet continued. "This craft lets me release everything I carry inside," she said. "It’s how I keep myself standing."

'She never puts it down'

Elsewhere, in a tent in the Nasser neighbourhood, Duaa Ahmed, 36, watches her nine-year-old daughter Maria carry a crocheted white and red doll with long, braided black hair everywhere she goes — to the makeshift learning centre, to sit with friends and to sleep.

Duaa first came across Shireen’s work online. She bought her daughter a small pendant with a miniature doll and later commissioned a full-sized one. The doll has not left Maria’s side since.

"It became her constant companion," Duaa said. "She always asked for toys — but there weren’t any."

Their home in al-Saftawi was bombed. They left with nothing, along with hundreds of other families. The tent in the Nasser neighbourhood is where Duaa now tries to reconstruct, for her daughter, some trace of the life Maria knew before.

She remembers the rituals that once seemed ordinary: taking Maria to a toy shop before every Eid, buying a new toy and new clothes, and going to the fairground together. "There was a life," she said.

Now she cannot manage even the smallest of those gestures. There is no Eid money for the children, no cash and no fairground. This Eid, she says, will be no different from any other day in the camp.

"It’s very hard for me that I can’t give my daughter even the simplest joys of Eid that she used to know before the war," Duaa said.

What a handmade doll reveals about a blockade

Maher is unambiguous about what he calls an unprecedented price surge, one that tracks the blockade category by category, commodity by commodity.

"The occupation allows only food to enter," he said, "while everything else is either completely banned or comes in only in tiny amounts through smuggling."

For Shireen, the blockade does not mean only hardship. It is the reason her children left Beit Hanoun without toys. It is the reason other mothers now message her asking for dolls. And it is the reason she keeps crocheting — not only to earn, but because the wool in her hands is, for now, the only thing that holds.

"Through this craft," she said, "I create moments of joy, even though everything we live through is marked by loss."

Ansam Al Qitaa is a freelance journalist based in Gaza. For years, she has covered the successive wars in Gaza and their humanitarian and social impacts for international and local outlets

This piece is published in collaboration with Egab