Gaza- People walk in amazement at the horrors of the catastrophe that befell them in the Al-Rimal neighborhood in the center of Gaza City, trying to understand the new geography of their neighborhoods, which they came to inspect after the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from them a few days ago, but they found them in a different state.
The people of this neighborhood are confused about the entrances to the alleys and the exits from the streets. They walk through them with the steps of a lost child trying to perceive things around him for the first time.
It is Gaza as they have never seen it before, or more precisely, it is anything but Gaza. Everything in the path of the tanks has become a target, and the reason is that it carries the “sin” of being in Gaza.
For the first time, the harm appears terrifying and widespread. Nothing has been overlooked. Stand on any spot and turn your gaze wherever you want and see how they cut the electricity, communications, and Internet wires with their bullets. Then they uprooted the trees in the roads, bulldozed the paved streets, and damaged the sewage lines. Then they marched with their tanks on the parked cars. In front of houses, they poured fire on buildings and towers one after another. What escaped an aircraft missile from the air was quickly hit by a tank shell on the ground.
People wonder, is this a war on the resistance? Rather, it is a war of revenge for life, structure, and humanity, they answer.
Horrific destruction
The Rimal neighborhood had the largest share of Israeli oppression, and the extent of its destruction is beyond words. It is already known as “the heart of Gaza,” the most prestigious neighborhood in the city, and the destination of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during official holidays and weekends, as it contains the headquarters of major companies, the most modern commercial centers, and the most luxurious and finest restaurants. Goods and markets.
On the ruins of his destroyed house, which was bombed by Israeli occupation aircraft, then completed its demolition during the ground entry, Muhammad al-Jarousha sets up his tent, and places in it what was spared from the demolition massacre.
Al-Jarousha told Al-Jazeera Net, “He is stubborn against Israel, which aims through all of this to displace the Palestinians and force them to leave their homes.”
His daughter Sherine responds to the question: How does this tent protect you from rain and strong winds? She said, “The Jews cannot control us. The wind wants to do so.” She praises her father, who “is creative in improving the tent, which she sees as the warmest place in the world as long as her family is well,” she says.
The situation of Al-Jarousha is like that of many Gazans who embrace the saying, “If they demolish the houses on us, we will pitch a tent on top of the rubble and we will not budge” as a doctrine, and they live it in reality, not as slogans.
Facing the Jarousha tent is the remains of a burned-out house for the Abu Sharar family, whose owner repaired the remaining room and returned with his family to it, not caring about the cold weather or the heat of the situation.
“Burning houses” was a very noticeable thing in the areas from which the Israeli destruction machine withdrew. Most of the houses in which the soldiers stayed for several hours, they burned them to hide their traces first, and in line with the policy of sabotage, which is the only goal that Israel succeeded in achieving here.
“Mercenary gangs”
Tel Aviv Tribune Net met the citizen Amira Arafat, who took us to her house, which was invaded by the occupation soldiers near the Palestine Mosque roundabout in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, and the description of the scene was beyond language: obscene drawings on the walls of the house and Hebrew writing on the furniture, and tampering and searching of all the bags and shelves, as if it was an invasion by gangs of mercenaries or… The mafia, as his friend said.
Arafat commented, “The amount of impurity they left in the house was something I never expected, but if they demolish it, we will rebuild it, and if they dirty it, we will clean it, and the option of leaving it is absolutely out of the question.” She says that they found a number of wicks and extended wires to ignite the fire in the house, “but they were destroyed by one of the resistance fighters.”
On the other side, a fifty-year-old woman with a clear appearance of sophistication stands in front of her completely burned house. She says in a voice stagnant with tears, “My house, my children’s houses, and our cars, we have nothing left. Where should we go? What have we done to them?” Those around her respond to her, “May God reward you well, Hajjah.” Safety is important.”
A little ahead, an old man with a hunched back resting his clasped hands behind his back, standing in front of the rubble of his relatives’ house, muttering incomprehensible words in which he seemed to be addressing someone, “16 martyrs have been under the rubble for 35 days, unable to retrieve them,” and responding to the looks of passersby accusing him of madness.
Destructive trade
As the occupation forces withdrew, merchants flocked to inspect their shops. Some of them took out the goods they had delivered, and others tried to repair the door of their shop, which had been dislodged from the pressure of the bombing and missiles.
“The blouse is for 3 shekels,” calls out a merchant with elegant clothes, after he brought out his dusty goods at the door of his shop, which was apparently luxurious before it was destroyed by the Israeli invasion, and placed them on a stall in front of the crowds to sell them for less than a dollar. He does this because he is forced to provide food for his children after a break from work. For more than 50 days, he told those gathered around him.
On the other hand, another merchant sits on a chair in front of the rubble of his shop, not looking up from it, as if he is going back in time to the day when his business was a reality and not a dream that evaporated today after Israel turned it into a pile of ashes in the blink of an eye.
“God help them, money is equivalent to a soul,” passers-by comment on these merchants.
The smell of death
The scene of passers-by wearing “pandemic masks” has returned to normal, with disintegrated body parts and corpses lying on the ground filled with the smell of death, even though one of them told me about a corpse that “had been lying in the road for more than two weeks, and had not yet decomposed. It is one of the dignity of the martyrs that he told us about.” About the Prophet Muhammad,” he said.
On the streets of the neighborhood, if we passed a corpse, we then found a mountain of garbage on the side of the road, emitting a smell that told you that it was 100 days old or more.
A sharp chill hits you as you walk through all this destruction, perhaps from the contagion of misery emanating from people’s features, as if an explosive bomb of frustration has struck everyone who walks here.
They stare at each other’s faces, as if they were asking about the secret of salvation, and they murmured timidly, “Thank God for safety,” and their response was, “What kind of safety is this?” They are certain that salvation was destined only for those who left, while those remaining in this reality are in the heart of misery.
At the height of this stagnation and frustration, the voice of the muezzin emanating from the destroyed Al-Salam Mosque broke through the wall of misery, saying, “God is great,” as if it was the voice of life emanating from the corridors of death, so an old passerby responded in a loud voice, “God is greater and more powerful than you, O Israel.”