GAZA IN RUINS: ‘Who Has Won Here?’
In the Gaza Strip people are returning home — or to the rubble that was once their home. Many are blaming Hamas for the destruction because the militants hid among civilians and attracted Israeli fire. Yet no one dares to speak out openly.
What is left over when a person is hit by a tank shell. Blood, tissue, bone splinters, splatters on the wall.
And anger.
Mohammed Sadala’s rage is aimed at the man, whose remains he found in his bedroom: a Hamas fighter. He and a comrade broke into the home which had long stood empty after the Sadala family fled. The Hamas men shot at the approaching Israelis from the balcony. The soldiers fired back, killing the militants and destroying the house of the 10-strong family in the process.
When Sadala came back to survey the scene he found his property in ruins: the younger children’s bedroom was burnt out, while the living room and hallway were strewn with bullet holes and blackened by soot from the fire. In the bedroom lay the corpses: one had bled to death, the other was hit by a tank shell.
Beside the bodies lay the assault rifle which they had used to try to stop the tanks.
“I used to support Hamas because they fought for our country, for Palestine,” says Sadala. Hamas stood for a new start, for an end of corruption, which had spread like cancer under the moderate Fatah. In the 2006 elections Hamas won the majority with their message of change, said Sadala, who earned a living in the building business. Gesticulating wildly, the 52-year-old surveyed the ruins of the bedroom: “That is the change that they brought about. We were blasted back 2,000 years.”
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