Gaza Metropolis – Close to a burned-out automobile that had been focused in entrance of their dwelling, Faiq Ajour stood with different members of the family cleansing up scattered particles and shattered glass.
Faiq had been on his method to purchase just a few objects from a close-by vegetable stall when the Israeli strike hit on Saturday.
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“I survived by a miracle. I had simply crossed the road,” he instructed Al Jazeera. The Palestinian described his shock – and his concern that it was his home that had been hit by the Israeli assault.
That wasn’t the case, and as he ran again in the direction of the scene, he discovered his household, bodily unhurt. However his three younger daughters shook with concern, anxious that Israel’s genocidal conflict on Gaza – which was alleged to have been suspended after the introduction of a ceasefire in October – had returned.
Israel has repeatedly attacked Gaza since that ceasefire started, accusing the Palestinian group Hamas of ceasefire violations. Hamas denies that, and Palestinians level out that it’s Israel that has used overwhelming drive because the ceasefire started, violating it 500 instances, and killing greater than 342 civilians, together with 67 kids.
The 5 killed in Gaza Metropolis’s al-Abbas space, the place Faiq lives, had been amongst 24 killed on Saturday throughout the Gaza Strip by Israel.
“It is a nightmare, not a ceasefire,” Faiq stated. “In a single second after some calm, life turns as if it’s a conflict once more.”
“You see physique components, smoke, shattered glass, killed individuals, ambulances. Scenes we nonetheless haven’t healed from and that haven’t left our reminiscences.”
‘Misplaced hope in all the things’
Faiq, 29 years previous and initially from jap Gaza Metropolis’s Tuffah neighbourhood, has suffered immensely in the course of the conflict. He described dropping 30 members of his prolonged household in February 2024, together with his mother and father and his brother’s kids, after an Israeli strike on a home they had been all staying in. The strike severely injured his spouse, forcing docs to amputate certainly one of her fingers.
“My mom and father had been killed, my brother’s son, my aunt, my cousins … the entire household was gone,” Faiq recalled.
Faiq has since moved his household throughout Gaza Metropolis and to central Gaza to flee Israeli forces, all seeking “a security that doesn’t exist”, as he places it.
Since October, he has been attempting to adapt to what he calls “the so-called ceasefire”, however says there’s nonetheless no security.
“Each few days, there’s a wave of bombardment and focused strikes, and all the things is turned the other way up with out warning.”
“We’re exhausted,” he added. “Life in Gaza is 99 p.c useless, and the ceasefire was simply 1 p.c of an try to revive it. However we’ve got misplaced hope in all the things.”
Faiq used to work along with his father within the clothes commerce, however the conflict has meant that they’ve misplaced all the things. He can’t attain his dwelling, which is inside what Israel phrases the “yellow line”, below complete Israeli management, with entry for Palestinians closely restricted.
“There’s no building there, no work, no infrastructure, no life, and no security,” Faiq stated. “So, the place is the tip of the conflict?”
“In the present day I simply sit at dwelling 24 hours a day, and there’s no signal of life,” he added. “We’re surviving on bitterness … We’re not simply pissed off. We’re in a disaster. Allow us to stay … allow us to reopen our outlets … reopen the crossings … allow us to stay our lives.”
No second section
The query of what comes subsequent in Gaza continues to be endlessly debated, each inside and out of doors of the Palestinian enclave.
United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza now requires a transitional technocratic authorities, made up of “certified Palestinians and worldwide consultants”, all below the supervision of a global “board of peace”, to be headed by Trump himself.
The plan additionally talks about an financial improvement technique and a global stabilisation drive, all designed to sign that stability and progress are on the playing cards for Gaza.
However the particulars are nonetheless unclear, significantly because the US and Israel reject any future position for Hamas, and the sheer quantity of devastation left behind by Israel in Gaza, that means {that a} rebuild of the territory will take years.
Israel itself can also be unwilling to totally decide to an finish to the conflict, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu below stress from his far-right political allies.
