Wrecked lives: Palestinians returning to the destroyed Shijaiyah neighbourhood in Gaza City. — AP
AFTER two weeks of intense battles between Hamas militants and Israeli troops in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shijaiyah, residents and rescue workers combed through the wreckage, a landscape of flattened buildings strewn with dozens of bodies.
Residents who returned described a neighbourhood that was now uninhabitable.
“Homes are all reduced to piles of rubble, bakeries and shops are destroyed, and even the streets have been dug up,” said Karam Hassan, a resident who had travelled back to Shijaiyah to see the aftermath of the fighting. “The scale of destruction is immense.”
More than nine months into the genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops are returning to areas they had previously conquered and encountering strong resistance from Hamas fighters. They say they are also uncovering weapons caches that belong to the militants.
The offensive in Shijaiyah was part of a wider Israeli effort to clamp down on a renewed Hamas insurgency in Gaza City, the military said. And Israel claimed that it had “eliminated” the deputy commander of Hamas’ Shijaiyah Battalion, Ayman Showadeh. He had been “a key operative” at the group’s operations headquarters and had been involved in directing the Oct 7 Hamas-led attack that set off the war in Gaza, Israel said.
Ahmed Sidu, a local resident and photographer who visited the Shijaiyah area said it had “no shelter and no water”. The Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, said that its crews had recovered more than 60 bodies from Shijaiyah after the Israeli withdrawal. The death toll could not be independently confirmed.
Dozens of people remained missing and were feared to be buried under the rubble, the statement added. The raid had destroyed most of the buildings and houses that were left standing after Israel’s initial invasion in October.
The battles in northern Gaza come amid signs of progress in truce negotiations. Some American officials have grown more optimistic that a deal to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza in return for a ceasefire may be at hand.
But people briefed on the talks said it would be days until it was clear whether a breakthrough had been achieved because of difficulties in communication between Hamas officials in Qatar and the group’s leaders in Gaza.
Other officials noted that previous moments of hope about an agreement had been dashed both by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Hamas.
US President Joe Biden, however, remains confident that the framework for the ceasefire deal will be agreed on by both Israel and Hamas.
“There are still gaps to close,” Biden has said, “but we’re making progress, the trend is positive, and I’m determined to get this deal done and bring an end to this war, which should end now.”
Both Israel and Hamas remain exceptionally wary about whether the other side is truly ready to make concessions.
Husam Badran, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview in Doha that his group had shown “great flexibility” in discussions with mediators, especially in making language changes, but had held firm to its demand that Israel agree to a permanent cease-fire.
“We’re not obstinate and rigid in negotiating,” he said. “If there are some phrases that will make the negotiations easier and lead to the same result – the end of the war – we have no problem.”
The Israeli military meanwhile had begun s operating in a number of areas in Gaza City. Those included the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, where Israeli forces stormed a vacated United Nations compound, and the southern outskirts of the upscale Rimal neighborhood.
The Palestinian Civil Defense crews last Friday had begun recovering bodies from Tal al-Hawa and the Sinaa neighbourhood, and that at least 60 had been recovered so far.
The Israeli military stated at its forces had raided “a Hamas combat complex embedded inside a compound previously used by UNRWA,” the main United Nations agency that assists Palestinians in the area. Troops were “engaged in close-quarters combat” with militants who had “fortified themselves inside”, they said.
The military announced the operation in Shijaiyah more than two weeks ago, along with evacuation orders that the United Nations office of humanitarian affairs said had pushed 60,000 to 80,000 people from areas east and northeast of Gaza City. The military later expanded its ground operations and issued warnings to evacuate to other parts of the city.
Sidu, the photographer, said he was among the few whose homes, on the outskirts of Shijaiyah, had suffered little damage. But he added that he was still not sure he could stay there because the infrastructure had been destroyed.
“How do we live without basic necessities and without water?” he said.
He added, however, that some people whose buildings and houses had been destroyed had set up tents near the rubble and were determined to stay. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
