Diksia.com - “When will this torment finish?” asks Amal Hamada, a 20-year-old woman who has been forced to leave her home. Like most people from Gaza, she feels helpless in the face of the danger of complete Israeli control after 22 months of conflict.
Speculation about the Israeli government possibly opting for a complete takeover of Palestinian land circulated from Israel to conflict-ridden Gaza prior to any formal declaration, causing anxiety and hopelessness.
Similar to most Gazans, Hamada has been forced to move multiple times due to the conflict, eventually settling in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, where Israeli forces conducted operations for the first time during the war last month.
“We have experienced numerous conflicts before, but none like this one. This war is prolonged and draining, with constant displacement. We are exhausted,” the woman said to AFP.
Similarly, Ahmad Salem, 45, questions how circumstances could deteriorate further in a region that already deals with persistent food shortages, large-scale displacement, and regular air strikes.
“Each day, we already experience anxiety and fear about the unknown. Discussing an expansion of Israeli ground operations implies more destruction and more fatalities,” Salem said to AFP.
“There is no secure area in Gaza. If Israel increases its land operations once more, we will be the first to suffer,” he stated from a camp located west of Gaza City, where he had taken refuge.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to lead a session of his security cabinet later on Thursday in an effort to gain approval for extending military actions in Gaza, including in heavily populated regions.
– ‘Just animals’ –
“We read and hear all the news… and none of it is working in our favor,” said 40-year-old Sanaa Abdullah from Gaza City.
“Israel is not willing to halt. The bombing persists, the count of martyrs and injured continues to increase, hunger and malnutrition are deteriorating, and people are perishing from starvation,” she stated.
What else could possibly occur to us?
Exactly 22 months after the catastrophic war began with Hamas’s attack in October 2023, the United Nations has warned that Gaza is approaching “widespread starvation.”
The area’s 2.4 million inhabitants completely rely on humanitarian assistance and face the constant danger of aerial bombardments every day.
In mid-July, the Israeli military stated that it had control over 75 percent of Gaza, including a wide area along the entire Israeli border and three major military routes spanning the region from east to west.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that over 87 percent of the Gaza Strip is subject to ongoing evacuation orders or classified as an Israeli military area.
The areas that remain are the most crowded. These include the city of Khan Yunis in the southern region, Gaza City in the northern part, and Deir el-Balah along with its nearby refugee camps in the central area.
“Now they talk about expanding their activities as though we aren’t even human, but just animals or figures,” Abdullah says with sorrow.
“A fresh ground invasion brings new displacement, new fear, and we won’t even have a place to hide,” she said to AFP.
What will occur if they initiate another land operation? Only God is on our side.
A broader conflict “could lead to disastrous outcomes for millions of Palestinians and might put the lives of the remaining captives in Gaza at even greater risk,” said senior UN representative Miroslav Jenca to the Security Council on Tuesday.
The conflict was ignited by an attack in October 2023, which led to the death of 1,219 individuals, with most being civilians, as reported by an AFP count using official data.
The Israeli counterattack has resulted in the deaths of at least 61,258 individuals in Gaza, with the majority being non-combatants, as reported by the Gaza health ministry, which the United Nations deems credible.
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