'All this blood, all this death': Palestinians protest Israel war with no end in sight
A year after the Hamas attack, Israel continues its military campaign in Gaza, while its operations in the occupied West Bank have expanded significantly.
For Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of the ongoing conflict between Israeli forces and the Hamas militant group, the consequences have been unremittingly difficult, and deadly.
The death toll from Israel's offensive in Gaza is now approaching 42,000 Palestinians, with another 39 deaths recorded Monday at local hospitals, according to Gaza's health authorities.
Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the United States and several other nations, has seen its control over territory in Gaza diminish over the past 12 months, leaving a political and logistical vacuum that international aid groups have struggled to fill.
Cease-fire talks between Hamas and Israel, brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, are on hold, so for civilians in Gaza, the forced displacement that for many began last October, still has no end in sight.
In the Deir al-Balah region of central Gaza, 58-year-old Abu Nidal Musleh lives in a makeshift tent, wearing mismatched shoes.
The father of seven comes from the same area of northern Gaza where civilians were once again ordered to evacuate Monday, and he's been displaced four times in the last year.
When Hamas-led fighters attacked communities in southern Israel a year ago, they killed more than 1,200 and seized about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Musleh was a teacher on his way to school that day.
He told NPR on Monday he feels empathy for the Israeli hostages held by Hamas — but he blames Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the suffering both sides have endured, and he insists peace will only be possible if Israeli citizens oust their premier.
“Rise up against Netanyahu,” he said. “Rise up — so we can have normal relations.”
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, violence has worsened in the past year between Palestinian militants and Israeli settlers and the Israeli military, which oversees the occupied territory with a vast network of checkpoints and military outposts.
Over the past few months, some of the heaviest Israeli airstrikes in decades have rocked Palestinian communities in the West Bank, killing dozens, alongside large-scale raids into cities including Jenin.
In Ramallah, the Israeli-occupied West Bank’s biggest city, dozens of Palestinians gathered in the main square Monday, waving Palestinian flags and carrying anti-occupation signs.
Basma Abu Sway said she had come to mark one year since the war in Gaza began, and called last Oct. 7 one of the most important days in Palestinian history.
She said she hopes the sacrifices made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank will not be for nothing.
“All this blood, all this death is bringing peace to Palestine,” she said. “We deserve as Palestinian people to live in complete liberation.”
Settler violence and Israeli military raids into towns and villages in the West Bank have killed more than 730 Palestinians since the beginning of the war, according to a combined count of data from the United Nations and Palestinian health authorities.
On Monday the Palestinian advocacy group, Palestinian Prisoners' Club, announced that Israeli military forces had arrested 45 people through Sunday night into Monday morning across the West Bank.
Rima Nazzal was also in Ramallah’s Manara Square Monday, and said she felt concern and fear — worried that Israel’s occupation of Palestinians would grow stronger as a result of the its military's actions after Oct. 7 last year.
“The world says Israel has a right to defend itself," she said. "As if it says Israel has a right to defend its occupation."
Anas Baba reported from the Gaza Strip. Nuha Musleh contributed from Ramallah, West Bank.
