Children injured in Israeli airstrikes are taken to a hospital in Gaza City. Photo: MOHAMMED SALEM/REUTERS
Before the war, it was the most prestigious area in Gaza City, with bustling shops, cafes, ice cream parlors and views of the Mediterranean Sea.
Today it lies virtually in ruins after brutal Israeli bombings, a clear sign that no part of Gaza will be safe in the coming weeks and months of conflict.
The people of Rimal simply couldn't believe it when they first heard that the area had been attacked. While the Palestinian enclave has been overcrowded, blocked and beset by humanitarian crises for 16 years, middle-class Rimal has come as close as it gets to becoming Gaza City's own Islington.
Karam Maher, an 18-year-old Gaza resident, told The Daily Telegraph: «We thought the evacuation order was a rumor until an Israeli policeman called my father and told him we had to evacuate if we cared about our lives.» /p>
Speaking from an upscale hotel near Rimal, he added: “We didn't know where to go and finally decided to come to this hotel.”
“It's nice to finally find accommodation. , but it's bad because nothing feels like home. And here I also hear explosions.”
People assess damage from Israeli airstrikes in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on Tuesday. Photo: Samar Abu Eluf/New York Times
At one stage he returned to see if his building was still standing. This was the case at the time, but the same cannot be said for most of Rimal.
Massive Israeli bombing destroyed roads that were usually lined with street food vendors, destroyed apartment buildings, and damaged a mosque and a university building.
When the war broke out, Maher said it was like a surreal “dream.” But it has now «become a nightmare» even for wealthier Gazans.
Past conflicts with Hamas have included heavy bombing of Gaza but ended with the group still in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that Israel intends to destroy Hamas' military and government capabilities.
As part of the new tactic, Israel warns civilians to evacuate entire Gaza neighborhoods, not just individual buildings, and then levels large swathes with waves of airstrikes.
Israel's tone has also changed. In past conflicts, its military has insisted on the precision of strikes in the Gaza Strip, trying to stave off criticism over civilian deaths. This time, military briefings highlight the destruction taking place.
“We will not accept a reality in which Israeli children are killed,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday at a meeting with soldiers near the southern border. «I have lifted all restrictions — we will eliminate anyone who fights us and use every measure at our disposal.»
Even with evacuation warnings, Palestinians say some are unable to flee or they have nowhere to go. and that entire families were crushed by the ruins.
Israeli airstrikes hit the Al-Rimal area of Gaza. Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In other cases, the strikes come with no warning at all, survivors say.
“There was no warning or anything,” said 58-year-old Hashem Abu Manea, who lost his 15-year-old daughter Joanna when his home in Gaza City was destroyed by strikes late on Tuesday. “We sat there like civilians, dressed like everyone else.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said hospitals would run out of generators in five days. Houses unable to store so much diesel are likely to go out sooner.
A British doctor who volunteers at Gaza's largest hospital has warned that Gaza's hospitals could collapse by the end of the week if a ceasefire is declared or humanitarian aid. The corridor has not been agreed upon between Hamas and Israel.
While the US is negotiating with Israel and Egypt to secure such a corridor, it would be a huge task given the two million Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of whom are under 18.
Egypt has long restricted the flow of Gazans into its territory, even during the most violent conflicts.
Cairo, a frequent mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, always insists that both sides resolve conflicts within their borders, saying so. it is the only way the Palestinians can secure their right to statehood.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a Palestinian who moved to Britain in 1988, said Gaza hospitals were almost double capacity as Israel carried out heavy air strikes raids on a besieged enclave. They attack entire neighborhoods, sending waves of wounded people to the hospital in a stream of ambulances.
Residents survey damage in Gaza City Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
At Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital, which is located in Gaza City and is often the central point for medical care in moments of crisis, there are so many wounded that it is impossible to operate Only the most severe cases are possible, and patients die while waiting for help.< /p>
“Since I started talking to you,” he says (two minutes and 15 seconds have passed since we started talking), “I have heard three airstrikes,” Mr. Abu-Sitta said in the conversation with The Daily Telegraph on WhatsApp.
“The hospital is full of people whose lives have been completely destroyed. If the bombing does not stop or there is no humanitarian corridor, I think the Palestinian health system will collapse by the end of the week.»
Improvised bomb shelters
For those unable to stay in hotels after airstrikes, hospitals and schools, many of which are run by the United Nations, have also been turned into makeshift bomb shelters with hundreds of overcrowded hallways and classrooms.
“No place in Gaza safely. Even UN schools were attacked. It’s somehow safe here,” added Afaf al-Najjar, a 21-year-old student who also took refuge in a hotel in Gaza City.
“My best friend’s husband died, maybe in an airstrike, maybe maybe there are fragments, no one knows — she was widowed when she was a little over 20,” she added.
Aftermath of Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip Photo: Anadolu
The United Nations has confirmed that four US-controlled schools were damaged by Israeli bombing and nine UN staff were killed.
The Israeli military said , which simultaneously hit about 200 targets in Rimal and the southern city of Khan Yunis. He said the airstrikes targeted «terrorist centers» used by Hamas, including a mosque weapons cache and the home of a Hamas anti-tank defense commander.
The airstrikes were just part of a larger attack since Saturday, when the Israeli army said it had dropped 1,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip.
'I lost my father… and my pregnant wife'
Talking to reporters after the airstrike on Beitu Hanoun, one Palestinian, said he lost eight family members.
“I lost my father, brother, uncle, two cousins, two of my extended family, my pregnant wife, and I am the only survivor,” said Ala al-Kafarneh.
“We received a message to leave the city of Beit Hanoun, and we went to the beach refugee camp. They threatened the building we were in, so we went to seek refuge at a beach camp,” he said.
“But the building we were in was also under threat, so we had to move to the city Sheikh Radwan, where we stayed in an apartment. Suddenly, at about 4 o'clock in the morning, we were hit, and we don't know why, we didn't do anything, that's all.»
Humanitarian disaster
Parallel to the bombing, revenge for the Hamas massacre of Israelis killed 1,200 people, according to Oxfam, an even deeper humanitarian catastrophe looms there.
A day after Israel declared a «total siege» of the enclave, which cut off supplies of fuel, food and electricity, the Gaza Strip's only power plant failed on Wednesday afternoon.
Hospital capacity across the territory is also about to collapse, with the death toll on the Palestinian side reaching 900.
“Do you think that we won’t even be able to make sure that our relatives and friends are okay because of the power and internet outages?” said Al-Najjar, one of the students who took refuge in the hotel.
“Another friend was wounded and his mother was killed in a rocket attack. If you're lucky you'll get advance warning, if not then it's over. There is nowhere to hide in Gaza,” she said.
“The worst is coming, we are all dead.”
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