This is the latest edition of our special coverage newsletter on the COVID-19 crisis in Palestine featuring dispatches directly from our Palestine correspondent Yumna Patel on the ground in Bethlehem. This newsletter is published Tuesdays and Fridays.
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As Palestine enters its seventh week under quarantine, there’s only one thing that’s on everyone’s minds: Ramadan.
In the years I’ve lived in Palestine, I’ve spent three Ramadans in Bethlehem. There was always something so magical about Ramadan in Palestine: the lights, the decorations, kids playing outside late into the night, families walking the streets on cool summer evenings, and just an overall sense of joy and merriment that overwhelms the city.
As a Muslim growing up in America, it’s what I imagine Christmas must have felt like for all of my friends and classmates.
It goes without saying that Ramadan this year is going to be different. The mosques are closed, many people can’t afford to decorate their homes, and the traditional sweet shops are shut down.
Everything that seems to make Ramadan what it is — sharing a meal with friends and family, and praying in congregation at the mosque — is not going to be there this year.
Despite COVID-19 and all its taken away from people, including some of the joys of Ramadan, you can feel the anticipation and excitement in the air for the holy month to come.
People are already planning what they are going to eat on the first night they break their fast, and pondering ways they can host a “socially-distanced” iftar, the meal that Muslims end their daily fast at sunset.
“Even if we can’t sit at the same table together, we can still cook and send food and sweets for our neighbors,” my neighbors, who typically invites me over for iftar every year, told me from her balcony this morning.
Others have expressed that being under quarantine might turn out to be a positive thing: with less distractions, they can make more of the holy month than they have before.
The sense of fear and anxiety surrounding the coronavirus pandemic has surely not gone away. Just this morning, the Palestinian Authority announced five new cases of the virus in the West Bank and Gaza, bringing the total number of cases in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, to 466.
People are still glued to their televisions and phones, awaiting any new updates on the spread of the virus. But for the first time in seven weeks, it finally seems like people have something to look forward to, and something to get their minds off of the coronavirus.
Ramadan Kareem ! to all those celebrating.
Update from Israel:
confirmed coronavirus cases: 14, 803
fatalities: 192