Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza and the breaking of its ceasefire with Hamas has plunged Palestinians in the besieged enclave back into despair, all but extinguishing their hopes that the 17-month conflict might finally end.
Israeli strikes on Gaza continued on Wednesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to resume “fighting with force” against Hamas, with health authorities saying 436 people have been killed since Tuesday.
For the 2.2mn Gazans who had begun tentatively rebuilding their lives in the hope the fragile ceasefire might become permanent, the deal’s collapse leaves them once again facing the prospect of an endless war.
“We’re used to fleeing, we’re used to putting on our clothes in the middle of the night,” said Lamis Atallah, a 17-year-old aspiring lawyer who together with her brothers fled her home in the northern border town of Beit Lahia on Tuesday after air strikes shook the family awake. “It turns out there is nowhere for us in Gaza. We are tired.”
Families who had returned home are again on the move in search of safety. Emergency rooms in hospitals are overwhelmed with the dead and injured. And many Gazans, in the midst of celebrating the holy month of Ramadan when the bombing began, have lost hope they would ever get a chance at normal life.
After the bombing started, Farida al-Ghoul, a 28-year-old English teacher, fled her partially destroyed home in the northern town of Jabalia with her family and started trekking south — with no idea where they would end up.
“We have no plan because nowhere is safe,” she said. “We could only bring some clothes and some canned food, but no water, because there isn’t even a donkey cart to take us, and we might need to carry the children.”
“Where are the rules of war?” asked Ghoul, who during the war had organised volunteers to teach thousands of children in displacement tents. “We are not just numbers, we have families and we have dreams.”
Israel renewed its campaign despite agreeing to a multiphase truce in January, as part of which it would withdraw its troops, Hamas would release remaining hostages in the strip and the two sides would negotiate a permanent end to the war.
But Netanyahu, who delayed engaging in serious talks over extending the deal, has sought new concessions from Hamas, including securing the upfront release of additional hostages without agreeing to end the war.
He warned on Tuesday that the latest strikes, which he said would target Hamas to force it to release the hostages, “were just the beginning”. Israel has threatened a new ground invasion to achieve all its war aims, including the eradication of Hamas.
More than 48,000 people have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to local officials, which began after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack during which militants killed 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages.
Though supported by the administration of US President Donald Trump, Israel’s decision to resume fighting drew widespread international condemnation. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said she told her Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar that the renewed attack on Gaza was “unacceptable”.
Catherine Russell, executive director of Unicef, described this week’s toll as “beyond horrifying”. She said the reported killing on Tuesday of more than 130 children would be “the largest single-day child death toll in the last year”.
The renewed bombing has once more sent floods of wounded people to Gaza’s hospitals, many of which have been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces during the war. According to the health ministry, 25 of the territory’s 38 hospitals are out of service.
“We received a large number of bodies and body parts, most of them children and women,” said Muhammad Qishta, a doctor with the Médecins Sans Frontières at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.
He described chaotic scenes, with families bringing in casualties while others flocked to the hospital in search of shelter. “We were treating serious cases, like third-degree burns on the face, amputations, and head wounds,” he said. “We received no less than 400 cases in under two hours.”
Ahmed al-Farra, the head paediatrician at Nasser, said that of 105 killed who were taken to the hospital after Tuesday’s attack, 49 were children.
The resumption of Israel’s military campaign came after it reimposed a full siege on Gaza earlier this month, blocking the entry of all aid into the territory, which sent prices soaring. Israel has also cut the last remaining electricity line into Gaza.
Mohamed Abu Ismail, who took refuge in his sister’s flat in Gaza City after the destruction of his home in Jabalia earlier in the war, said the streets have emptied out.
“Everyone’s afraid and wondering what will happen next, and where they can go to be safe,” he said. “We had expected some reaction from Israel [after negotiations stalled] but we still hoped the war had ended. We lived on the hope mediation would succeed.”
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