Ahed Farwana, a Palestinian political analyst and a specialist in Israeli affairs, believes that Israel needs the present state of limbo in Gaza to proceed and keep away from transferring on to the reconstruction of the Strip.
“The Israeli occupation is working to entrench a state of affairs related to what’s taking place in southern Lebanon by escalating issues every so often and thru steady assassinations,” stated Farwana.
Israel agreed to a ceasefire with the Lebanese group Hezbollah in November 2024 after a one-year battle that noticed many of the latter’s management killed. Nevertheless, since then, Israel has continued to periodically assault Lebanon, together with on Sunday, when a Hezbollah navy commander was killed in Beirut, and at the least 13 individuals had been killed in an assault on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on November 18.
Farwana believes that Israeli assaults in Gaza aren’t merely a navy tactic, however a part of a long-term imaginative and prescient to perpetuate chaos and keep away from any upcoming political obligations.
“Netanyahu doesn’t wish to transfer to the second section,” the analyst instructed Al Jazeera, referring to the subsequent section of the ceasefire, the place delicate matters such because the reconstruction and administration of Gaza could be addressed. As a substitute, he thinks that Israel plans to develop the realm below its management “to grab as a lot land as potential from the Gaza Strip in order that it has the higher hand in any future preparations” for the enclave.
Inner motives
Many observers imagine that Netanyahu’s want to keep away from transferring ahead with the ceasefire deal is partly the results of home political calculations.
With Israeli politics divided extra by whether or not a politician’s stance is for or in opposition to Netanyahu, quite than left or proper, the prime minister is aware of {that a} fall from energy may spell the tip of his political profession and result in investigations into his position within the failures that allowed for the October 7 assault. He presently faces a number of trials for corruption, a authorized course of that will seemingly velocity up ought to he lose the upcoming elections, anticipated someday earlier than October 2026.
However regardless of the Netanyahu authorities’s evasion ways on the subject of the ceasefire, Farwana says it’s unlikely that the dimensions of Israel’s assaults in Gaza will return to what they had been earlier than the implementation of the settlement.
“There are important pressures, particularly from the US administration,” stated Farwana. “Donald Trump needs his plan – the so-called [board of peace], stability forces, and different elements – to succeed.”
“The state of affairs will stay restricted to increasing the yellow zone and to ongoing focused assaults every so often. It could develop progressively, however to not the purpose of returning to sq. one.” However that state of limbo, Farwana stated, implies that the individuals of Gaza will finally not be capable of really feel “any actual calm”.
It’s a state of affairs Raghda Obeid, a 32-year-old mom of 4, is aware of all too properly.
She has already been by infinite cycles of displacement, and her dwelling within the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza Metropolis is totally destroyed. Now, what terrifies her probably the most is that the conflict will return.
Raghda is presently residing along with her household in a tent in western Gaza Metropolis. An Israeli strike hit the realm final week.
“The second of the final strike was terrifying, identical to the primary day of the conflict,” Raghda stated, recounting how her kids had been terrified. “We may see the smoke from afar, individuals had been working and screaming within the streets, carrying the killed and their torn our bodies.”
“I used to be additionally terrified. I’m an grownup, and I used to be scared. I stated, ‘That’s it, the conflict is again, and it’s our flip now,’” she added with a tragic smile.
Like many of the inhabitants of Gaza, Raghda and her household are on the mercy of assist organisations, counting on them for meals, with few alternatives for work obtainable.
The fact is that they are going to be residing in a tent for the foreseeable future, together with in the course of the winter, and the cruel climate it can convey.
Every day, Raghda and her husband’s mission is to seek out meals and fetch water. Their kids run from place to position searching for a group kitchen to safe a meal.
“I don’t know what is predicted of us. It’s been greater than two years, and we’re coming into the third, displaced and damaged like this. Isn’t there any resolution for us?”
“We now have no revenue,” Raghda stated. “Our life is nonexistent. We stay off the group kitchen and water. Our life is a conflict with out an precise conflict.”
