Israel bombs once-bustling Gaza City neighbourhood Zeitoun to rubble

3 hours ago 1

Israel has wholly destroyed much than 1,000 buildings successful the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods successful Gaza City this month.

Once a thriving, vibrant neighbourhood successful Gaza City, Zeitoun was known for its bustling markets, olive groves, and tight-knit community. Generations of families lived here, gathering lives, memories, and futures.

Today, Zeitoun is unrecognisable. Entire blocks person been flattened. Homes reduced to rubble, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud has been speaking with Palestinians who erstwhile called the neighbourhood home.

“We were sleeping, and astatine midnight, the extortion collapsed connected our heads, and the pieces were each implicit us. We woke up terrified. I enactment connected my supplication gown and started to telephone my children. I called their names Ibrahim, Mahdi, Mohamed, Sanad. But I couldn’t spot them due to the fact that of each the rubble and the dust,” said Feryal Ahmed.

Israel has wholly destroyed much than 1,000 buildings successful the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City since it started its sustained battle connected the metropolis connected August 6, trapping hundreds nether the rubble, the Palestinian Civil Defence said earlier this month.

Israeli tanks person been rolling into the Sabra neighbourhood arsenic Israel moves to afloat inhabit Gaza City, forcing adjacent to 1 cardinal Palestinians southwards to attraction zones.

The standard of demolition is staggering. What was erstwhile live with dependable and colour is present silent, grey, and buried successful dust.

‘Everything successful Zeitoun was beautiful’

“I volition ne'er hide Zeitoun arsenic agelong arsenic I’m inactive breathing. It is simply a tragedy. I americium wounded by what the Israelis are doing to the neighbourhood … Everything successful Zeitoun was beauteous – the birds, the water, the greenery, the farmlands, the olive trees,” said Mahdi Awad.

Neighbours who erstwhile gathered for meals successful each other’s homes present slumber successful the open, grieving and uncertain of tomorrow.

A fig of houses were deed successful Gaza City, which has been nether terrible onslaught – specifically its Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods – for astir a week now.

Beneath the mounds of debris and factual lies a deeper wound: the displacement of families, the silencing of neighbourhoods, and the nonaccomplishment of history.

“The demolition is acold greater than conscionable the buildings successful this neighbourhood. Most of the infrastructure and residential areas, schools, mosques, waterways and adjacent pipelines and h2o networks person been severely damaged, which makes beingness and surviving present astir impossible,” said Asem al-Nabih, a Gaza municipality spokesperson.

For galore young Palestinians, Zeitoun is not conscionable a spot connected the map; it is the lone location they person ever known.

“I learned there, I grew up there. I’m 1 of the children of the neighbourhood. I privation I could aftermath up and beryllium told to spell back. Even if my location has been bombed – and I’m definite it has – oregon if everything is gone, I inactive privation to spell back,” said Mahdi Khaled, a young Palestinian resident.

Despite the devastation, this longing is stronger than the fearfulness of bombardment.

From beingness to rubble, and from rubble to longing — the communicative of Zeitoun lives connected successful its people. For them, location is not conscionable walls and a roof; it is memory, belonging, and the determination to return.