Gaza Truce Is Not Enough, Say Residents of Bombed-Out Neighborhood

Palestinian children walk among the houses destroyed in Israeli strikes during the conflict, amid the temporary truce between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, at Khan Younis refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 29, 2023. (Reuters)
Palestinian children walk among the houses destroyed in Israeli strikes during the conflict, amid the temporary truce between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, at Khan Younis refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 29, 2023. (Reuters)
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Gaza Truce Is Not Enough, Say Residents of Bombed-Out Neighborhood

Palestinian children walk among the houses destroyed in Israeli strikes during the conflict, amid the temporary truce between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, at Khan Younis refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 29, 2023. (Reuters)
Palestinian children walk among the houses destroyed in Israeli strikes during the conflict, amid the temporary truce between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, at Khan Younis refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, November 29, 2023. (Reuters)

Returning home to find their neighborhood wrecked by bombs, residents of Abu Ta'imah on the outskirts of Gaza's Khan Younis said the Palestinian territory needed a permanent ceasefire, not just an extension of the truce between Israel and Hamas.

Local people fled the area on the eastern edge of the city at the start of the war and did not return until the truce, which was in its sixth day on Wednesday.

"We were shocked to see this destruction. We were shocked to see our homes, our streets, our lands, our yards and everything demolished," said Gihad Nabil, who was recently married and had been living in Abu Ta'imah with his wife.

Standing on a roof with a view of ruined buildings and mounds of rubble as far as the eye could see, he said the area had been home to about 5,000 or 6,000 people before the war. He asked where they would go.

"My house is completely destroyed. My brother's home, my uncle's my neighbor's, all of them destroyed. We don't need this truce, we need a complete ceasefire," he said, likening what he was seeing to an earthquake zone.

As Nabil and another man sat on the roof, talking and smoking a shisha pipe, a group of children down below sat around a small fire built on a pile of rubble and warmed up bread, which they shared.

Three of the children climbed onto the carcass of a car whose pockmarked blue metalwork looked like crumpled paper and posed for a Reuters camera, framed by twisted cables and jagged chunks of concrete.

Militants from Hamas, the group that runs Gaza, triggered the war on Oct. 7 when they rampaged through southern Israel, killing 1,200 people including babies and children and taking 240 hostages of all ages, according to Israel's tally.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched an assault on Gaza that has killed more than 15,000 people, four in 10 of them children, according to health officials there.

Gone in a moment

The war has displaced 80% of Gazans from their homes, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who on Wednesday described the situation as an epic humanitarian catastrophe.

Abdelrahman Abu Ta'imah, a member of the clan that gave the area its name, searched through his bombed-out apartment, pulling clothes and a pink mattress from the debris.

"I have been struggling and working for 30 years in this country," he said, adding that even before the war life was hard because of the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt since 2007, when Hamas took control of the enclave.

"Money doesn't come easy, then all of a sudden, all the work and effort of 30 years disappeared in a moment. One rocket makes all this go away. Why is that?" he asked.

From the start of its attack, Israel told Palestinians living in northern Gaza to move to the southern part of the strip, which includes Khan Younis and its environs.

However, Israeli forces have also pounded the south, though less intensively than the north. Israel says it targets Hamas infrastructure, and accuses Hamas of putting civilians in harm's way by using them as human shields.

Diplomatic efforts were underway on Wednesday to prolong the truce, which has allowed more aid trucks to enter Gaza and some Israeli and foreign hostages to be released, as well as some Palestinian detainees to be freed from Israeli prisons.

But Abu Ta'imah said a short truce was not enough and he longed for a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Ever since we were born, we've been enduring wars and destruction. Every time we rebuild, there comes a fiercer war than the one before," he said.



Gaza Mourns Children Killed in Israeli Strike as Death Toll Rises

Zakeya Al-Wasifi, the grandmother of five Palestinian children who took their first polio vaccine in September and were killed in an Israeli strike before taking their second dose, shows the deceased children's clothes at her damaged house, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Zakeya Al-Wasifi, the grandmother of five Palestinian children who took their first polio vaccine in September and were killed in an Israeli strike before taking their second dose, shows the deceased children's clothes at her damaged house, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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Gaza Mourns Children Killed in Israeli Strike as Death Toll Rises

Zakeya Al-Wasifi, the grandmother of five Palestinian children who took their first polio vaccine in September and were killed in an Israeli strike before taking their second dose, shows the deceased children's clothes at her damaged house, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Zakeya Al-Wasifi, the grandmother of five Palestinian children who took their first polio vaccine in September and were killed in an Israeli strike before taking their second dose, shows the deceased children's clothes at her damaged house, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

A Gaza family sat weeping on Saturday over children killed by an Israeli strike as they were getting ready to play soccer, amid an intensified bombardment that Palestinian health authorities said has killed 44 people over the past 24 hours.

The strike was in Mawasi, a southern coastal area where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter after Israel's military told them to leave other areas it was bombing in its war against Hamas.

"The rocket struck them. There were no wanted or targeted people there and there was nobody else in the street. Just the children who were killed yesterday," said Mohammed Zanoun, a relative of the dead children.

The UN Human Rights Office said on Friday that nearly 70% of fatalities it had verified in Gaza were women and children.

Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva, where the office is based, said it categorically rejected the report, saying it did not accurately reflect realities on the ground.

STRIKES

Strikes overnight and on Saturday morning also killed four Palestinians east of Gaza City including two journalists, four people in a house in Beit Lahiya, and two people in a tent at al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, medics said.

Israel's military did not immediately respond on Saturday to a request for comment on strikes on areas where displaced people were sheltering.

It has previously said Hamas fighters hide among the civilian population and it hits them when it sees them. Hamas denies hiding among civilians. For the past month, Israel's main military focus has been in northern Gaza, the first part of the tiny, crowded territory that its troops overran early in the conflict last year.

A committee of global food security experts warned on Friday that there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza amid the renewed fighting.

Israel's military said 11 trucks of food, water and medical supplies had been delivered into the north Gaza areas of Jabalia and Beit Hanoun on Saturday and said the famine assessment was based on "partial, biased data".

It said was preparing to open the Kissufim crossing into Gaza to expand aid routes. On-off peace talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have made little progress over months.

On Friday a US official said Washington had asked Qatar to close the Hamas office in Doha after the group rejected a ceasefire proposal.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed the report as "an American attempt to send a message of pressure to the movement through the media".