Truce provides an opportunity to rescue martyrs still trapped under the rubble of destroyed houses and residential buildings (Al Jazeera)
GAZA – With joy mixed with anticipation and anxiety, the residents of the Gaza Strip received a temporary truce agreement between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Israel, announced by the State of Qatar in the early hours of the morning for 4 days, which can be extended, and includes a ceasefire and the release of women and children prisoners from both sides.
About 7 weeks have passed since the outbreak of the most ferocious Israeli war on this small coastal strip, following the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation launched by Hamas on the seventh of last October, during which the sounds of explosions did not stop as a result of air, land and sea raids, and it is time for Gazans to catch their breath and heal their wounds.
In the southernmost city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, and like other cities in the Gaza Strip in the south and north, this agreement had an impact on the city's residents, and the estimated 300,<> displaced people who were forced to abandon their homes in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, as well as thousands of others who were forced to internally displace their homes in the eastern areas adjacent to the Israeli security fence, towards shelters in schools and public facilities, and in the homes of relatives and friends.
Temporary return
Says um Mohammed Sufi to Al Jazeera Net that the days of truce will help her and her husband to reach their home in the area of "thorn" near the security fence, east of Rafah, and bring some of the necessary needs of clothes and winter covers, after they had to displace their six children, without luggage, on the first day of the Israeli war.
The displaced woman resides with her family in a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the city center, and does not intend to return to her home to live there before the war completely stopped, and recalls a painful experience she went through in the third war on Gaza in 2014, when a temporary truce agreement collapsed, rockets and shells rained down on the area, and she and her family miraculously survived.
For um Mohammed, "there is no safety for the occupation," she says, "Although they target everything, even schools, it is safer for us to stay with the (displaced) people in school than at home with a fork."
Um Mohammed is eager for the truce to take effect, to check on her home, which she does not know what happened to it during the past weeks, and hopes that the truce will develop into a comprehensive ceasefire agreement, and that they will not stay long in school.
The harsh winter weather compounded the suffering of Um Mohammed and hundreds of thousands of displaced people in schools and public facilities, which lack the most basic necessities to cope with the cold and rain, and according to her, UNRWA provides the displaced with food and blankets is insufficient: "Life here is tragic, people sleep on tiles, and children shiver from the cold."
Truce does not allow thousands of displaced people from the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes (Al Jazeera)
One-way movement
If Um Mohammed is more fortunate because the days of the truce will enable her to return, even temporarily, to her home and bring supplies that improve her life and family in the shelter, Iman Tayeh, 41, will not be able to move from the same shelter to her home in the Shujaiya neighborhood east of Gaza City.
The truce agreement allows residents of the northern Gaza Strip to move south while ensuring that the occupation will not be exposed to them, while thousands of displaced people will not be able to return to their homes in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, including Iman, who was forced with her family and several of her relatives to be displaced twice during the war, the first from their homes in the Shujaiya neighborhood, and the second from a shelter in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, towards the city of Rafah.
Iman asked in a voice full of sadness and oppression, "What is the use of the truce for us as displaced people from Gaza?" "Thank God anyway, it is enough that it will stop the bloodshed, killing and destruction."
A displaced woman who shared the same room in the conversation intervened, saying as if to remind her of another benefit of the truce, "as well as (as well) women and children will be freed from the prisons of the occupation."
Under the agreement, Hamas will release 50 women and children from the Gaza Strip settlements, in exchange for the occupation liberating 150 women and children, out of about 300 children and 33 female prisoners, whom it detains in its prisons.
Until this return, Iman hopes that UNRWA and relevant institutions will improve the lives of IDPs in shelters and provide them with basic necessities of life. Looking at her daughter Hadeel, 20, who was born just 14 hours before the displacement on foot, she said: "We can't find her the right food, and with great difficulty I prepared lentil soup for her on a wood fire."
As the airstrikes continued, the residents of Rafah greeted the truce agreement with joy mixed with anxiety (Al Jazeera)
Life needs
Mohammed is waiting for the return of the truce, and the flow of aid in order to refuel adequate quantities of fuel and other household necessities such as cooking gas and canned food, and says to Al Jazeera Net, "We do not know until the moment what aid will enter through the Rafah crossing with Egypt? We hope it will meet our needs."
According to a statement issued by Hamas, the truce agreement stipulates the flow of hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, relief and medical aid, including fuel, which Israel has been refusing to enter the Gaza Strip, and was not included in the Egyptian-American-Israeli tripartite agreement, which allowed the flow of scarce quantities of humanitarian aid, including bottles of drinking water, canned food, and simple medical supplies.
Mohammed faced during the past weeks, like the majority of Gazans, difficulty in providing a small amount of diesel to run a small generator, used to raise water to tanks above the roof of his house in the Shaboura refugee camp in the center of Gaza City, and says to Al Jazeera Net that he had to buy one liter about 7 times its real price.
The fuel crisis, including cooking gas, prompted Mohammed, like many others, to return to alternative means, such as firewood, whose prices have more than doubled, which applies to all goods that have run out of markets and have no alternative, due to the continued closure of the only commercial Kerem Shalom crossing, since the beginning of the war, and the prices of the remaining scarce quantities of some of these goods have risen significantly.
The truce is an opportunity for Gazans to catch their breath after weeks of killing and destruction (Al Jazeera)
A truce for pain relief
As for Mohammed Ayoub, he is only concerned about the truce being able to visit the grave of his martyred daughter, Wala'a, who rose in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a building belonging to her husband's family, including her apartment, and turned it into a pile of rubble.
About a month after this raid, Ayoub is still under the influence of shock, and says to Al Jazeera Net "stone and tree compensated, but Min (who) compensates me for my daughter loyalty?".
Since he buried her with the participation of a limited number of his family and her husband's family, who lost a group of their members, most of them women and children, Ayoub has been eager to visit her grave in the western cemetery in Rafah, and to stay comfortably next to her, reading the Qur'an, and talking to her quietly and not disturbed by the sounds of explosions.
This truce will allow Job to fulfill his desire to visit his daughter's grave, and will allow others to bury their relatives, who did not have the opportunity to be pulled from the streets and roads, and from the rubble of destroyed buildings and residential houses.
Source : Al Jazeera