‘Year of suffering’: Gazans weary of war on October 7 anniversary
• Once bustling city is now unrecognisable wasteland of rubble and sand-covered streets
• Residents say Israeli attacks make it feel ‘as if war has just begun’
GAZA STRIP: One year after Israel unleashed war on Gaza, the Palestinian territory is unrecognisable, its residents are exhausted by displacement and shortages, with no end in sight.
“It felt like the first day of the war all over again”, said Khaled al-Hawajri, 46, as the Israeli forces bombarded his Gaza neighbourhood on Monday, even as Israel marked the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct 7 raid.
“Last night, we were terrorised by the bombardments from quadcopters and tank shells,” said Hawajri, who has been displaced 10 times with his family of seven in the past year.
“We have endured a whole year in the north under bombardment, terror, and fear in the hearts of my children,” he said, adding he had staying in Gaza’s devastated north because “there is no safe place in the entire Strip”.
On Monday, Gaza City was barely recognisable, ravaged by relentless air strikes and fighting.
Residents walked along sand-covered streets stripped of pavements, with buildings either destroyed or left without facades, while piles of rubble littered the roads.
With fuel in short supply and expensive, car traffic was almost nonexistent. 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 64-year-old Hussam Mansour, speaking from a street in Gaza City, surrounded by piles of rubble and sand.
The United Nations says 92 per cent of Gaza’s roads and more than 84pc of its health facilities have been damaged or destroyed in the war.
Long war
Mansour and his sons have all been displaced, and his apartment building was destroyed in an air strike.
“Now when I walk the streets, I do not recognise them anymore,” he said.
Like Hawajri and Mansour, Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants have endured hardship, with no signs of relief, even after Israel reassigned divisions to the north of the country, where troops are fighting Hezbollah.
About 90pc of the population has been displaced, the United Nations says.
“Last night was one of the hardest nights of the war, as if the war had just begun!” said 46-year-old Muhammad al-Muqayyid, displaced from the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.
“I never imagined the war would last this long,” he said.
“A year has gone and we have seen every kind of suffering — disease, hunger, danger and loss.”
Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 people, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Gaza health ministry.
“There was a sudden ground invasion by tanks, and people were rushing out of their homes without taking anything with them, just carrying their children and running through the streets with fire and shells raining down on them”, Muqayyid said, referring to an Israeli military operation in northern Gaza on Sunday.
Hamas has also kept fighting. Its armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it launched a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv on Monday.
Samah Ali, a 32-year-old woman displaced in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, said rocket launches were predictable on this day.
“Suddenly, we heard the sound of rockets launching, and everyone in the camp came out to see where they had been fired from,” she said, adding some people fled fearing retaliatory Israeli strikes.
“It’s certain that the occupation army will return and strike.”
Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2024
Header image: Palestinians walk on a dirt road lined with building rubble in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City on Monday, on the first anniversary of the Oct 7 Hamas raid and subsequent Israeli invasion of Palestine.—AFP