“Israel isolated us from the world”

2023-10-30 14:54:18

On Sunday morning, the phones of the 2.3 million people trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip slowly came back to life, inundated with updates, messages and missed calls after the end of a near-total 36-hour communications blackout. imposed by Israel.

The nights in Gaza are now completely dark. As communications were lost on Friday night, Israel intensified its aerial bombardments and launched a ground operation in the strip. Ambulance drivers have described how they decided to simply drive towards the sound of the explosions, as there were no exact coordinates to follow.

A new wave of anguish swept through the territory when communications returned for those with charged phones and news of friends and relatives dead since Friday arrived suddenly.

“They have been the worst nights of bombing so far, but the worst thing was not knowing what was happening. It was as if we were blind,” says Mohammed Bashir, a 38-year-old accountant from Deir al-Balah. Bashir, his wife, his three children and his elderly mother are staying with relatives after an airstrike hit the building next door, killing 26 people, including 11 children, and damaging their own living place.

The war in Gaza unleashed after the massacre by the Palestinian militia Hamas in southern Israel, in which 1,400 people died and another 230 were kidnapped, is now in its fourth week. More than 8,300 people have died in the small strip, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and survivors lack a safe place to shelter.

The UN has warned that public order is beginning to break down after thousands of desperate people raided UN warehouses in search of food over the weekend. Only 84 truckloads of aid had entered Gaza across its southern border with Egypt as of Sunday, compared to 500 a day before the latest outbreak of fighting. Water, medicine, fuel and food are running out, while sewage and garbage accumulate in the streets, increasing the likelihood of outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera and dysentery. The UN considers the siege a war crime.

On Sunday, a spokesman for Cogat, the Israeli Defense Ministry unit in charge of civil administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, said Israel, the UN and Egypt are coordinating a “drastic increase” in aid. A spokesman for the Rafah border crossing stated that 33 trucks passed into Gaza on Sunday, according to the Associated Press.

Drinking water is a pressing concern across the Strip: Facebook groups are filled with requests about where to find it, and several civilians with whom The Guardian contacted by phone and WhatsApp in the last week claim that they have resorted to local Gaza supplies and contaminated sea water.

In Ramallah, thousands of Gaza workers working in Israel and the occupied West Bank, trapped outdoors since the war broke out, desperately searched for news from home as the communications blackout appeared to end.

Sayef Olehe, 30, managed to speak to his wife and three daughters on Sunday. Celine, who turned three on Friday, told her father that she did not want to celebrate her birthday until the shelling that rocked the family’s apartment in southern Gaza stopped.

The family moved two weeks ago from Gaza City to the supposed safety of a house owned by relatives near Khan Yunis, in the south of the strip, but airstrikes continue to rain around them. “He said it was not the right time to celebrate because there are many people dying. He has seen too much death. He cries all the time,” she says.

“Judgment Day”

The Israeli Army has repeatedly asked residents of the northern half of the strip to evacuate south of the Gaza River, and this Sunday said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in coordination with the UN, have established a “zone “safe” near Khan Yunis, but did not give further details.

The IDF’s new appeal was met with indifference by the estimated 1.4 million people who have already been displaced. Southern Gaza is not safe from airstrikes, and many Palestinian media outlets say the bombings there have led an unknown number of people to decide to return to their homes in Gaza City to the north.

Shaban Ahmed, a civil servant who works as an engineer and has five children, describes the weekend’s Israeli attacks as “doomsday.” “This morning, Sunday, I discovered that my cousin was killed in an airstrike on his house on Friday,” Ahmed, who remained in Gaza City despite an Israeli order to evacuate the south, told Reuters. “We found out today. “Israel isolated us from the world to annihilate us, but we hear sounds of explosions and we are proud that the resistance fighters stopped them meters away.”

Hazem al-Enezi, director of the Mubarrat Al Rehma orphanage in central Gaza City, previously told The Guardian that he and his only remaining partner could not transport the 27 children in their care, several of whom suffer from physical disabilities and special needs.

On Saturday morning, during the communications blackout, the mosque next to its building was hit, shattering the center’s windows, damaging a games room and the kitchen, and causing fires in the building and those adjacent to it. Everyone survived with minor cuts, Enezi says, thanks to neighbors who helped put out the fire. The emergency services did not show up.

“There is no room in the UN shelters and they are not equipped to care for children with special needs there,” Enezi says in a WhatsApp message. “We still have solar power, so for now we will stay and the children are in the rooms that were not damaged. We will manage.”