Children Play in Rubble of Gaza for Eid Holiday

Displaced Palestinian children play as they help disassemble their tent in southern Gaza's Rafah before heading to Khan Younis on April 11, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)
Displaced Palestinian children play as they help disassemble their tent in southern Gaza's Rafah before heading to Khan Younis on April 11, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)
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Children Play in Rubble of Gaza for Eid Holiday

Displaced Palestinian children play as they help disassemble their tent in southern Gaza's Rafah before heading to Khan Younis on April 11, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)
Displaced Palestinian children play as they help disassemble their tent in southern Gaza's Rafah before heading to Khan Younis on April 11, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)

Girls played on a makeshift seesaw in a Gaza bomb site this week while boys chased across rubble with plastic guns, their games reflecting an Eid al-Fitr holiday dominated by the war that has devastated the enclave.

Six months of an Israeli air and ground campaign in Gaza have changed all aspects of life, with most people driven from their homes, parts of the enclave facing famine, and disease spreading through the tent cities where many now live.

Eid al-Fitr, the festival that ends the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, is usually a time for family celebrations including gifts of new toys for children.

This year, few can afford new toys, or find any in market stalls since Israel halted commercial imports into Gaza as part of its offensive to destroy Hamas, launched after the group mounted an armed rampage in Israel on Oct. 7.

"We built this game because all our toys have been destroyed and our houses have been destroyed and there's nothing for us to play with except this pipe," said Magd Dahman, 14, one of a group of children who made the seesaw in the rubble of a bomb site.

The children of that part of Jabalia refugee camp, near Gaza City in the most damaged northern part of the tiny, crowded Gaza Strip, crowd around the seesaw in a Reuters video, sitting three-in-a-row on the long pipe it is made from.

One boy, Mohamed Abu al-Qomsan, 14, plays a drum with his hands and signs sang as others gather round, and two small girls in striped jumpers take over the seesaw.

"There isn't an atmosphere of Eid or the joy that comes with it," he says. "As you can see, children are playing on the rubble and rocks. I'm entertaining them."

Earlier in the week, boys with bright plastic guns staged a mock battle across the rubble of Jabalia camp, re-enacting those fought across the same territory over recent months between Hamas fighters and invading Israeli forces.

"Some of these children's fathers have been martyred. Their mothers have been martyred," said Abdulrahman Abu Karsh, an activist organizing children's entertainment in Rafah in the south of Gaza. "There's sadness everywhere."



Deadly Israeli Strike in West Bank Highlights Spread of War

Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)
Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)
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Deadly Israeli Strike in West Bank Highlights Spread of War

Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)
Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)

The ruins of a coffee shop in the West Bank city of Tulkarm show the force of the airstrike on Thursday night that killed a senior local commander of the militant group Hamas - and at least 17 others.

The strike in Tulkarm's Noor Shams refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the occupied West Bank, destroyed the ground floor shop entirely, leaving rescue workers picking through piles of concrete rubble with the smell of blood still hanging in the air.

Two holes in an upper level show where the missile penetrated the three-storey building before reaching the coffee shop, where a mechanical digger was clearing rubble.

The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago, and one of the biggest since the second "intifada" uprising two decades ago.

"We haven't heard this sound since 2002," said Nimer Fayyad, owner of the cafe, whose brother was killed in the strike.

"The missiles targeted a civilian building, a family was wiped from the civil registry. What was their fault? ...

"There is no safe place for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves."

Residents said the strike took place after a rally in the middle of the camp by armed fighters based there. When the rally ended, some went to the coffee shop, Reuters reported.

The Israeli military said the strike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, a volatile city in the northern West Bank that has seen repeated clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.

It said the attack joined "a number of significant counterterrorism activities" conducted in the area since the start of the war.

ATTACK KILLS FAMILY OF FIVE IN APARTMENT

Local residents said another commander, from the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, was also killed but there was no immediate confirmation from either faction.

But Palestinian emergency services said at least 18 people had died in all, including a family of five in an apartment in the same building.

The missiles penetrated their ceiling and the floor of their kitchen, leaving many of the cabinets incongruously intact.

With the first anniversary approaching of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the strike on Tulkarm underlined how widely the war has now spread.

As well as fighting in Gaza, now largely reduced to rubble, Israeli troops are engaged in southern Lebanon while parts of the West Bank, which has seen repeated arrest sweeps and raids, have in recent weeks come to resemble a full-blown war zone.

Flashpoint cities in the northern West Bank like Tulkarm and Jenin have suffered repeated large-scale operations against Palestinian militant groups that are deeply embedded in the area's refugee camps.

"What's happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders," said Faisal Salam, head of the camp refugee council.

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the past year, many of them armed fighters but many also unarmed youths throwing stones during protests, or civilian passers-by.

At the same time, dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the West Bank and Israel by Palestinians, most recently in Tel Aviv, where seven people were killed by two Palestinians from the West Bank with an automatic weapon.