War in Gaza leaves thousands displaced

Palestinians in Gaza have begun picking through the rubble after days of Israeli airstrikes reduced hundreds of buildings to rubble.

Ramez al-Masri's house was destroyed on Wednesday less than four years after he moved in with his family in 2017. Previously he had spent three years living in rental houses and caravan-trailer shelters after the 2014 Gaza war.

Now al-Masri and the 16 people who lived in the house in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun are scattered at relatives' homes, uncertain about how long they will remain homeless this time.

At least 1,000 houses were destroyed and thousands others sustained damage during an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers, the fourth in more than a decade. A cease-fire was agreed on Thursday.

The destruction is less extensive than after the 50-day war of 2014, in which entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble and 141,000 homes were either wiped out or damaged.

However, rebuilding pledges have yet to gain the same momentum seen in the wake of the 2014 cease-fire, when international donors pledged $2.7 billion to reconstruct the war-battered enclave.

Ramez said it was around 3:00 a.m. Wednesday when a phone call from Israel came to a resident of the neighborhood, warning them to leave their homes ahead of bombing.

The 39-year-old said they did not know which one of the seven buildings that his extended family lived in would be targeted. He was astonished that the air-strike hit the two-floor home where he lived with his eight children, brother's family and mother.

"If we knew someone is wanted, we would not have stayed here from the outset," he said, in dismissal of Israeli justification that air-strikes have been targetted at Hamas militants and their infrastructure. Ramez has a grocery shop on the street and said neither he nor his brother living in the same house has anything to do with militant groups.

The airstrike reduced the house to a crater, which is now filled with murky water after the bombing damaged water and sewage pipelines.

The rest of the adjacent homes were also badly damaged. Walls were blown up, exposing the colorful interior decorations of the living and bedrooms. The blast was so powerful that it has rendered most of the houses irreparable as the supporting concrete pillars have tilted.

A mobile pump was deployed to suck the filthy water out of the area as bulldozers worked to reopen lanes clogged by rubble. City workers were also seen removing damaged power lines, but there was no sign of an effort to clear all of the rubble as families wait for crews to visit and assess the damage.

"Now I hope that donors and international figures and rights organizations to stand by us, try to help us so we can rebuild quickly," Ramez said.

The damage also hit the house of Nader al-Masri, a long-distance runner who participated in dozens of international competitions. Since he lost his house in the 2014 war, Nader, 41, has taken the second of his family's three-floor home.

The third and the first floors sustained heavy damage. The room containing dozens of cups, medals and awards that Nader has collected through his 20-year stint as a runner was damaged, but most of the awards remained intact.

Nader is familiar with suffering, having experienced home demolitions in three of the four Hamas-Israel wars.

"I had over 150 cups (and trophies). In each of the previous wars, I lose a cup, two, three. There were also 20 glass awards. All of them were broken and those are the remaining ones. Each war, the number drops," he said, showing a medal from Beijing 2008 Olympics.

As a runner from 1998 to 2018, Nader has been the subject of news reports, particularly after Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza since 2007 to isolate Hamas. The blockade has often prevented him from traveling for outside marathons. At best, he arrives at the running track at the last minute.

Nader, now a coach with the Palestinian Athletics Federation, has moved his five children to their uncle's house, for now. The ceiling of his daughters' bedroom has cracked; the bright layers of paint have fallen off, exposing the gloomy, dark plaster. School backpacks lie on the ground among shards and debris.

"I spent 10 days at my home safely, without any worry. I'm not a fighter of a politician. I'm an athlete and have nothing to do with politics," he said of his time during the war before he received the warning call at dawn.

"Things are difficult because we can not build a home every day," he added.

Gaza is still recovering from the war, which killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children and 39 women, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Israel says more than 200 of the dead were militants. Hamas and other militant groups are yet to announce the full lists of their members killed in the fighting.

On Sunday morning, hundreds of municipal workers and volunteers started a one-week campaign to clear rubble from Gaza's streets.

The work began outside a high-rise building that was flattened by Israeli warplanes during the early days of air-strikes on Gaza, with workers loading rubble into donkey carts and small pickup trucks. Outside one of the destroyed government buildings, more than a dozen donkey-drawn carts stopped, with children collecting rubble, cables and whatever recyclable leftovers they can sell.

For Ramez, the only option is to wait for rebuilding, or at least a payment that would allow him to rent a house.

"My children are scattered; two there, three here, one there; things are really very difficult," he explained. "As long as there is occupation, there is a plight. Don't expect from the occupation anything other than disaster, strikes, and death. We live in death everyday as long as there is an occupation."