Gaza Families Near Israeli Border Struggle to Build a Life in the Heart of a Conflict

[daring dude]

A Palestinian family broke its daylong fast for the observance of Ramadan at a United Nations school in Gaza City on Monday. CreditWissam Nassar for The New York Times

GAZA CITY — In 2008, Umm Samer Marouf fled the northern Gaza Strip under Israeli bombardments that destroyed her family’s house and strawberry fields and left her deep in debt. Now, she and her seven children have fled again, from their half-built replacement home, and wonder if it, too, will be demolished.

“They should kill us all at once or resolve this for good, not shoot at us every two years,” Ms. Marouf, 42, said Monday at a shelter in Gaza City, a United Nations elementary school where it seemed as if her whole neighborhood had moved, kite-flying children, drying laundry, family squabbles and all.

More than 17,000 Palestinian civilians have fled from areas in northern Gaza near the boundary with Israel, after the Israeli military warned of impending attacks there, part of its campaign to curb militant rocket fire from Gaza. Many of the displaced have been forced from their homes several times over six years during periodic fighting that has left families financially and psychologically depleted.

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Major Strikes So Far
Here are approximate locations of 19 major airstrikes that resulted in deaths since Israel began its air campaign on Tuesday. The Israeli military says it has struck more than 1,100 targets since it started the operation in response to waves of rockets being fired from Gaza.


By ANDREW ROSSBACK and DEREK WATKINS

Sources: Palestinian Center for Human Rights (strike locations and estimates of the number of dead); United Nations (map)
The violence only punctuates a deeper, continuing struggle, as Gazans trying to go about their lives face a set of interlocking and relentless economic and political pressures from Israel, from their own leaders’ infighting, and, recently, from new tensions between Gaza’s Hamas leadership and Egypt that have deepened Gaza’s isolation.

Now, international aid workers are warning of a new humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Gazans without water as workers refuse to repair pumping systems because several workers died in airstrikes.

At least 180 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since last week by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The attacks followed the largest and most far-reaching campaign of rocket fire into Israel yet carried out by Hamas and other Gaza militants.

No Israelis have been killed by the rockets, as most have landed in open areas or were shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, although several people have been injured and millions have sought refuge in bomb shelters.

The Gaza violence erupted after a series of escalations elsewhere: Palestinian kidnappers killed three Israeli teenagers; Israeli troops swept through the West Bank, arresting hundreds; and a Palestinian boy was beaten and burned to death in Jerusalem in an apparent revenge attack.

Ms. Marouf’s son-in-law, a father of four, lost part of a leg and suffered internal injuries in a strike on Saturday as he headed to his work at a chicken shop. That was only the latest blow to a family whose experience traces every stage of Gaza’s disappointments since 2005, when Israel unilaterally pulled out its settlements and troops, and residents briefly hoped for a new order of increased autonomy and opportunity.

Ms. Marouf grew up in the shadow of an Israeli settlement, subject, she said, to frequent security clampdowns. Her husband waited hours each day to get through security to work on Israeli farms. Then, Israel billed the pullout as the end of its occupation of the Gaza Strip, a narrow, 25-mile-long coastal territory that it seized in the 1967 war.

“We built good hopes,” Ms. Marouf said. “We want Gaza to be like any other nation, with a state, a seaport, a future for our children.”

But things only got worse. Israel never relinquished control of Gaza’s borders, airspace and waters; Palestinians consider it still occupied. Israel imposed even harsher restrictions on the movement of people and goods as militants periodically fired rockets and Hamas, which had killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, won Palestinian elections in 2006. Ms. Marouf’s husband could no longer reach Israel for work, so they invested their savings in renting land to grow strawberries.

Gaza kept sinking. Facing a boycott from Israel and the West, Hamas failed to form a government; it captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006, prompting more Israeli bombardment as Palestinian rocket attacks continued. In 2007, Hamas took over Gaza from its rival party, Fatah, by force, dividing the Palestinian Authority.

An agreement with Israel to ease its near blockade grew even more remote, making it hard for farmers like the Maroufs to export their harvests.

Then, in late 2008, came what Israel called Operation Cast Lead, involving airstrikes and an incursion into northern Gaza to destroy rocket launchers. The Maroufs fled to a United Nations school, where an Israeli airstrike killed several people; Israeli officials called it a mistake.

Ms. Marouf gave birth to her seventh child, Saja, days later. Her daughter Hadeel, then 11, and a teenage brother went home to get baby clothes, and found their house a smoking ruin, the fields burned. As they walked away, Hadeel said Monday, several neighborhood children tagged along. An Israeli tank shell killed six of them.

“One person’s insides were spilling out,” Hadeel said, reaching for her mother’s hand. Also destroyed was the house of Ms. Marouf’s married daughter, Sabeen.

“We all have childhood memories there,” Sabeen said of her mother’s house. “But the occupation killed our memories as well.”

The family lived in tents for a year, shivering at night as the wind blew under the flaps. Their only income was about $6 a month Ms. Marouf earned making cheese at a women’s factory run under a European Union aid project; even that has disappeared, the project discontinued.

They received United Nations compensation for their house, enough to build a home only half its size, Ms. Marouf said. Construction was slow because of Israeli restrictions on importing building materials. Money ran out before the house was done, but the family moved in, without furniture, which they could not afford. The children went to school in tattered uniforms.

In an Israeli assault in Gaza in 2012, the family stayed put, but last week, they cowered under the most intense bombardments they had ever heard, knowing that if wounded, they would be too frightened to go to a hospital. Ms. Marouf said that each morning, “We thank God that the day has come and we are all right.”

In the shelter, where the family sleeps on bare floors, her daughter Saja, now 5, stared gravely from her mother’s arms and played with a shekel coin. “She won’t eat,” Ms. Marouf said.

Around the corner, a building was flattened by an airstrike on Sunday, and the family is not sure whether they are safe.

Ms. Marouf blamed Israel, Hamas and Fatah for failing to achieve peace.

“We don’t hate the mujahedeen; they defend our people, ourselves, our land,” she said, using the Arabic word for holy warriors to refer to militants. “But we are the victims,” she added, “caught between the three sides.”