A year after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel as war rages on in Gaza, the Palestinian territory remains uncharted and its residents are exhausted by displacement and deprivation, with no end in sight.
“It felt like it was the first day of war again,” said Khaled al-Hawajri, 46, after Israeli forces bombed his Gaza neighborhood on Monday as Israel marked the anniversary of the Hamas attack.
“Last night we were terrorized by bombings from quadcopters and tank shells,” said Hawajari, who was displaced 10 times with his family of seven last year.
“We have faced an entire year of bombing in the north, terror and fear in the hearts of our children,” he said, adding that he had stayed in the devastated north of Gaza because “there is no safe place in the entire strip.” Is.”
Gaza city, devastated by relentless airstrikes and fighting, was barely recognizable on Monday.
Residents walked off the sidewalks and onto sand-covered streets, buildings were either destroyed or left without facades, while piles of debris littered the streets.
With fuel in short supply and expensive, car traffic was almost negligible. Most people walked, cycled or used donkey carts.
“There is no electricity or petroleum products. Even firewood is not available. Food is almost non-existent,” said Hussam Mansour, 64, speaking from a street in Gaza City surrounded by piles of debris and sand. “
The United Nations says 92 percent of Gaza’s roads and more than 84 percent of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in the war.
– The Long War –
Mansour and his sons are all displaced, and their apartment building was destroyed in an airstrike.
“Now when I walk down the streets, I don’t recognize them,” he said.
Like Hawazri and Mansour, Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have endured hardships, with no signs of relief, even after Israel redeployed divisions to the north of the country, where troops are fighting Hamas. Lebanon’s Lebanese allies are fighting Hezbollah.
The United Nations says about 90 percent of the population has been displaced at least once.
“Last night was one of the hardest nights of the war, as if the war had just begun!” said Muhammad al-Muqayyad, 46, a displaced person from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
He said, “I never thought the war would last so long.”
“A year has passed and we have seen every kind of suffering – disease, hunger, danger and loss.”
Israeli forces have been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the unprecedented attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,909 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The United Nations considers the figures credible.
One year later, Israel has yet to achieve one of its main objectives: ensuring the return of all hostages by October 7, 2023.
Of the 251 people captured that day, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 who have been killed according to the Israeli military.
Israeli forces are still waging a campaign to rescue hostages in Gaza and crush Hamas, which has been in power since 2007.
“There was a sudden ground invasion by tanks, and people were coming out of their homes with nothing, just their children, into the streets with fire and shells,” Muqayed said, referring to an Israeli. Military operation in northern Gaza on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Hamas keeps fighting. Its armed wing, the Azzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired rockets into Tel Aviv on Monday.
Samah Ali, a 32-year-old displaced woman in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, said rocket launches were to be expected on this day.
“Suddenly, we heard rockets being fired and everyone in the camp came out to see where they were fired from,” he said, adding that some people fled out of fear of retaliatory Israeli attacks.
“It is certain that the occupation forces will return and attack.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
