“WE BOTH NOW HAVE NOTHING”
Another strike, on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday, again saw Palestinians rush to rescue victims and retrieve bodies from the rubble.
“There are about 12 martyrs so far, mostly children,” said bereaved resident Ghazi Darwish. “What was their fault? Among them my one-month-old son, what did he do to Israel? My other son is five years old, he was also martyred.”
Further south in Khan Yunis, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israel had twice struck its headquarters, killing five people, on Tuesday.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, deplored the strikes as “unconscionable” and said “Gaza’s health system is already on its knees”.
Israelis have meanwhile expressed deep concern for the remaining hostages inside Gaza, who are believed to be held in tunnels amid the ongoing combat and bombardment.
One former hostage, Ruti Munder, 78, from the Nir Oz kibbutz that was devastated in the Hamas attack, reflected on her 50 days in captivity in The New York Times.
She recounted how Hamas gunmen killed her son and kidnapped her along with her daughter, grandson and her husband, who remains missing.
Inside Gaza, Munder wrote, she was kept “in a small room on the second floor of a hospital”, guarded by a man who had told her that, without Hamas, “he would have had no money or opportunities”.
“The bitter irony is that because of Hamas, we both now have nothing,” she wrote, adding: “I hope our two peoples can finally live in peace, side by side. And I know that if Hamas remains in power, that will never happen.”
