By Ali Mustafa
Al Arish, Egypt, Nov 21 (EFE).- The tragedies suffered by Gazans due to the ongoing Israeli military offensive are unimaginable, says Musa Ibrahim Abu Yazar, accompanying a relative wounded by a bombing during the war between the Islamist Hamas group and Israel.
His cousin, Hasan Nashaat Abu Yazar, is currently undergoing treatment at an Egyptian hospital, recuperating after surgeons removed shrapnel from his spine.
“The situation is extremely tragic in Gaza, in a way that no one can imagine,” Musa Ibrahim told EFE at the Al Arish public hospital, where dozens of wounded people from the Palestinian enclave have been transferred for treatment.
Hasan Nashaat was evacuated to Egypt through the Rafah Pass after doctors at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza said his surgery was not possible at the Palestinian health center.
The General Authority of Land Ports of Egypt reported that 77 vehicles, carrying 343 injured and 269 attendants, have crossed into Egypt through the Rafah crossing.
Over 1,200 aid trucks, totaling 219 tons, have crossed into Gaza.
Musa Ibrahim said they intended to return to their home in Gaza once the war ends but with a poignant twist. “Of course, I will return.”
However, he said he would not be returning to the conditions before or what followed after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 when Islamist fighters killed 1,200 people in Israel.
The Hamas border incursion sparked a new wave of Israeli bombing that has killed over 13,300 Gazans, most of them children, women, and the elderly, in the last six weeks of the war.
“The situation before Oct. 7 was very difficult,” he said, citing the tightened blockade imposed by Israel. “There is no work, and the situation became even more complicated after the operation,” referring to the Hamas strike.
He said no one from his family had spoken about their possible return to Gaza after his uncle Salah Abu Yazar passed away in the Egyptian hospital. “No information has yet arrived to transfer his body and bury it in Gaza. We still don’t know anything.”
Tarek Hamed Abu Eita, a 41-year-old from northern Gaza, is tending to his injured son, who has sustained bruises on his head and arm, at an Egyptian hospital.
Abu Eita spoke of the devastating toll his family had endured, losing his father, wife, and child in a bombing incident that struck a building adjacent to his home, causing it to collapse.
Reflecting on the conditions in the besieged enclave before Oct. 7, he asserted that it was “just as bad, if not worse than the current war.”
Describing the pre-war situation as “worse than you could imagine,” he said people struggled to find food, unemployment was rampant, and the region faced a blockade with nearly closed border crossings.
Expressing his reluctance to return to the past, Abu Eita said, “But if there is a change for the better, of course, I would want to go back. I have my home and my life there. But I don’t think anyone wants to return to the conditions that existed before.”
He blamed the ruling authority, pointing fingers at Hamas, for the dire circumstances in the Palestinian enclave, marked by injustice and a lack of job opportunities.
“In my case, I have to return because of my responsibilities,” he said, as his son lay asleep on a hospital bed. EFE
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