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THE ceasefire announced between Israel and the Palestinian organisation, Hamas, does not erase the memory of the chilling and heart-wrenching images from Gaza during the 11 days of violence. Refugee camps bombarded by Israeli forces, children killed in missile attacks, buildings targeted and destroyed, people watching helplessly as bodies of family members were pulled out of the rubble and thousands left homeless and traumatised. The humanitarian crisis unleashed by Israeli aggression affected every Palestinian.
Read: The mental scars of the children of Gaza
The Israeli military onslaught against the Palestinians added another grim chapter to over 70 years of brutality and suffering inflicted on a dispossessed and displaced people by an occupying power. Palestinians have been forced out of their homeland, deprived of their land and subjected to unceasing repression, arbitrary arrests and collective punishment. They have seen entire neighbourhoods being demolished and people uprooted to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Gaza’s two million inhabitants have suffered 14 years of a blockade and cruel restrictions imposed by Israel.
Against this backdrop of historical injustice, it took only a spark for the situation to erupt in which the occupying power rained havoc but was met by resistance from people armed only with an unshakable belief in their cause. The trigger for the latest flare-up was a combination of factors — an unprovoked police assault on worshippers at Al Aqsa Mosque during Ramazan and eviction of Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem’s neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah.