Gaza’s Displaced Residents Tell of Fear and Abandonment

This picture taken on November 12, 2023 from a position along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel shows a smoke plume erupting during Israeli bombardment on the Palestinian enclave amid ongoing battles. (AFP)
This picture taken on November 12, 2023 from a position along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel shows a smoke plume erupting during Israeli bombardment on the Palestinian enclave amid ongoing battles. (AFP)
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Gaza’s Displaced Residents Tell of Fear and Abandonment

This picture taken on November 12, 2023 from a position along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel shows a smoke plume erupting during Israeli bombardment on the Palestinian enclave amid ongoing battles. (AFP)
This picture taken on November 12, 2023 from a position along the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel shows a smoke plume erupting during Israeli bombardment on the Palestinian enclave amid ongoing battles. (AFP)

On foot, by horse-drawn cart and clinging to the sides of overcrowded trucks, Palestinians on Sunday fled southwards through Gaza to escape Israeli air strikes, telling of their fear, despair and bitter sense of abandonment.

"Nowhere is safe in Gaza. My son was injured and there was not a single hospital I could take him to so he could get stitches," said displaced Palestinian Ahmed al-Kahlout. "There is no water, there isn’t even salt water we can wash our hands with."

He had been forced to leave his home to search for basic necessities for his family while "there are bodies filling Gaza's streets".

There are still people hoping the conflict will be solved soon, he said.

"But only God knows if it’ll be solved. The whole world has let us down, the progressive world that boasts about human rights has let us down."

Also heading south, a Palestinian woman, Mariam al-Borno, said death, displacement and hunger had forced her and her children to leave home "to flee for our lives."

"We saw death with our own eyes. Throughout it all we were afraid."

People at a United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) school in Beit Lahia, where they had sought shelter, were looking at a crater left by an explosion.

"Even at UNRWA shelters we can't find safety," said one man.

"I'm just searching for a safe place, nothing more, to save myself and my children," he said.

Outside Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa, entertainer Alaa Miqdad gathered displaced children and put on a clown show.

"Despite the pain we are living in and the hurt, we will smile through the pain," he said.

But Ismail al-Najjar, whose family's residential compound in Khan Younis in the south was hit by an air strike, was less sanguine.

"I was coming with my horse, I stopped the horse, the aircraft came and fired something ... there was bombardment everywhere."

"It is not just destruction; it is an earthquake ... I ask God to take vengeance on the killers of children," he said.



Israel Short on Soldiers after Year of War

 Israeli military members mourn soldier Major Guy Yaacov Nezri, who was killed amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, during his funeral at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Atlit, northern Israel, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Israeli military members mourn soldier Major Guy Yaacov Nezri, who was killed amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, during his funeral at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Atlit, northern Israel, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israel Short on Soldiers after Year of War

 Israeli military members mourn soldier Major Guy Yaacov Nezri, who was killed amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, during his funeral at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Atlit, northern Israel, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)
Israeli military members mourn soldier Major Guy Yaacov Nezri, who was killed amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, during his funeral at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Atlit, northern Israel, October 29, 2024. (Reuters)

More than a year into the Gaza war, the Israeli army's reservists are exhausted and it is struggling to recruit soldiers just as it opens a new front in Lebanon.

Some 300,000 reservists have been called up since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, according to the army, 18 percent of them men over 40 who should have been exempted.

Military service is mandatory from the age of 18 for Israeli men and women, though several exemptions apply.

Israel is waging a multi-front war against Hamas in Gaza and Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Since the military launched its ground offensive in Gaza on October 27 last year, it has lost 367 soldiers in the campaign, while 37 have died in Lebanon since Israel began ground operations there on September 30.

Periods of reserve duty have been extended, and some reservists complain they are unable to go on with their normal lives for up to six straight months.

"We're drowning," said reservist Ariel Seri-Levy in a social media post shared thousands of times.

He said he had been called up four times since the October 7 attack, and called out those who want Israel to "stay in Lebanon and Gaza".

"We have to end this war because we are out of soldiers," he said, adding that while he still believed in serving one's country, "the concessions have become too great".

Another reservist and father of two told AFP under condition of anonymity that "to fatigue and moral exhaustion is added the fact that I lost my job".

Many freelance workers have had to close shop because of the war, even if the government guarantees a minimum income for reservists.

"The collective is still above the individual but the cost is too great for my family," the reservist said, adding that he spent nearly six months in Gaza this year.

- Ultra-Orthodox exemptions -

The ongoing war has inflamed the public debate on drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews, many of whom are exempted from military service.

The ultra-Orthodox account for 14 percent of Israel's Jewish population, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), representing about 1.3 million people. About 66,000 of those of conscription age are exempted, according to the army.

Under a rule adopted at Israel's creation in 1948, when it applied to only 400 people, the ultra-Orthodox have historically been exempted from military service if they dedicate themselves to the study of sacred Jewish texts.

In June, Israel's Supreme Court ordered the draft of yeshiva (seminary) students after deciding the government could not keep up the exemption "without an adequate legal framework".

Ultra-Orthodox political parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition called for such a framework before a vote on the budget at the end of the year.

Aryeh Deri, leader of the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, said he hoped "to solve the problem of the draft" for seminary students.

- 'Lighten the load' -

Some 2,000 wives of reservists from the religious Zionist movement, which combines religious lifestyle with army participation, signed an open letter asking to "lighten the load for those who serve".

"There is no contradiction between Torah study and military service, both go hand in hand," academic Tehila Elitzur, mother and wife of a reservist, told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

Six men who had volunteered despite being eligible for exemptions were killed in combat between October 22 and 28, including a father of 10.

David Zenou, a 52-year-old rabbi who fought for 250 days this year, including several weeks in Lebanon, said: "It's an honor to serve my country, and I will continue to do it for as long as I can.

"Above all, let's not forget that this is war and we are short on soldiers," the father of seven and grandfather of six told AFP.