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Several civilians were killed and others injured when Israeli warplanes targeted a group of civilians in the eastern Gaza district of Zeitoun.
According to international media reports, Israeli drone bombed a house in the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, injuring civilians, mostly children.
People were also injured in an Israeli attack on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, with international media reporting the injured were taken to Al-Aqsa Hospital.
As they turn from a year that could barely have brought more bitter hardship after 12 weeks of a pulverising Israeli assault, people in Gaza have little hope that 2024 will bring much relief.
In Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt, which has become the biggest focal point for Palestinians fleeing other parts of the enclave, people on Sunday were more preoccupied with trying to find shelter, food and water than by the new year.
“In 2024 I wish to go back to the wreckage of my home, pitch a tent and live there,” said Abu Abdullah al-Agha, a middle-aged Palestinian man whose house in Khan Younis was destroyed and who lost a young niece and nephew in an Israeli air strike.
“I wish for our children to live in peace and security, to go back to school, back to university, for workers to go back to work and find a source of income,” he added.
Any hope of a political settlement to the conflict and Palestinians’ 75-year quest for self-determination appear further away than ever.
People crowd around makeshift tents in Rafah that have sprung up on streets and pavements, in empty lots and fields. UN-run schools designated as shelters early in the conflict were rapidly filled with people whose homes were destroyed.
In their tents made with crude plastic sheeting, where people have only the minimum of belongings such as blankets and cooking utensils, people look back with fond sadness on their abandoned homes and lives.
“I hope in 2024 that everything is fixed and for life to go back to normal,” said Muna al-Sawaf, 12, from Gaza City, playing with a kitten in the rubble. “I want life to go back to normal, get dressed, run errands again, our homes to be rebuilt.”
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