Caring for Stray Animals in Besieged Gaza

Despite Gaza’s immense human suffering, this team of animal rescuers still make time to care for the Strip’s stray cats and dogs

The Gaza Strip is in crisis, and has been for a long time. In large part due to the blockade imposed on it by Israel and Egypt in 2007, the UN predicts that come next year, the besieged enclave will no longer be “a liveable place” without “herculean efforts” to improve access to safe drinking water, high-quality healthcare and education, and affordable, reliable electricity. Of course, the UN’s estimations are concerned solely with human needs, but animals — and especially domesticated animals — require clean drinking water too. And with human healthcare in crisis, the outlook for veterinary care is also bleak.

Amid such human hardship, you’d naturally expect the lot of animals to be passed over, indefinitely consigned to the “we’ll get to that one later” box. But in Gaza, hope for animals exists in the form of the Sulala Society for the Care of Stray Animals, which puts heart and soul into looking after the Strip’s many homeless cats and dogs. Palestine’s strays, who are thought to be largely abandoned, escaped, or otherwise released pets and working animals, are so numerous that they constitute one of the greatest animal welfare issues there. And while Sulala (the word means, simply, “breed” in Arabic) has their hands full with this crisis, their efforts extend to countless other species of animals. An…