The body of a small child is being pulled from the rubble of a bombed house, a woman weeping before a row of corpses wrapped in white shrouds, a new casualty arriving at a hospital crowded with the wounded and displaced, and residents standing in long lines for several hours to obtain a few liters of water they share with dozens of others. These images summarize the situation in Gaza.
A month after the devastating Israeli military assault on the territory controlled by Hamas, Palestinians trapped inside the besieged enclave face significant and recurring daily suffering that fuels feelings of anger and despair among some of them. Abu Jihad, a middle-aged man from Khan Younis in the densely populated southern part of the territory, said, "By God, we await death. It would be better than this life. We await death at every moment. It's death on hold." He was standing on a street near his home, which had been leveled in an airstrike that shook the neighborhood in the middle of the night.
Abu Jihad expressed his anger towards Israel and the world, which he accused of silence and impotence: "We want a solution; this is not life. Either kill us all or let us live." Health authorities in the coastal enclave state that the subsequent aerial, naval, and ground assault by Israel on Hamas has resulted in the deaths of more than 10,000 Palestinians. Israel asked residents of the northern part of the territory, where its forces are encircling the city of Gaza, to move southward for their safety, but it is also bombing the south, albeit less intensively than the north.
**A Row of Corpses**
Health officials reported today that two separate airstrikes on homes in Khan Younis and Rafah resulted in the deaths of 23 people last night. At the site of the attack in Khan Younis, a man lifted the body of a small child wearing what appeared to be sleepwear from beneath the debris of a destroyed house. A little girl survived, but a concrete slab had fallen on her legs. A group of men tried to rescue her with their hands while a crowd of people stood outside the building, anxiously encouraging the rescuers.
Ahmed Ayash, a resident injured in the strike, emerged from the explosion site with his face smeared in blood that also splattered his shirt and arm. He appeared enraged while speaking to journalists. He said loudly, pointing his finger at the devastation, "This is the courage of so-called Israel; they show their strength against civilians. There are infants and children inside, as well as elderly people."
Israel claims to target militants only and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields and hiding weapons and operational sites in residential areas. Hamas denies these accusations.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, a row of corpses wrapped in white shrouds lay on the ground outside the gate. The lengths of the bodies indicated that some were adults while others were children. A woman dressed in a red dress and a beige hijab broke down in tears, bending forward as a man tried to comfort her. Another man wearing a black shirt cried and writhed in pain. After a while, a group of men, including medical staff in surgical attire and plastic aprons, performed funeral prayers for the deceased.
**No Water**
In Rafah, also located in the south, there was another familiar scene of men and boys lining up on a sandy ground littered with garbage at a single hose that serves as the only available source of water for thousands of residents now. There was a long queue of yellow, green, blue, and black water containers as people waited for hours to obtain a meager allocation of water. A young man, Bakr Al-Kashif, wearing a yellow vest, said, "Everyone comes with a 20-liter container and shares it with the rest of their family. Each person gets four or five liters. This is the same situation every day."
