Gaza- With joy mixed with anticipation and anxiety, the residents of the Gaza Strip received a temporary truce agreement between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel, announced by the State of Qatar early in the morning for 4 days, which can be extended, and includes a ceasefire and the release of women and children held captive by both sides.
About 7 weeks have passed since the outbreak of the most fierce Israeli war on this small coastal strip, following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by Hamas on the 7th of last October, during which the sounds of explosions did not stop as a result of air, land and sea raids, and the time has come for the Gazans to capture They breathe and heal their wounds.
In the city of Rafah, in the far south of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt, and like other cities in the Gaza Strip in its south and north, this agreement had an impact on the residents of the city and the displaced people there, whose number is estimated at more than 300 thousand. They were forced to abandon their homes in Gaza City and the north of the Gaza Strip, in addition to thousands. Others were forced to internally move from their homes in the eastern regions adjacent to the Israeli security fence, towards shelter centers in schools and public facilities, and in the homes of relatives and friends.
Temporary return
Umm Muhammad Al-Sufi tells Al-Jazeera Net that the days of the truce will help her and her husband reach their home in the “Al-Shouka” area near the security fence, east of the city of Rafah, and bring some necessary needs of winter clothes and blankets, after they were forced to flee with their six children, without luggage, on the day. The first for the Israeli war.
This forty-year-old displaced woman resides with her family in a school affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the center of the city. She does not intend to return to her home to live there before the war stops completely. She recalls a painful experience she went through in the third war on Gaza in 2014, when a truce agreement collapsed. Temporarily, rockets and shells rained down on the area, and she and her family miraculously survived.
As for Umm Muhammad, “there is no safety under the occupation,” and she says, “Although they target everything, even schools, our staying with the (displaced) people in the school is safer than our house with a fork.”
Umm Muhammad is eager for the truce to take effect, to inspect her house, which she does not know what happened to over the past weeks, and she hopes for herself that the truce will develop into a comprehensive ceasefire agreement, and that they will not stay at school for long.
The harsh winter weather doubled the suffering of Umm Muhammad and hundreds of thousands of displaced people in schools and public facilities, which lack the most basic components to confront the cold and rain. According to her, what UNRWA provides to the displaced in terms of food and blankets is insufficient, and she says, “Life here is tragic, and people sleep on the tiles.” “And the children are shivering from the cold.”
One-way movement
If Umm Muhammad is more fortunate because the days of the truce will enable her to return – even temporarily – to her home and bring supplies that will improve her life and that of her family in the shelter center, then Iman Tayeh (41 years old) will not be able to move from the shelter center itself to her home in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of the city. Gaza.
The truce agreement allows the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to move south while ensuring that the occupation does not attack them, while thousands of displaced people will not be able to return to their homes in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, including Iman, who, along with her family and a number of her relatives, were forced to flee twice during the war, the first from their homes in Al-Shuja’iya neighborhood, and the second from a shelter center in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, towards the city of Rafah.
Iman asked in a voice filled with sadness and oppression, “What is the benefit of the truce for us as displaced people from Gaza?” She added, “Praise be to God in any case. It is enough that it will stop the bloodshed, killing, and destruction.”
A displaced woman who shared the same room with her joined the conversation and said, as if reminding her of another benefit of the truce, “It will also free women and children from the occupation prisons.”
Under the agreement, Hamas releases 50 women and children from the Gaza envelope settlements, in exchange for the occupation freeing 150 women and children, out of about 300 children, and 33 female prisoners, whom it detains in its prisons. Iman said, “May God grant relief to all our prisoners, and grant relief to us in Gaza.” “And return us safely to our homes.”
Until this return, Iman hopes that UNRWA and the relevant institutions will improve the lives of the displaced in shelter centers and provide them with the basic necessities of life. She said, looking at her daughter Hadeel (20 years old), who was born just 14 hours before being displaced on foot, “We cannot find suitable food for her, and with great difficulty I prepared lentil soup for her over a wood fire.”
Life needs
Muhammad is awaiting the return of the truce and the flow of aid in order to supply sufficient quantities of fuel and other household supplies such as cooking gas and canned food. He told Al Jazeera Net, “We do not know yet what aid will enter through the Rafah crossing with Egypt? We hope that it will meet our needs.”
According to a statement issued by Hamas, the truce agreement stipulates the flow of hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, relief and medical aid, including fuel, which Israel has continued to refuse to enter the Gaza Strip, and was not included in the tripartite Egyptian-American-Israeli agreement, which allowed the flow of scarce quantities of humanitarian aid, which included packages. Including drinking water, canned food, and simple medical supplies.
During the past weeks, Muhammad, like the majority of Gazans, faced difficulty in providing a small amount of diesel to operate a small generator, which he uses to raise water to tanks on the roof of his house in the Shaboura refugee camp in central Gaza City. He told Al Jazeera Net that he was forced to buy one liter for about 7 times its price. Real.
The fuel crisis, including cooking gas, pushed Muhammad – like many others – to return to alternative means, such as firewood, the prices of which have more than doubled, and this applies to all goods that have run out of markets and no longer have an alternative, as a result of the continued closure of the Karam crossing. Abu Salem is the only commercial enterprise, since the beginning of the war, and the prices of the remaining scarce quantities of some of these commodities have risen significantly.
A truce to relieve the pain
As for Muhammad Ayoub, the only thing that concerns him about the truce is being able to visit the grave of his martyr daughter, Walaa, who was killed in an Israeli air strike that targeted a building for her husband’s family, which included her residential apartment, and turned it into a pile of rubble.
About a month after this raid, Ayoub is still under the influence of shock, and he tells Al Jazeera Net, “The stones and trees are compensated, but who (who) will compensate me for my daughter Walaa?”
Since he buried her with the participation of a limited number of his family and her husband’s family, which lost a group of its members, most of them women and children, Ayoub has been eager to visit her grave in the western cemetery in the city of Rafah, and stay at peace next to her, reading the Qur’an, and talking to her quietly, not disturbed by the sounds of explosions.
This truce will allow Ayoub to fulfill his desire to visit his daughter’s grave, and will allow others to bury their loved ones, who did not have the opportunity to extract them from the streets and roads, and from under the rubble of destroyed buildings and residential homes.
