Gazans living hopelessly among rubble of homes flattened by Israeli strikes

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories (AFP):

After her house was levelled by an Israeli strike, Najah Nabhan wonders what will become of her and dozens of relatives left homeless by the latest Israeli assault on battered Gaza.

“I’d barely reached the street, then the house was bombed,” said Nabhan, standing next to a mangled heap of concrete slabs and breeze blocks that had been the family home.

Dozens of homes were destroyed during five days of deadly Israeli strikes allegedly in response to rocket fire from Gaza which was itself a response to the death in Israeli custody of a hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner.

Nabhan, 56, has been trying to care for her children and grandchildren, many of whom have disabilities, since they have been left homeless.

“I borrow clothes from the neighbours for them. I didn’t take anything with me,” she said, in the Bir al-Najeh neighbourhood of northern Gaza.

The family said they were warned in a phone call from the Israeli military that a strike was imminent, but the army did not care to explain why it targeted the house.

In total, 103 Palestinian homes were completely destroyed and 140 severely damaged in the attacks, the United Nations has revealed.

Belal Nabhan, 35, earns just 10 shekels ($2.70) a day selling parsley in the market, and said he remains in a state of shock.

“People were screaming and we ran away… now 45 people are staying here, where will they go? They need shelter,” he said, indicating relatives resting beside the rubble.

The ruins of past Israeli assaults on war-ravaged and impoverished Gaza are still visible across the region which is called the world’s “largest open air prison” for the Israeli blockades imposed on it.

With Gaza’s poverty rate at 53 percent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it is nearly impossible for the victims of demolitions to ever be able to rebuild their homes.

‘My dreams are gone’ 

In Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, children clambered atop a huge mound of concrete flattened by Israeli bombardment.

In the tightly-packed neighbourhood, Mohammed Zidan’s home escaped a direct hit but the blast was so powerful it blew out the walls.

“Because you want to strike one person, you don’t need to destroy a whole apartment complex,” said the 29-year-old.

“I’m a young man living in my house, with my children in my home. I’m focusing on my work. What’s my fault, that you make me pay the price?”

As Zidan stepped over the remains of his bedroom, Palestinians elsewhere were commemorating the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”

It marks the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, in the war which erupted when Israel was created in 1948.

“We will stay living the life of the Nakba, continuously,” said Zidan, who has taken to sleeping on the street behind his home.

The Israeli military has refused to respond to any enquiry as to why it targeted the neighbourhood.

A fragile ceasefire has largely held since late Saturday, ending the repeated rounds of Israeli strikes.

The brutal Israeli assault killed 33 people in Gaza, including children and women.

Sitting in a donated wheelchair in Bir al-Najeh, Haneen Nabhan said she fainted when she heard her home was destroyed.

“I used to take medicine, but the medicine’s in the rubble,” she said.

“All my dreams were in the house, and my dreams are gone.”