With World’s Attention Shifting, Some in Gaza Fear They Will Be Forgotten

With World’s Attention Shifting, Some in Gaza Fear They Will Be Forgotten

Even as Israel signals that it is moving its focus to its northern border with Lebanon, there has been no pause to its bombardment in Gaza, where residents are facing another winter with little access to food or shelter.

• Share full article

By Raja Abdulrahim

Reporting from Jerusalem

After nearly a year of war, fear marks everyday life for Palestinians in Gaza. There is fear of the Israeli warplanes that tear through the skies and carry out deadly airstrikes. There is fear of famine with only a trickle of aid coming in. There is fear of being displaced, yet again, by Israeli evacuation orders.

And now, there is increasing fear of being forgotten.

International attention has been diverted, first by deadly Israeli military raids into Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank this month, and this week by coordinated attacks against the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s leaders have increasingly signaled that they intend to shift their focus from the Gaza Strip to their northern border with Lebanon, in what the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, described this week as a “new phase of the war.”

But the war it is already waging in Gaza has not gone away. Israel, which says it wants to eradicate the armed group Hamas that led the Oct. 7 attack, has not stopped its airstrikes or ground attacks.

And some Gazans worry that the already sputtering efforts to reach a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas will be sidelined as tensions rise in other areas of the Middle East.

“Unfortunately, people see the attention going to the West Bank or Lebanon,” said Muhammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who has been forced to flee numerous times. “We don’t know what is going to happen here. It’s not just depression or misery. It’s a catastrophe in a terrifying way, and the situation is getting worse all the time.”

He played a brief clip that showed him and his family fleeing recently in the back of a truck, his sunburned face covered in sweat. “The displacement,” he said, letting the camera take in a road packed with people fleeing by vehicle and donkey carts, is “the worst thing people can live through.”

With humanitarian access restricted, about 96 percent of the population in Gaza still faces high levels of acute food insecurity, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a partnership of U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups, reported this month.Nearly half a million people are facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, meaning families are suffering from an extreme lack of food and face starvation, the group reported.

A separate coalition of aid groups working in Gaza analyzed recent data on aid entering the territory and said that Israel has “systematically blocked” entry of food, medicine, medical supplies, fuel and tents since the war began.

The organizations’ analysis found that as a result of the Israeli government’s restrictions on aid, 83 percent of the food Gazans need is not getting in. Gazans have gone from having an average of two meals a day earlier in the war to just one every other day, the group reported.

COGAT, an Israeli Defense Ministry body that implements government policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, did not respond to a request for comment on the aid groups’ report.

In August, an average of only 69 humanitarian trucks entered Gaza each day, well below the average of 500 trucks, including those carrying commercial goods, before the war, according to the United Nations.

Some 1.87 million people are in need of shelter, with at least 60 percent of homes damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations.

“With the onset of the winter season, any gust of wind sends all the tents flying because they are all just blankets,” Mr. Al-Masri said. “If we human beings have collapsed, we are tired, we are falling apart, how is a tent going to stay together for an entire year?”

Just a few months ago, Gazans followed every new development in cease-fire negotiations. But now, people have given up hope.

“We wake up and go to sleep, and the airstrikes don’t stop,” aid Rawoand Altatar, who lives with her parents in Gaza City. “Additionally, there’s little food and little water and spread of diseases. People walk through the streets talking to themselves.”

But Ahmed Saleh, a 44-year-old civil servant in Gaza City, said it didn’t matter if the international community shifted its attention elsewhere, because for nearly a year “the world did nothing for Gaza.”

Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.

Our Coverage of the Middle East Crisis

• Device Attacks in Lebanon: A day after pagers exploded across Lebanon, a second wave of deadly blasts rocked the country, as hand-held radios carried by Hezbollah members blew up.
• Israel’s Audacious Attack: What did Israel’s device attacks in Lebanon accomplish, and what did they cost? “The Daily” explains.
• Chaos Inside Hezbollah: The attacks targeting Hezbollah’s devices caused thousands of injuries, piercing the group’s rank and file and raising questions about how it will respond.
• Hamas’s Future in Gaza: One of Hamas’s most senior officials said in an interview that the militant group expects to play a decisive role in the enclave when the war with Israel is over.
• A Struggle to Celebrate: Since the Oct. 7 attacks and the start of the war in Gaza, marking major holidays has been completely upended for three religions in the region.