In a mournful ceremony at the cemetery of Deir el-Ballah, in central Gaza, 14 Palestinians who died in an Israeli shelling on Saturday were buried. They had left their homes in Gaza City and reached this area on the instructions of the Israeli army, hoping to find temporary shelter. Instead, members of the Agrami family clan were involved in an air force attack on a nearby house. The building where they were located collapsed and they were pulled lifeless from the rubble.
"How is it possible that the world watches unfazed by tragedies like these?" the relatives despaired. "Why doesn't Israel distinguish between Hamas' goals and ordinary people? Why kill children?" After the bombing, the odyssey continued in Shuhadei al-Aqsa Hospital. The morgue had no air conditioning and the smell of death was overpowering. The bodies had to be removed as soon as possible. This morning they were lined up in the rear parking lot of the hospital, where a short religious ceremony took place. Then the bodies were loaded onto trucks bound for the cemetery. The heartbreak and anger of the family members was uncontainable: "Why did they agree to leave Gaza City? There their home is still intact, here they met their death."
At the sight of the procession of those trucks, several evacuees began to think of turning back, with all the risks of the case. "To die for the sake of dying, better to die at home. If it still exists."
The order to evacuate the northern part of Gaza has been openly challenged by all hospitals in that area. "We do not move our patients," al-Ahli warned. The staff of two hospitals in the north of the Strip took the same attitude: "We will stay until the end." Around the al-Shifa hospital, the main hospital in Gaza, there is a climate of tension because Israel has struck nearby. A Hamas official, Yiad al-Buzum, has again dissuaded Palestinians from leaving their homes. "The enemy," he said, "deceives you." But now the anger of the people, directed primarily against Israel, does not spare Hamas either. At the funeral ceremony for those killed in Deir al-Ballah, anger suddenly exploded towards its officials: "Cursed, look at the destruction you have wrought on us."
Then in the streets of Deir el-Ballah - a place considered particularly pleasant in Gaza, an ideal destination for a family holiday in the rare moments of tranquility in the Strip - despair crept in. Finding drinking water today was a difficult task. Given the sudden crowd of thousands of people, to buy bread you have to make a reservation, pay in advance and come back the next day to pick it up. Caught in the pincers of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on the one hand and Egypt's attitude on the other, which does not open the Rafah crossing to Sinai, many seek solace in religion. Not in mosques, some of which have been hit by the air force and therefore considered dangerous. Even people who do not normally practice religion today, in the desolation of Deir el-Ballah, felt the need to associate themselves in prayer. Genuflecting in the street, under a marquee.
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