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GAZA CITY: With no shoes to protect their tiny dust-covered feet, Hiam Muqdad’s grandchildren toddled unfazed through the bombed-out ruins of their Gaza City neighborhood in search of clean water.
Clutching large black buckets and their grandmother’s hand, the infant trio seemed not to notice the scars left by two years of war, barely registering the enormous piles of rubble, warped metal and toppled buildings lining their path.
Muqdad, 62, told AFP she went out every morning with the children to search for water, sometimes finding enough for a few days and sometimes not at all.
“Children no longer say ‘I want to go to nursery or school’ but rather ‘I want to go get water or food or a food parcel’,” she said. “The child’s dream is gone.”
“In the past they used to go to the park but today children play on the rubble.”
Reaching a mound of broken breeze blocks, the children, whose parents live in the southern city of Khan Yunis, diligently scrambled for scraps that could be used to make a fire.
Torn pieces of cardboard, a discarded milk carton, a plastic bottle and a few thin twigs made up the haul.
Fuel secured, the group began their walk back through the hazy ruins to their makeshift home.
- ‘Tear of joy, tear of sadness’ -
Muqdad lost both her house and relatives during the gruelling war between Israel and Hamas, which flattened vast swathes of the Palestinian territory and displaced most of its population at least once.
After the US-brokered ceasefire came into effect on October 10, the family returned from the south to the Al Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City to pitch a tent in the rubble of their ruined home.
“When they said there was a truce, oh my God, a tear of joy and a tear of sadness fell from my eye,” Muqdad said, recalling those she had lost.
The war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, has killed at least 68,519 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run government’s health ministry that are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Muqdad’s house was entirely destroyed by a bulldozer, she said, explaining that afterwards she “couldn’t even find a mattress in it.”
Sheets of battered corrugated metal mark out the small patch of sand the family now calls home, forming an island of life in the ruins.
Outside, the street is flattened, and only the skeletons of collapsed buildings remain.
Early each morning, with the sun still low in the sky, Muqdad emerges from the family’s igloo-shaped tent to set about instilling order into the chaos of displacement.
Sitting in front of a large Palestinian flag, she delights in showing her grandchildren the pasta they are going to cook on an open fire.
While she said it is enough to satisfy their hunger, Muqdad lamented that she “cannot buy vegetables or anything because we do not have cash and no income.”
Israel repeatedly cut off supplies into Gaza during the war, exacerbating dire humanitarian conditions.
The World Health Organization said on Thursday there had been little improvement in the amount of aid going into Gaza since the ceasefire, and no observable reduction in hunger.
- ‘Bring life back’ -
After two years of war, Gaza’s public services are crippled and the territory is buried under more than 61 million tons of debris, according to UN data analyzed by AFP. Three quarters of buildings have been destroyed.
“We want to remove all the rubble,” Muqdad said, adding the destruction was particularly affecting the children’s mental health.
In the watery sunlight, the young children milled around on large mats spread out on the sand, sometimes passing the time sitting on upturned buckets.
After returning from their trip to collect fire material and water, Muqdad sat on the floor to begin washing the family’s clothes by hand in a large metal vat.
But as evening fell, the family’s thin foam mattresses were brought back into the tent and the day’s activities halted as darkness descended.
“I light a candle because I don’t have electricity or a battery or anything,” Muqdad said.
Despite the suffering and severe lack of daily essentials, Muqdad said she still held out hope that things could get better.
“We want to bring life back even a little, and feel that there is hope.”

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday that Israel would seek no approval to strike targets in Gaza or Lebanon, despite agreeing to ceasefires.

“Israel is an independent state. We will defend ourselves by our own means and we will continue to determine our fate,” Netanyahu told a meeting of government ministers.

“We do not seek anyone’s approval for this. We control our security,” he said, following a week of visits by a parade of the highest level US officials seeking to consolidate the ceasefire in Gaza.

Israeli forces carried out a “targeted strike” on an individual in central Gaza who was planning to attack Israeli troops, Israel’s military said on Saturday. A US-backed ceasefire is in force between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas just over two years since the war in the Gaza Strip began, but each side has accused the other of violations.

Israel said it had targeted a member of Islamic Jihad. On Sunday, the Palestinian militant group said in a statement that the Israeli military’s claim of a planned attack by the group was a “mere fallacious allegation.”

It did not say whether one of its members was killed in the Israeli strike.

Witnesses said they had seen a drone strike a car and set it ablaze. Local medics said four people had been wounded, but there were no immediate reports of deaths.

Witnesses said separately that Israeli tanks had shelled eastern areas of Gaza City, the Gaza Strip’s biggest urban area. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Several Israeli media sites said Israel, in a reversal of a policy of barring entry to foreign forces, had allowed Egyptian officials into the Gaza Strip to help locate the bodies of hostages taken captive in the Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, that triggered the war.

As part of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas has said it will return all the hostages it abducted, but the remains of 13 are still in the enclave.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.