A mood of despair consumes many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who live in dire humanitarian conditions, having endured 12 months of Israeli bombing of the Strip.
“We spent a year in the war,” Abdullah Hamida, a cancer patient displaced from Beit Lahia, told CNN in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. Hamida added that he lost his parents, brother and sisters in the conflict.
“It is torture. We do not know where to go and live in tents.”
Nabila Shinar, a displaced person from Sheikh Radwan, said she spent the past year “in fear, terror, hunger and tragedy.”
Gazans told CNN they did not expect the fighting to last a year, and some now worry it may be endless, as they see no concrete efforts to strengthen the ceasefire.
Some residents say they waited months for the war to end so they could bury their dead or recover their remains.
Umm Fadi, a woman displaced from northern Gaza and now taking refuge in Deir al-Balah, said she had lost hope in the world’s ability to act in the face of bloodshed. Fadi lives in tents with her husband and five children, and fears the coming winter, saying that her family does not have clothes to protect them from the cold.
For Gazans, it has been 365 days “of suffering, poverty, hunger, disease, instability and insecurity,” she told CNN.
She added: “We are bodies without souls.”
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