Displaced Palestinians from northern Gaza City move belongings to the city center after the Israeli military issued warnings to evacuate. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
Displaced Palestinians from northern Gaza City move belongings to the city center after the Israeli military issued warnings to evacuate. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
For two months, a cease-fire spared Palestinians the grim task of identifying bodies. With Israel resuming its assault, they are back at it.
For nearly 60 days, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip did not have to tally the newly dead as a fragile truce between rel="" title="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/israel/">Israel and Hamas held. Hostages and prisoners were freed, food and supplies returned to markets, and people picked their way through ruins they had called home.
On Tuesday, after weeks of fruitless talks to extend the ceasefire, Israeli warplanes bombarded cities up and down the Gaza Strip, and the counting began again.
More than 400 people were killed in the strikes, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, whose figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Among the dead were 130 children, Unicef said, reporting that some of the airstrikes hit shelters where families were sleeping.
After weeks of relative calm, the attacks Tuesday appeared to catch many in Gaza off guard, including those who had returned to battered neighbourhoods and were sheltering in close quarters together. The result was one of the deadliest single-day tolls of the entire war, which began with the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in which about 1200 people were killed and 250 abducted.
The Israeli military response devastated Gaza, killing tens of thousands of people, displacing millions and flattening towns. Day after day, month after month, survivors searched for the wounded and the dead.
The body of a person killed in an Israeli air strikes is carried through a blood-stained corridor at the Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
They were doing so again in the hours after Israel’s latest airstrikes, which began before dawn Tuesday.
The office of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that he had ordered the strikes after Hamas’ “repeated refusal” to release the 59 hostages still being held in Gaza. Fewer than half are believed to be alive.
In an address, Netanyahu suggested that Israel would keep launching strikes in tandem with negotiations with Hamas. “This is just the beginning,” he said.
After the strikes, some went to morgues to identify missing relatives. Others wrapped bodies in shrouds and hurried to bury them. During much of the war, traditions of death like funeral processions and mourning tents had themselves become too dangerous to perform.
Displaced Palestinians move belongings. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
Many of the dead have been buried in common graves, courtyards and backyards, with prayers said quickly and under cover, rather than under the open sky.
With only a few of Gaza’s hospitals still functioning, survivors tried to administer whatever treatment to the wounded they could.
The dead and injured include a huge number of children, aid workers say. And while some grievously wounded children have left Gaza for medical care abroad, the border crossings are now closed. Those wounded in this week’s attacks can seek help only within the territory’s bounds.
More than 48,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began, according to local officials. Palestinians have mourned in the places they can, often outside hospitals or by the wreckage of their homes.
Mourners around the bodies of their loved ones at the Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it had struck sites and individuals affiliated with Hamas and another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, across the enclave.
Hamas quickly re-emerged in public after the ceasefire was reached, seeking to show its dominance over Gaza and staging elaborate hostage release ceremonies that infuriated Israelis. In addition to Netanyahu’s assertion about Hamas’ refusal to release hostages, the Israeli military said it struck Gaza to prevent planned attacks on Israelis.
In past strikes on shelters, Israel has said that militants used them as bases and that it tries to minimise the harm to civilians. On Tuesday, the military hit at least one tent housing displaced people in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where thousands had fled.
Removing solar panels from the rubble of a building that was destroyed in an airstrike. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
The first phase of the ceasefire ended March 1, and although neither Israel nor Hamas immediately resumed fighting, the Israeli Government began ratcheting up its pressure on Gaza residents.
It halted all aid into the territory and severed sources of electricity, forcing people to scavenge for cooking firewood from the remains of homes.
Food and fuel are once again scarce. Scalpers are selling bread for three times the original price, and there is no more gasoline arriving for generators, ambulances or anything else.
The Israeli military has issued new evacuation orders, warning Palestinians about neighbourhoods subject to strikes. Families heeding them packed up again Tuesday, taking whatever they could.
With donkeys pulling carts, Palestinians who had returned only weeks ago to Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, left again. Israel ordered evacuations in the area Wednesday, warning residents of what it called “combat areas”.
Israel advanced deeper into Gaza on Wednesday, saying its soldiers had seized parts of a major corridor separating the enclave’s northern half from the south. The military said its goal was to create a “partial buffer zone” there.
Palestinian families warned by Israel to evacuate their homes in Gaza City set up tents in a park. Photo / Saher Alghorra, The New York Times
Some wells are still functioning in central Gaza, but they supply only brackish water, which could cause long-term health problems, aid workers warn. Israel’s Energy Minister has suggested that water could soon be cut off. Its Foreign Ministry maintains that the territory has received sufficient aid and that Hamas is exploiting shipments.
Gaza has had little electricity since the first days of the war, when Israel cut off sources in its initial response to the 2023 Hamas attack. For months, Palestinians in Gaza lived in blackout conditions, with the territory’s essential services relying on solar panels and generators.
After another round of attacks, the panels have become more valuable than ever.
But solar panels can do only so much. Many Gaza residents remain in darkness.
