By Ben Chacko
LONDON: Israelis gathered on October 7 to commemorate the 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, and saw 251 taken hostage, which subsequently saw the Israeli government conduct its genocidal destruction of Gaza. In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters and the site of a music festival that the militants over-ran three years ago in the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
For Palestinians, the anniversary brings another day of misery. Most of Gaza’s two million residents live in vast, squalid tent camps, with large parts of the strip’s cities reduced to rubble. More than half the territory remains in the hands of the Israeli military. Despite a so-called ceasefire deal reached nearly a year ago, Israeli strikes continue almost daily.
Near the Israeli town of Reim, where the music festival was under way when Hamas attacked, families gathered today around photos of their killed relatives. Anya Davitashili, who lost her 25-year-old son, Sean, said she visits the site every Saturday.“I have a video of him dancing here that ends at 6.29 in the morning, it’s in front of my eyes all the time,” she said. “Every morning, you wake up and there is just endless missing.”
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians said the extent to which their lives had deteriorated over the past three years was previously unimaginable. “We witnessed death, destruction, and bombardment that we had never known before,” said Walid Akram, a Gaza City resident who, like most in Gaza, has been displaced by the war.
Raed Khozeiq’s coastal neighbourhood in Tel al-Hawa was largely flattened. Nothing about his life now is the same, he said.“No country in the world has gone through what we have experienced here,” he said. “A war of extermination, starvation, the absence of schools and universities — nothing remains.”
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, about half were women and children, Gaza’s Health Ministry has said. Since the ceasefire, 1,460 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the ministry. Restrictions on the entry of goods and aid have contributed to a hunger crisis, food security experts say.
Violence continues across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel’s far-right government has heightened restrictions on Palestinians while emboldening settlers who have attacked them and destroyed their property. (IPA Service)
Courtesy: Morning Star
