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Palestinians in Gaza Say Israeli Bombardment Feels Like New ‘Nakba’

A Palestinian flag flies among the rubble in the destroyed al-Rimal neighborhood following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 10 October 2023. (EPA)
A Palestinian flag flies among the rubble in the destroyed al-Rimal neighborhood following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 10 October 2023. (EPA)
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Palestinians in Gaza Say Israeli Bombardment Feels Like New ‘Nakba’

A Palestinian flag flies among the rubble in the destroyed al-Rimal neighborhood following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 10 October 2023. (EPA)
A Palestinian flag flies among the rubble in the destroyed al-Rimal neighborhood following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 10 October 2023. (EPA)

Palestinians in Gaza say Israeli bombardment has been so heavy they feel they are living their own "Nakba," the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel's creation that led to their mass dispossession.

Israel on Tuesday pounded the Gaza Strip with the fiercest air strikes in its 75-year conflict with the Palestinians, leaving Gazans like Plestia Alaqad, 22, running for their lives.

"The situation is crazy - literally no place is safe. I've personally evacuated three times since yesterday," said Alaqad, who has been filming personal accounts of life under bombardment and posting them on her Instagram page.

After her apartment block was hit, she took refuge in a friend's home but then got a call it would be targeted too. After a brief stay in a hospital, where she charged her phone, she headed to another home to take shelter with journalists.

"Only yesterday I understood what my grandpa, may he rest in peace, told me about 1948 and the Nakba. When I used to hear the stories about it, I didn't understand," she said via videocall from a home in Gaza where she and others were seeking refuge from bombardment after the surprise Hamas attack on Israel.

"I'm 22 years old - and yesterday I understood the Nakba completely."

More than seven decades after the Nakba, Palestinians still lament the calamity that resulted in their displacement and blocked their dreams of statehood.

In the war surrounding Israel's founding, some 700,000 Palestinians, half the Arab population of what was British-ruled Palestine, fled or were driven from their homes, and have been denied return. Many ended up in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as well as in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel has already tightened its blockade of Gaza, fully banning food and fuel imports and cutting the electricity supply. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the price Gaza would pay "will change reality for generations".

Radwan Abu al-Kass, a boxing instructor and father of three boys, said his five-storey house in the al-Rimal district had been destroyed in bombardment on Monday night.

"We'd never imagine our house could become a mountain of rubble. That's all it is now," he told Reuters by phone.

Al-Kass and his children were now seeking refuge at a friend's home a few kilometers away, but feared that heavier bombardment was to come.

"This is our 1948. It's the same thing. It's another Nakba."

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What to Know about the Ceasefire Deal between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah

People gather as cars drive past rubble from damaged buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs, after a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah took effect at 0200 GMT on Wednesday after US President Joe Biden said both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France, in Lebanon, November 27, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
People gather as cars drive past rubble from damaged buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs, after a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah took effect at 0200 GMT on Wednesday after US President Joe Biden said both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France, in Lebanon, November 27, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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What to Know about the Ceasefire Deal between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah

People gather as cars drive past rubble from damaged buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs, after a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah took effect at 0200 GMT on Wednesday after US President Joe Biden said both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France, in Lebanon, November 27, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
People gather as cars drive past rubble from damaged buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs, after a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah took effect at 0200 GMT on Wednesday after US President Joe Biden said both sides accepted an agreement brokered by the United States and France, in Lebanon, November 27, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

A ceasefire deal that went into effect on Wednesday could end more than a year of cross-border fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, raising hopes and renewing difficult questions in a region gripped by conflict.
The US- and France-brokered deal, approved by Israel late Tuesday, calls for an initial two-month halt to fighting and requires Hezbollah to end its armed presence in southern Lebanon, while Israeli troops are to return to their side of the border. It offers both sides an off-ramp from hostilities that have driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese and 50,000 Israelis from their homes.
An intense bombing campaign by Israel has left more than 3,700 people dead, many of them civilians, Lebanese officials say. Over 130 people have been killed on the Israeli side.
But while it could significantly calm the tensions that have inflamed the region, the deal does little directly to resolve the much deadlier war that has raged in Gaza since the Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023 that killed 1,200 people.
Hezbollah, which began firing scores of rockets into Israel the following day in support of Hamas, previously said it would keep fighting until there was a stop to the fighting in Gaza. With the new cease-fire, it has backed away from that pledge, in effect leaving Hamas isolated and fighting a war alone.
Here’s what to know about the tentative ceasefire agreement and its potential implications:
The terms of the deal
The agreement reportedly calls for a 60-day halt in fighting that would see Israeli troops retreat to their side of the border while requiring Hezbollah to end its armed presence in a broad swath of southern Lebanon. President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the deal is set to take effect at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday (9 p.m. EST Tuesday).
Under the deal, thousands of Lebanese troops and U.N. peacekeepers are to deploy to the region south of the Litani River. An international panel led by the US would monitor compliance by all sides. Biden said the deal “was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities.”
Israel has demanded the right to act should Hezbollah violate its obligations, but Lebanese officials rejected writing that into the proposal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the military would strike Hezbollah if the UN peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, does not enforce the deal.
Lingering uncertainty
Hezbollah indicated it would give the ceasefire pact a chance, but one of the group's leaders said the group's support for the deal hinged on clarity that Israel would not renew its attacks.
“After reviewing the agreement signed by the enemy government, we will see if there is a match between what we stated and what was agreed upon by the Lebanese officials,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy chair of Hezbollah’s political council, told the Qatari satellite news network Al Jazeera.
“We want an end to the aggression, of course, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of the state” of Lebanon, he said.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said Tuesday that Israel’s security concerns had been addressed in the deal.
Where the fighting has left both sides After months of cross-border bombings, Israel can claim major victories, including the killing of Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, most of his senior commanders and the destruction of extensive militant infrastructure.
A complex attack in September involving the explosion of hundreds of walkie-talkies and pagers used by Hezbollah was widely attributed to Israel, signaling a remarkable penetration of the militant group.
The damage inflicted on Hezbollah has hit not only in its ranks, but the reputation it built by fighting Israel to a stalemate in the 2006 war. Still, its fighters managed to put up heavy resistance on the ground, slowing Israel’s advance while continuing to fire scores of rockets, missiles and drones across the border each day.
The ceasefire offers relief to both sides, giving Israel’s overstretched army a break and allowing Hezbollah leaders to tout the group’s effectiveness in holding their ground despite Israel’s massive advantage in weaponry. But the group is likely to face a reckoning, with many Lebanese accusing it of tying their country’s fate to Gaza’s at the service of key ally Iran, inflicting great damage on a Lebanese economy that was already in grave condition.
No answers for Gaza Until now, Hezbollah has insisted that it would only halt its attacks on Israel when it agreed to stop fighting in Gaza. Some in the region are likely to view a deal between the Lebanon-based group and Israel as a capitulation.
In Gaza, where officials say the war has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, Israel’s attacks have inflicted a heavy toll on Hamas, including the killing of the group’s top leaders. But Hamas fighters continue to hold scores of Israeli hostages, giving the militant group a bargaining chip if indirect ceasefire negotiations resume.
Hamas is likely to continue to demand a lasting truce and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in any such deal, while Netanyahu on Tuesday reiterated his pledge to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces were ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007 and who hopes to one day rule over the territory again as part of an independent Palestinian state, offered a pointed reminder Tuesday of the intractability of the war, demanding urgent international intervention.
“The only way to halt the dangerous escalation we are witnessing in the region, and maintain regional and international stability, security and peace, is to resolve the question of Palestine,” he said in a speech to the UN read by his ambassador.