Palestinian women mourn near the bodies of relatives killed in Israeli airstrikes outside the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital mortuary in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, in June.
Jehad al-Shurafi/AP
Many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are engulfed in an atmosphere of despair, enduring 12 months of Israeli bombing of the enclave and living in dire humanitarian conditions.
“We have spent a year at war,” Abdallah Humeida, a cancer patient evacuated from Beit Lahia, told CNN in the city of Deir Albala in central Gazania. Humaida lost her parents, brother and sister in the conflict, he said.
“It’s painful. We don’t know where to go and are living in tents.”
Nabila Schnar, a woman evacuated from Sheikh Radwan, said she had spent the last year “in fear, fear, hunger and tragedy.”
Gaza residents told CNN they do not expect the fighting to last for another year and fear it will never end, given the lack of concrete efforts to solidify the ceasefire. Some people do.
Some residents say they have been waiting months for the war to end just to bury the dead and retrieve their remains.
Umm Fadi, who fled northern Gaza and is now sheltering in Deir al-Balah, said he has lost hope in the world’s ability to act in the face of bloodshed. Fadi, who lives in a tent with her husband and five children, is worried about the coming winter because her family doesn’t have clothes to protect them from the cold.
It has been 365 days of “suffering, poverty, hunger, disease, instability and insecurity” for Gazans, she told CNN.
“We are bodies without souls,” she added.