NOVANEWS
Bombed homes, shelling and cars charred by missiles: Fidaa Zaanin on how Israel destroyed Beit Hanoun
Palestinians in Gaza walk amid destroyed buildings in the northern district of Beit Hanun during an humanitarian truce on July 26, 2014. (Photo: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
Six months after flying to Iceland to study, Fidaa Zaanin returned to her home in the Gaza Strip. One month later, the 25-year-old Zaanin was confronted by yet another Israeli attack on the coastal enclave that is surrounded on all sides by hostile forces.
Zaanin, a resident of Beit Hanoun, in Gaza’s north, has seen two punishing wars come and go. The only difference this time is that the ferocity of Israel’s assault has surpassed the others–something that many thought was hard to do given the immense destruction wrought by Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09.
“I can’t say I’m shocked to come back, because this is the reality. This is what I grow up to, this is the way I was raised up,” Zaanin, who joked her age is “three wars,” told me in a phone conversation from Gaza City, where she has been displaced to after Beit Hanoun suffered heavy bombardment. “This one is much worse. They are targeting everywhere.”
The numbers bear her out. Israel’s 22-day attack in 2008-09 killed an estimated 1,400 Palestinians, with estimates varying depending on which group did the counting. Whatever the exact number is, though, the grim toll of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge has now passed Cast Lead’s toll. At least 1,437 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed over the past three weeks. Over 5,000 were injured during Cast Lead, while over 8,000 have been injured during the current assault.
But statistics can only tell you so much. My conversation with Zaanin focused on what the people of Beit Hanoun, the place where she resides, have gone through over the past week as Israeli shelling and bombs rained down on the city in Gaza’s north. It is one of the hardest hit areas in Gaza. She managed to stay in Beit Hanoun for most of the assault, but that changed earlier this week.
On the night of July 25th, Israel launched a massive–and by many accounts indiscriminate–attack on areas near the border with Israel, including Beit Hanoun and Shuja’iya, after Palestinian militants killed Israeli soldiers. Zaanin lived through a terrifying night that saw Israeli shells and bombs level rip up the area’s infrastructure. Reporting from the city the day after, The Guardian’s Gaza-based reporter Peter Beaumont wrote that “whole blocks had been flattened, dozens of buildings at a time reduced to a moonscape from which the smell of death at times wafted.”
“It was the most scary night. They were shelling in a very crazy way, a very intense way,” said Zaanin. “I don’t know how I managed to hold on that night. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep that night, not even one minute.” Her house shook the whole time as the skies lit up from the bombing, she added.
She left Beit Hanoun the morning after the July 25th attack while there was a temporary cease-fire, walking two kilometers with family members until they reached a place where a car could bring them to Gaza City. Asked what she witnessed on her way over to Gaza City, she painted a macabre portrait. Many homes were demolished. Other houses that weren’t demolished bore the scars of Israeli bombing; her neighbor’s roof had a hole through it. Ammunition littered the street. Cars in the street were blackened after being hit by Israeli missiles, in some cases while people were inside of them, said Zaanin.
I asked her whether her home was okay. She said that after she left Beit Hanoun, neighbors had told her that windows were broken. Her uncle’s house is damaged, and some chickens on the uncle’s farm had been killed. “But this is nothing compared to what happened to other people, so I can’t really complain,” said Zaanin, adding that Gaza City was a comparably calmer place. Still, she has had no electricity since Israeli shells hits Gaza’s sole power plant. She can only access the Internet through her phone–which is quite expensive–or when she finds journalists in the city who have an Internet connection.
Despite the destruction in Beit Hanoun and other areas of Gaza, Zaanin said the incessant Israeli shelling and bombing has not broken the people of Gaza’s spirit and desire to change their situation. “In the streets, people are pro-resistance. There is no one complaining. They are saying, ‘they are killing us, they are targeting us all the time, just go with it if it’s going to give us our rights.’” But she added, “of course people are sad about their homes, about their loved ones who already left us, about the kids who are dying….It’s not because of the resistance that this happening. people know they target us whether there is resistance or not.”
For now, all Zaanin can do is wait out this military assault from Gaza City, away from home. She wants to continue her studies. And she was supposed to start working this month. That will have to wait.
