Hamas still standing, but some Gaza districts gone

SALATIN, Gaza Strip (Reuters) – Palestinian families returned to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday but many found there was nothing recognizable left standing.

Women and children gazed around in dismay as they came in sight of Salatin, trundling slowly along on overloaded donkey carts or packed into decrepit cars, over roads ripped up by Israeli tanks and explosions.

There was a fierce battle here for high ground overlooking the city of Gaza after Israel launched a ground offensive 16 days ago against Hamas Islamists who rule the enclave.

A used Israeli army intravenous drip bag lay discarded in the road, and further on an Israeli army boot was half covered in the rubble of Nabil Sultan’s flattened house.

Houses left and right were blasted by tank and heavy machine-gun fire. Some, like Sultan’s, were pancaked by bombs from the F-16s of the Israeli airforce.

A dazed man wrapped in a blanket against the early morning chill said he simply could not find his house.

“The Israelis told us to leave our homes up here. They said it would be dangerous. Hamas fighters came and told us the same,” said Sultan.

About 45,000 Gazans took refugee in United Nations-run schools during the fighting. Nearly 1,300 Palestinians were killed and 5,300 wounded. Most casualties were civilians.

Israel lost three civilians hit by Hamas rocket fire in Israel and 10 soldiers killed in action, including four in “friendly fire” incidents. Some 50 were wounded.

Israel declared a ceasefire three days ago, matched a few hours later by Hamas. On Tuesday an Israeli gunboat patrolling offshore repeatedly fired bursts of heavy cannon, but there was no sound of return fire and no report of any fresh fighting.

Ignoring the lopsided death toll and the awful devastation inflicted on some parts of Gaza by Israel’s long-range heavy weapons, Hamas has declared victory.

One Gaza newspaper cartoon on Tuesday depicted a hand thrust up from twisted ruins, flashing a V for Victory sign.

But Hamas called the people out onto the streets to celebrate its defiance of the Jewish state, confident that thousands would heed the summons.

“THIS WAS MY HOUSE”

“We’ve won the war. But we’ve lost everything,” said the scrawny Sultan, with a thin smile. “This was my house,” he shrugged, by a pile of smashed concrete and ripped bedding.

Openly criticizing Hamas in front of foreigners is rare. Praising the Islamist group and its local leader Ismail Haniyeh is easier. “If Haniyeh is all right, then all this is nothing,” said one heavily veiled grandmother, waving an arm at the blasted landscape of her Jabalya district.

She would not give her name.

Israel said its forces were sent in to “change the reality” on the ground in Gaza, to punish Hamas and deter its militants from firing rockets into Israeli cities to the north and east of the coastal enclave.

Up on the Jabalya ridge to the east of the city, the reality is now one of total destruction. There are no buildings left standing to shelter Hamas rocket crews. No more orchards for them to hide among either. Not even a big chicken coop.

But these were homes, not forts, and now their owners are left to scavenge through the wreckage, retrieving whatever they can: mattresses, door-knobs, taps, doors, electrical switches.

The first efforts of what will be a mammoth clean-up job in these shattered districts has just begun.

Bloated corpses of dead horses and donkeys have to be collected and piles of rotting garbage removed before disease takes hold. Water and power, patchy before the war, have to be restored and impassable roads cleared of rubble and smashed cars. Shattered sewage pipes have to be uncovered and repaired.

Down in the city many streets are unscathed, apart from the targets of pinpoint bombing by the Israeli air force.

At the Taha mosque, which locals said was hit at two in the morning, only the minaret was left standing. Adjacent buildings were scarred but mainly intact. Not everyone was so lucky.

“Maybe the Israelis think the mosque is for Hamas. Maybe they think there is some guns here,” said 14-year-old Abed, accurately giving Israel’s justification for hitting religious buildings. He was sleeping nearby when the warplanes attacked.