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December 19, 2024 | 07:23 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Recently, the Sultanate of Oman reportedly sent a large number of Nintendo Switch consoles to the besieged Gaza Strip featuring the latest edition of Minecraft with Omani sword-wielding warriors that had been customized “to defend the people of Gaza.”
Speaking to The New Arab, Palestinian sources said that the shipment included enough Minecraft credits for Palestinians that “will help them rebuild Gaza” on the gaming platform.
“However, the shipment has not yet arrived in Gaza, and we do not know whether the Israeli army will allow it into Gaza,” a source in Gaza said, adding that “it is very important for our youth and children to use such games to overcome their psychological stress and think about the structure of Gaza after the war.”
Palestinians in Gaza previously used Minecraft in 2017 to design public spaces in Gaza after Israeli wars destroyed thousands of homes and civilian infrastructure, said Ahmed Ghalib, a structural engineer in Gaza.
"Because of the 17-year Israeli blockade, we were forced to invest in everything around us, including games, to create our world in the imprisoned coastal enclave [...] we have managed to overcome most of the Israeli obstacles to rebuild our territory with the minimum means we have," he told TNA.
But now, he explained, the situation has changed completely because the Israeli army has destroyed more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip, according to estimates by official Palestinian organizations and the United Nations.
"So, it is completely inappropriate for us to accept such games in Gaza. To rebuild Gaza, we need hundreds of engineers and designers who will help us redesign the coastal enclave once again, because the Israeli army has also changed the geography of Gaza after destroying all the features in our territory," Ghada Zourob, a Palestinian engineer in Rafah, told TNA.
"Unfortunately, it seems that the Arabs, including the Omanis, are not satisfied with the silence and failure of the Israeli massacre in Gaza, but they want to invest in our blood by financing such shipments that will not benefit us in Gaza, only waste our time and energy and distract our children and youth from the harsh reality we are going through," he added.
"For more than 14 months, we have been asking the Arabs to support us and pressure Israel to stop the war, but today they claim that they are helping us to rebuild Gaza, which is completely destroyed, through electronic games and paying money for them. Don't they know that many people are dying of hunger, cold and oppression in Gaza? Will these games save them?" he asked.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli army has been waging a genocidal war in Gaza under the pretext of responding to an unprecedented attack by Palestinian militants led by Hamas. The Israeli army has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and injured more than 107,000 others, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
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