For the first time in his short life, Imad Dib, orphaned by the Gaza war, was preparing to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha without his parents.

"Dad would buy us a sheep, but now we are alone," the 11-year-old said.

Before the war, he said, "I loved Eid so much, I was excited for it each year, to be able to celebrate and wear new clothes," he said of the Eid tradition, looking weary in his patched-up shoes.

Every day, the boy returns to the ashes and charred tarp, which are all that's left of the tent in which he once sheltered with his family. Dib said he wanted to remember his parents, who were killed in an Israeli air strike.

This year, rather than celebrating, he is preoccupied simply with the thought of how he and his four sisters will find anything at all to eat.

- Not one........

© Al Monitor