DM Monitoring
GAZA: Although the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip has ended, the pain has just begun for many Palestinians who had their homes destroyed in the 11-day conflict.
Hiba Saad, a 42-year-old Palestinian woman from the Shuja’eya neighborhood, east of Gaza city, said she and her family were forced to leave their house during the Israeli airstrikes.
“It was the most difficult night for us. My children, husband and I walked a long way to get away from death, as the Israeli aircraft carried out many raids around my house,” the mother of 11 recalled.
“The only thing we wanted back then was to escape death,” she said with a breaking voice.
Now, Saad and her family live in a classroom of al-Shatea primary school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Saad’s family is among 130 families living in the school who could not return to their destroyed and uninhabitable homes. The family of Mohammed Ghabayen is also residing at an UNRWA facility after his home in the village of Beirut Lahia was completely destroyed.
The 32-year-old father of five said, “It was not my first time that I was forced to be displaced. In 2014, I was displaced too, where I stayed at a UNRWA school for more than 80 days due to the destruction of my house.”
“Back then, things were very complicated. We had no economic or political support and the reconstruction took ages,” he added.
Ibtissam Abu al-Qumbuz, from Gaza City, lives in a house of her relatives after her own house was destroyed.
“What has been the sin of these children that they need to live in homelessness, poverty and deprivation?” the 52-year-old said, referring to her kids and grandchildren that make up some 30 people.
“What crime did they commit for Israel to impose collective punishment on them?” she asked.
The displaced families expressed their fear that the reconstruction of Gaza would not be accelerated and that the miserable conditions that they lived through after the end of the 2014 conflict would be repeated.
