Gazans lose a rare pleasure: the zoo

Armored forces reportedly razed cages, structures

By Craig Nelson, Cox News Service

Gazans lose a rare pleasure: the zoo — Santa Barbara News-Press, 22 May 2004 — Santa Barbara News-Press · Santa Barbara, California · 22 May 2004

Transcribed from the clipping

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The families crammed into this narrow sliver of land don’t have much by way of entertainment. There are no movie theaters, thanks to censuring Islamic fundamentalists. Shopping malls are a fantasy. A summer afternoon at the beach must usually suffice.

In all, though, there are precious few diversions for a population of 1.3 million mostly poor and mostly young people. So when Israeli forces destroyed a tiny, dilapidated zoo in Rafah this week, it was a notable loss.

On Friday, as residents tore through piles of rubble and twisted metal fences looking for any creatures still alive, the zoo’s owner, Mohammed Ahmed Joma, asked why. “The last thing I expected is that they would destroy my zoo. This is just a family place, one of the few here in Gaza that people can enjoy,” Mr. Joma said.

Nearby, the remains of an Egyptian goose, a brightly-colored male pheasant, two Guinea hens and a turtle were piled on a mound of dirt. A lamb lay dying under a stairwell, near a raccoon with a six-inch gash across its abdomen. A terrified kangaroo huddled among a turkey, a peacock and at least four horned sheep in the basement of Mr.

Joma’s house, where he put them for safekeeping. And somewhere in this dusty frontier town, there were other animals on the loose, including a python, another kangaroo and two ostriches. Israel initially denied that its forces had demolished the zoo.

Context added by this archive

Almost nothing in this archive is about what people do on a day off. This is: a family place, one of the few, in a town of 1.3 million with no cinema and one beach.

The inventory in the fourth paragraph is the whole piece — a goose, a pheasant, two guinea hens, a turtle, a lamb dying under a stairwell, a raccoon cut open, and a kangaroo hiding in a man’s basement with a turkey and a peacock and four sheep because he carried them there himself.

Cite this item

"Gazans lose a rare pleasure: the zoo," Santa Barbara News-Press, 22 May 2004. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2004-009. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2004-009