As Israeli bombs began to fall across Lebanon, scenes of bloodshed and chaos were all too familiar to Gazans.
Mai al-Afifa, 24, was teaching a workshop on how to identify unexploded ordnance at a school converted into a shelter in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah on Thursday when an Israeli missile hit the next building on the campus. According to medics at the scene, a total of 28 people were killed and 54 injured.
As Afifah stumbled to safety through the smoke and debris, she found the body parts of two female and one male aid workers. The Israeli military said it used a precision strike to target Hamas militants using the school as a command center.
“We are very saddened by what is happening in Lebanon right now … we have experienced this pain and loss,” he said. “But we also fear that Gaza will forget: the massacres here have increased and no one talks about it. All TV channels are talking about the regional war, what is happening in Iran, Israel and Lebanon.
Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon in early October after two weeks of intense airstrikes and targeted assassinations aimed at destroying Hezbollah's leadership and military capabilities.
The day after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-allied Lebanese militia that has sparked a new war in solidarity with the Palestinian group, began firing on Israel. Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the Blue Line have been displaced from their homes by cross-border fires last year.
Israel says its “targeted and limited” offensive in Lebanon is aimed at allowing Israeli citizens to return to evacuated areas. But a fifth of the country has already been displaced by Israeli evacuation orders and now covers a quarter of the tiny Mediterranean country, raising fears that Israel is preparing for a much broader push against the Lebanese bloc.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Lebanese people in a televised address last week to “liberate your country from Hezbollah” … to avoid “the destruction and suffering we see in Gaza.”
The war in Lebanon and the threat of regional expansion by Iran and the United States have pushed Gaza down the news bulletins and diplomatic agenda. Even so, Israel was able to renew its year-long assault on the besieged Palestinian territory. More than 400,000 people have been caught up in the latest fighting in the Jabaliya neighborhood of Gaza City, which has now entered its second week. Israel says the ground offensive is necessary to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
Badr al-Saharna, 25, from Gaza City, said he and his family stuck in their home for a year and wanted to leave, but fighting and Israeli snipers made that impossible.
“Walking down the street you see apocalyptic scenes… It's shocking to be here. [Every day] I am reminded of the hypocrisy of the world,” he said.
All of northern Gaza is under Israeli evacuation orders: The Israeli military has told civilians to move to al-Mawazi, a coastal area of southern Gaza, for their safety, despite repeated shelling of the “humanitarian zone”. The World Health Organization said last week that seven missions to evacuate the wounded from hospitals and take them south were denied or blocked by Israeli forces.
A year after the October 7 Hamas offensive that sparked the war in Gaza, one in every 55 people has been killed, more than 90% of the 2.3 million people have been displaced from their homes, and food, medicine and clean water are still in short supply amid new Israeli restrictions on access to the Strip.
In September, the UN And Israeli government data showed food and aid deliveries to Gaza fell to a seven-month low, with the UN saying the threat of famine is still looming because of new rules imposed by Israel. The World Food Program has led the warning; There has been no food distribution in northern Gaza since October 1. The UN body said on Saturday it had distributed the last supplies of high-energy biscuits, tinned food and flour, but it was unclear how long it would last.
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, said: “We have no words to describe the horrors we are hearing from northern Gaza. Israel's bombardment is relentless, terrified and starving people are shot dead as they try to flee, and dozens of bodies lie in the street.
“As Israel's war for Palestinian survival intensifies, the international community seems to have abandoned Gaza. All momentum towards a ceasefire has stalled.
International mediation talks aimed at a lasting ceasefire and hostage release deal have been deadlocked since July, frustrating Palestinians and families of Israeli prisoners captured on October 7.
Those talks are now overshadowed by efforts to calm the situation in Lebanon and prevent an all-out war between Israel and Iran after Tehran hit the Jewish state with 180 ballistic missiles earlier this month in response to the assassination of the Hezbollah leader. Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Until last month, a cease-fire in Gaza was seen as key to ending escalating regional tensions: Iran, Hezbollah and other allied fighters in Yemen, Iraq and Syria have all said they would stop firing on Israel and US assets in the Middle East during the war. Ends in Gaza.
But after Israel declared war on Hezbollah, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed in a speech that Tehran and its proxies would continue the fight against Israel. Gaza's future is not clearly linked to the other fronts of the war.
Mohammed Said, a 36-year-old father of four from Deir al-Bala, sheltering with his family elsewhere in the city after their home was damaged in an airstrike, said he resigned because the world's attention had shifted elsewhere.
“Gaza has always been forgotten. That is why all this has happened,” he said.
