With 96 percent of Gaza’s farmland destroyed, farmers are returning to fields buried in rubble and unexploded ordnance, but Israel’s blockade is making recovery nearly impossible.
The Israeli army is targeting Gaza’s remaining residential blocks that were left standing after the ceasefire, leaving even more Palestinians homeless. “Fear has become a permanent guest in our homes,” one resident told Mondoweiss.
“He went for a walk and never returned.” Palestinians in Gaza describe the disappearance of their loved ones during the genocide and the open-ended agony of not knowing when they might see them again.
“Every moment I connect my life now to those years after the Nakba,” says 85-year-old Fatima Ibrahim Khalfallah. “This Nakba is more terrifying, more deadly, more destructive. . . The same hunger, thirst, and fear — but multiplied many times over.”
A rodent bounty is sweeping across Gaza offering 34 cents a mouse and $1.7 per rat, amid warnings from health officials that over 70,000 people have been infected by rodent-borne illnesses in the Strip.
Gaza is paying the price for the failed U.S.-Israeli wars across the Middle East. As the countries have become mired in Lebanon and Iran, Gaza has faded into the background, and Palestinians’ hopes of ending the genocide have faded as well.
Hamas security leaders tell Mondoweiss that the fight against Israeli-armed militias in Gaza is only one part of the broader effort to counter Israel’s campaign to sow chaos in the Strip.
While the world is focused on Iran, Israel is signaling plans to restart the genocide in Gaza.
Officials say Israel’s attacks on humanitarian aid workers aim to block essential aid from reaching Palestinians, as Israel continues to impose a blockade on Gaza seven months into the so-called “ceasefire.”
The decimation of Gaza’s judicial system has left hundreds of thousands of women unable to claim inheritance, get a divorce, or retain custody of their children. “That is the reality of women in Gaza. We are abandoned,” says Maysoun, a mother of two.