‘There is no life left here’: This broken Gazan town’s problems won’t be solved by aid
By Nicole Johnston, Sky News correspondent in Jerusalem
Rather than give Palestinians a glimmer of hope, the UN resolution to deliver more aid to Gaza appears only to have let people down in its weakened language.
The resolution did not include a call to end the war. Israel insists it won’t stop fighting until Hamas is finally routed from Gaza and can never launch an attack against Israelis again. Israel says a ceasefire will only benefit Hamas by keeping the group in power.
In Gaza, the UN resolution has not been popular.
Amal Zaqout in Rafah told me she’s “disappointed” and the UN vote is “useless”.
“I can’t imagine people can agree to the incessant killing in Gaza,” she said.
Gazans sound bereft of hope.
On the phone, the silences grow longer as people struggle to find the words to describe the depths of their suffering. “I have no words” is frequently heard.
In the north, journalists sent Sky News video from the devastated town of Beit Lahiya.
There, one man said: “What you see brings tears to your eyes, they have destroyed the entire area, look at this child, his body has decomposed.”
There is no life left here, there are no more houses – can you see any? Nothing is left.”
Gaza has broken down – raw sewage flows into the sea, rubbish piles in the street, the UN says no hospital in the north is functioning and desperate men haul themselves on to the back of aid trucks to take anything they can get their hands on.
The winter rain has turned tent camps into muddy cesspits of death, disease and depression.
This tiny strip of land, once famed for its hospitality, spicy food and long stretches of Mediterranean beaches, lies in ruin.
Its farmland has been churned up by Israeli tanks, its neighbourhoods bombed to rubble and its people reduced to living in what the United Nations has described as “hell on earth”.
There may be more aid coming, but so is the war.
