Displaced Gaza Mother Crochets Dolls to Earn Income, Bring Joy This Eid

Inside a tent in Al-Bureij camp, Shireen al-Kurdi picks up her hook and works yarn into the shape of a doll. She was not trying to build a business. She was trying to make her children smile.

"When we were displaced from our home, we left with nothing," the 36-year-old mother said. "That's when I decided to make dolls by hand, just so my children would have something to play with."

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 Beit Hanoun in the first days of the assault carrying almost nothing: not enough clothes, and no toys for the children.

What began as a private act of motherhood grew into the household's primary source of income. Shireen now sells her crocheted dolls to families across displaced communities in Gaza, becoming the sole breadwinner after her husband lost his work as a driver when the war began.

The demand for those dolls exists against a deliberately engineered absence. According to Maher al-Tabba, director of the Gaza Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Israel has banned the import of children's toys into Gaza through commercial and humanitarian channels alike since October 2023. "The ban covers toys of all kinds: fabric, plastic, paper and electronic." For the second consecutive year, Gaza's families arrived at Eid al-Fitr, a holiday defined by gifts for children, new clothes, and fairground visits, with no toy shops open and no toys available, even for those who could afford them.

Shireen's crocheted dolls cannot fill that void entirely, but they reach into it. Each one hand-stitched in a tent by a woman who learned the craft more than two decades ago, never imagining it would one day be the thing that kept her family fed.