Palestinian protesters attend a rally to mark the first anniversary of the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on Monday.
Zain Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images
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Zain Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images
A year after the Hamas attack, Israel continued its military campaign in Gaza, while operations in the occupied West Bank intensified.
For Palestinian civilians caught in the middle of the ongoing conflict between Israeli forces and the militant group Hamas, the consequences have been dire, and deadly.
The death toll from the Israeli offensive in Gaza has now approached 42,000 Palestinians, with another 39 deaths recorded in local hospitals, according to Gaza health authorities.
Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the United States and several other countries, has seen its control of territory in Gaza diminish over the past 12 months, leaving a political and logistical void that international aid groups have found difficult to fill.
Ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel, mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, are on hold, so for civilians in Gaza, the forced displacement that began last October, still has no end in sight.
Residents, family members and friends of those killed or taken hostage gather to mark the anniversary of Monday’s Hamas attack in Be’eri, Israel.
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In the Deir al-Balah area of ​​central Gaza, 58-year-old Abu Nidal Musleh lives in a makeshift tent, wearing inappropriate shoes.
The father of seven comes from the same area of ​​northern Gaza where civilians were once again ordered to evacuate there, and he has 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 took about 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Musleh became a teacher when he left school.
He told NPR on Monday that he felt empathy for the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas — but he blamed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the plight of both sides, and he insisted that peace can only be achieved if Israelis oust the prime minister.
“Rise against Netanyahu,” he said. “Face it – so we can have a normal relationship.”
People carry a flag-draped corpse to the grave of one of three people killed before an Israeli airstrike targeted a car in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on March 20.
Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
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Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, violence has worsened in the past year between Palestinian militants belonging to Hamas and other armed groups, and Israeli settlers and the Israeli military, which monitors the occupied territories with a wide 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, along with large-scale attacks on cities including Jenin.
In Ramallah, the largest city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, 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 October 7 one of the most important days in Palestinian history.
He said that the expectation of sacrifices made by the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank was in vain.
People hug at the home of Maayan and Yuval Bar, who were killed by Hamas, as Israel marked the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, at Kibbutz Be’eri, an Israeli communal farm on the Gaza border, on Monday.
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Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
“All this blood, all this death brought peace to Palestine,” he said. “We deserve as Palestinians to live in full freedom.”
Settler violence and Israeli military attacks on West Bank towns and villages have killed more than 730 Palestinians since the start of the war, according to combined data from the UN and Palestinian health authorities.
On Monday, a Palestinian advocacy group, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, announced that Israeli military forces had detained 45 people from Sunday night to Monday morning in the West Bank.
Rima Nazzal was also in Ramallah’s Manara Square on Friday, and said she felt worried and afraid – worried that the Israeli occupation of Palestine will grow stronger as a result of a military action after October 7 last year.
“The world says Israel has the right to defend itself,” she said. “Like saying Israel has the right to defend its occupation.”
