Baking hope in Gaza: Making Christmas cookies in a displacement tent

Khan Younis, Gaza – From a makeshift kitchen with a sand floor and a nylon roof, and lacking the most basic equipment, Mayess Hamid prepared Christmas cookies this year.

Hamid, 31, has been making cakes and cookies for about 10 years, working at one of Gaza’s largest cake shops before it was destroyed in Israel’s continuing war on the besieged enclave.

Like many in Gaza, she lost her job when the bakery she worked at was bombed.

“I wanted to start the year with optimism and make Christmas cookies to distribute to the children around me in the camp,” she says as she kneads.

“The war turned our lives upside down. I lost my income, and my home was destroyed,” says Hamid, who has been displaced nine times since her family left Zeitoun, east of Gaza City, and has now settled in al-Mawasi in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

“My children are excited, waiting eagerly and trying to help, especially with decorations,” she adds, arranging the cookies in a baking tray.

Making cookies was challenging because of basic food shortages that are so severe that some parts of Gaza are in famine.

Israel has largely blocked the entry of aid and commercial shipments since the beginning of the war.

Drawing from her experience, she substitutes unavailable materials with things she can find.

“Before the war, I decorated cakes with ready-made sugar paste. Now, I use a mix of liquid cheese and powdered sugar, and it works,” she says.

Lacking Christmas cookie cutters, Hamid drew stencils on paper using her phone, cut them out, and shaped the dough by hand using a knife.

“Even simple tasks like baking cookies have become challenges during the war,” she says, arranging the cookies and preparing to bake in a nearby clay oven the whole camp relies on.

“From gathering materials to shaping dough and baking, each step feels unfamiliar and complicated.”

As the second batch of cookies bakes, Hamid begins to decorate the first inside her small tent.

“The war may have taken my home and life as I knew it, but not my passion for decorating and attention to detail,” she says, glancing around her tidy tent.

While trying to bring a festive feel to the displacement camp, Hamid cannot hide her sorrow that the world celebrates Christmas as usual, while Gaza endures a second year of war and devastation.

“We try to smile, but our wounds run deep, and there is little we can do. We feel forgotten.”

At the same time, she still clings to hope that this Christmas will bring peace. Her sole Christmas wish is for the war to end.

“Just let the war stop. Let the killing and destruction end so we can live in peace with our children,” she says.