Anonymous 2m 563 #covid19
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
On 5th, March 2020, The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency in the West Bank and Gaza Strip due to seven COVID -19 pandemic cases confirmed in Bethlehem. Therefore, all schools, universities, organizations, mosques, and churches have closed.
On 21 March, two cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in the Gaza Strip, in people who returned from Pakistan.
The situation in the West Bank and Gaza is different. In the West Bank, they are forbidden to go outside their homes except 200 meters around it on foot.
About the Gaza strip, the situation here is horrible. If the virus spread, it would spread like wildfire because the boarders have been blocked since 2016, has a rising population, and hospitals don’t have many ventilators (approximately 56) and 40 intensive care beds for the most crowded place in the world.
During quarantine, I stayed at home (self-isolation) like my society members, completed my writing course online by Zoom, connected with my friends online. Everything in our lives becomes online, and that is useful and so dull at the same time. Because you learn how to deal with new programs, you save your time. On the other hand, it’s annoying to stay at home without visiting your friends and going to your favourit places.
All Palestinian people continue their lives from home by taking lectures and courses online and having virtual meetings. As a result of online experience, our brilliant youths and organizations think out how to make solutions to facilitate this time. Gaza Sky Geeks is one of the significant organizations here in Palestine. It launched “Hack The Crisis Palestine,” the first online Hakthon which gathered the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip to create effective technology solutions that serve our communities to solve the problem of this virus.
Of course, I wasn’t silent during this quarantine. I decided with my friends to help our community, too. Our helping was translating a booklet from English to Arabic about Chinese experience with Covid-19 called “Handbook of COVID -19 Prevention and Treatment”.
Some people here in Gaza are fed up with an emergency situation and decided to live their life as usual. Their proof is Gaza has blocked, and the government ordered all travellers who came from the border to stay in isolation for 21 days.
After 2 months of the quarantine, all coronavirus crisis were still in isolations and the number of cases wasn’t dangerous in Gaza. So I decided to go out to our land where it is so far from the city to break the boredom and have fresh air. I went with my 2 nieces, spent a wonderful time and made crowns from yellow flowers for them.
During the pandemic, the holy month of Ramadan has also begun. In this month the Muslims around the world fast, visit each other and pray “Trawiih” at mosques. We are very sad at this time because we can’t pray at mosques. So a lot of families pray Trawiih at homes with their families.
On 11th, May, president Mahmoud Abbas announced a new state of emergency for 30 days with an easing of some of the lockdown measures that have been applied in Palestine. Therefore, Palestinians have such freedom of movement.
I wish for this crisis to end and all the people return to their normal lives, visit each other, and all the world to live in peace and safety.
(
