On Monday afternoon, two friends, Khaled al-Shaer, 60, and Musa Qishta, 59, were walking toward their destroyed homes in the city of Rafah near the Egyptian border with Gaza. They had gone out for a stroll to pass the time until that day’s Ramadan fast ended at sunset.
When they arrived at the Rafah Municipality Stadium in the center of Rafah, they came into view of Israeli tanks stationed near the border. The tanks opened fire.
Muhannad Qishta, Musa’s cousin, says that Musa had wanted to get closer to his home and see what had become of it.
“While they were crossing the street, the tank saw them and opened heavy fire, but it did not hit them,” Qishta told Mondoweiss. “The two men tried to escape the gunfire, so they fled to an abandoned UNRWA school nearby.”
Due to their old age, they could not run long distances, but as soon as they tried to escape, the Israeli army sent a quadcopter to chase after them.
“The army had fun killing them in cold blood,” Qishta said.
After they reached the school, the Israeli drone caught up with the two men and opened fire directly, mortally wounding them and leaving them to bleed to death in the school courtyard.
Several hours later, a search party made up of the men’s family members was dispatched to look for them when they didn’t show up in time for iftar. They found their bodies in the school. Musa Qistha, one of the murdered men, did not have children in his life, a relative told Mondoweiss. He adopted his nephew after his father was killed throughout the war, taking responsibility for his care. Now his nephew has been orphaned again.
Bloody scenes like these have returned to Gaza following the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement and Israel’s halt of humanitarian aid into the Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the ceasefire would not continue without the release of more Israeli captives, stating that there would be “no free lunch” for Palestinians.
Following the Israeli PM’s cutting off of humanitarian supplies to Gaza, Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza’s border areas witnessed a sharp increase on Sunday as the army began firing artillery shells and carrying out drone strikes across Gaza, killing four people on Sunday. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said in a statement on Monday that another five people were killed and 21 were injured.
According to eyewitness testimonies obtained by Mondoweiss, the Israeli army shelled several residential areas in Beit Hanoun, killing civilians in their homes and in displacement camps in northern Gaza. In Khan Younis and al-Bureij to the south, Israeli tanks stationed on the border have fired randomly at Palestinians on a daily basis since Sunday.
Samar Hijazi, a resident of northern Gaza, tells Mondoweiss that the shelling in Beit Hanoun took place next to her tent, which she had set up beside the remains of her destroyed home.
“When I saw the shelling in front of me, I thought the ceasefire was over and that the war had started again,” she said.
“I could not believe what I saw. The war was supposed to be over, but in one moment, we lived through it all over again,” Hijazi added. “They kill people in the streets and in their homes while they are fasting, without posing any danger or threat to anyone. Israel does not want us to live a single day of peace in our country. They want us to hate our country and leave it. But they are dreaming.”
“This war will not end so as long as this criminal occupation remains on our land,” she said.
Israel Attempting to Return Situation in Gaza “to Square One”
The most recent attacks against Palestinians in Gaza have not been the first of their kind since the start of the 42-day first phase of the ceasefire. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel has killed 121 Palestinians since the ceasefire began, marking one of Israel’s most flagrant violations of the terms of the agreement, in addition to its refusal to allow in the agreed-upon amounts of tents, prefabricated mobile homes, and heavy machinery for the removal of rubble.
Hamas said the most recent Israeli attacks aim to prevent the ceasefire from moving on to its planned second phase, which would see the start of talks over a permanent end to the war. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem in Gaza told Mondoweiss on Tuesday that the Israeli occupation is “attempting to shuffle the cards and return the situation in Gaza to square one.”
“There have been over a hundred martyrs since the ceasefire was declared, so the occupation bears full responsibility for the repercussions of this criminal behavior,” Qasem added.
Qasem’s comments come after Hamas rejected a U.S.-Israeli proposal that would essentially do away with the agreed-upon format of the original ceasefire agreement and introduce an “intermediate” phase between the first and second phases. The proposed intermediate phase would ostensibly lead to the release of half of the remaining 59 Israeli captives in Gaza, and the remaining half would be released at the end of that stage if the two parties agree to an end to the war.
“The Israeli government is trying to extend the first phase of the ceasefire and prevent moving to the second phase,” Hazem Qasem told Mondoweiss. “This clearly violates the agreement, which stipulates three interconnected phases. It is unacceptable.”
Qasem reaffirmed Hamas’s commitment to the original agreement, which would bring about a permanent end to the war and Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza.
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