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Gaza’s Wasteland Seen via Bicycle after Six Months of War

A Palestinian youth walks amid rubble in a devastated area around Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on April 3, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)
A Palestinian youth walks amid rubble in a devastated area around Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on April 3, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)
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Gaza’s Wasteland Seen via Bicycle after Six Months of War

A Palestinian youth walks amid rubble in a devastated area around Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on April 3, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)
A Palestinian youth walks amid rubble in a devastated area around Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on April 3, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group. (AFP)

Before the Gaza war erupted, the tiny enclave run by the Palestinian group Hamas was impoverished and densely populated, but full of life -- restaurants, shops, makeshift soccer pitches, universities and hospitals.

Six months after the conflict began, Reuters cameramen took bicycle rides along its ruined streets to gauge the destruction left by Israeli air strikes that have killed more than 33,000 people in retaliation for Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The same scene played out on one road after another -- pile after pile of rubble on each side in the strip, home to 2.3 million people who lack medicine, medical care and food in a deepening humanitarian crisis.

Many live in shelters or tent cities after moving from one part of the enclave to another to try to escape the relentless bombardment.

Movement along its quiet streets is limited. There are few signs of life. Men drive by on a motorbike. A young boy pushes a wheelbarrow along a dirt road past obliterated buildings through clouds of dirt. A mosque was not spared destruction. On another, a man walks along with a sack of flour on his shoulder.

Food is scarce in Gaza where Palestinians say attempting to secure supplies is a life or death scramble like the one that cost more than 100 Palestinians their lives in February trying to get food from an aid convoy. Israel said many were trampled to death in the chaos, while Gaza's health authorities say Israeli troops opened fire on crowds.

Imminent famine

Israel is carrying out the offensive in retaliation for a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 people taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

The United Nations has warned of a looming famine and complained of obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza. The US also says famine is imminent.

Israeli officials say they have increased aid access to Gaza, are not responsible for delays and that the aid delivery inside Gaza is the responsibility of the UN and humanitarian agencies. Israel has also accused Hamas of stealing aid, a charge Hamas denies.

Underscoring the chaos in Gaza, citizens from Australia, Britain and Poland were among seven people working for celebrity chef Jose Andres' World Central Kitchen who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza on Monday, the NGO said.

For now, Palestinians can only walk on streets lined with debris and watch the wastelands grow with each airstrike.

The cameramen on bicycles saw little signs of life in a sea of rubble. Two women walked with a young child. A few people sat under a colorful umbrella. Men moved along with a donkey on a cart. Burned out cars stood on the edge of some streets.

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Watching the Sun Rise over a New Damascus

Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)
Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)
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Watching the Sun Rise over a New Damascus

Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)
Damascus is seen at sunrise from Mount Qasyun, which for years was off limits to regular people. (AFP)

After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Afaf Mohammed did what she could not for more than a decade: she climbed Mount Qasyun to admire a sleeping Damascus "from the sky" and watch the sun rise.

Through the long years of Syria's civil war, which began in 2011 with a government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, people were not allowed access to the mountain.

But now they can return to look down again on their capital, with its high-rise hotels and poor suburbs exhausted by war.

When night falls, long queues of vehicles slowly make their way up a twisting road to a brightly lit corniche at the summit.

Once there, they can relax, listen to music, eat and, inevitably, take selfies.

On some evenings there have even been firework displays.

Afaf Mohammed told AFP that "during the war we weren't allowed up to Mount Qasyun. There were few public places that were truly accessible."

At her feet, the panorama of Syria's capital stretched far and wide. It was the second time in weeks that the dentist in her thirties had come to the mountaintop.

A man sells tea on Mount Qasyun, from which government artillery used to pound opposition-held areas under Assad's rule. (AFP)

- Ideal for snipers -

Her first was just after a coalition of opposition fighters entered the city, ousting Assad on December 8.

On that occasion she came at dawn.

"I can't describe how I felt after we had gone through 13 years of hardship," she said, wrapped close in an abaya to ward off the chilly breeze.

Qasyun was off limits to the people of Damascus because it was an ideal location for snipers -- the great view includes elegant presidential palaces and other government buildings.

It was also from this mountain that artillery units for years pounded opposition-held areas at the gates of the capital.

Mohammed believes the revolution brought "a phenomenal freedom" that includes the right to visit previously forbidden places.

"No one can stop us now or block our way. No one will harm us," she said.

Patrols from the security forces of Syria's new rulers are in evidence, however.

They look on as a boy plays a tabla drum and young people on folding chairs puff from water pipes as others dance and sing, clapping their hands.

Everything is good-natured, reflecting the atmosphere of freedom that now bathes Syria since the end of Assad rule.

Gone are the stifling restrictions that once ruled the people's lives, and soldiers no longer throng the city streets.

Visitors to Mount Qasyun can now relax, listen to music, eat and snap selfies. (AFP)

- Hot drinks and snacks -

Mohammad Yehia, in his forties, said he once brought his son Rabih up to Mount Qasyun when he was small.

"But he doesn't remember having been here," he said.

After Assad fell, his son "asked if we would be allowed to go up there, and I said, 'Of course'," Yehia added.

So they came the next day.

Yehia knows the place well -- he used to work here, serving hot drinks and snacks from the back of a van to onlookers who came to admire the view.

He prides himself on being one of the first to come back again, more than a decade later.

The closure of Mount Qasyun to the people of Damascus robbed him of his livelihood at a time when the country was in economic freefall under Western sanctions. The war placed a yoke of poverty on 90 percent of the population.

"We were at the suffocation point," Yehia told AFP.

"Even if you worked all day, you still couldn't make ends meet.

"This is the only place where the people of Damascus can come and breathe a little. It's a spectacular view... it can make us forget the worries of the past."

Malak Mohammed, who came up the mountain with her sister Afaf, said that on returning "for the first time since childhood" she felt "immense joy".

"It's as if we were getting our whole country back," Malak said. Before, "we were deprived of everything".