FREE GAZA BLOG

Traffic on Sea Street, a major thoroughfare alongside Gaza’s coastline, includes horses, donkeys pulling carts, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks and cars, mostly older models. Overhead, in stark contrast to the street below, Israel’s ultra-modern unmanned surveillance planes crisscross the skies. F-16s and helicopters can also be heard. Remnants of their deliveries, the casings of missiles, bombs and shells used during the past three weeks of Israeli attacks, are scattered on the ground.

Workers have cleared most of the roads. Now, they are removing massive piles of wreckage and debris, much as people do following an earthquake.

“Yet, all the world helps after an earthquake,” said a doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. “We feel very frustrated,” he continued. “The West, Europe and the US watched this killing go on for 22 days, as though they were watching a movie, watching the killing of women and children without doing anything to stop it. I was expecting to die at any moment. I held my babies and expected to die. There was no safe place in Gaza.”

He and his colleagues are visibly exhausted, following weeks of work in the intensive care and emergency room departments at a hospital that received many more patients than they could help. “Patients died on the floor of the operating room because we had only six operating rooms,” said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan, an intensive care unit doctor who grew up in Chicago. “And really we don’t know enough about the kinds of weapons that have been used against Gaza.”

In 15 years of practice, Dr. Abuhassan says he never saw burns like those he saw here. The burns, blackish in color, reached deep into the muscles and bones. Even after treatment began, the blackish color returned.

Two of the patients were sent to Egypt because they were in such critical condition. They died in Egypt. But when autopsies were done, reports showed that the cause of death was poisoning from elements of white phosphorous that had entered their systems, causing cardiac arrest.

In Gaza City, the burn unit’s harried director, a plastic surgeon and an expert in treating burns, told us that after encountering cases they’d never seen before, doctors at the center performed a biopsy on a patient they believed may have suffered chemical burns and sent the sample to a laboratory in Egypt. The results showed elements of white phosphorous in the tissue.

The doctor was interrupted by a phone call from a farmer who wanted to know whether it was safe to eat the oranges he was collecting from groves that had been uprooted and bombed during the Israeli invasion. The caller said the oranges had an offensive odor and that when the workers picked them up their hands became itchy.

Audrey Stewart, a human rights worker, had just spent the morning with Gaza farmers in Tufaa, a village near the border between Gaza and Israel. Israeli soldiers had first evacuated people, then dynamited the houses, then used bulldozers to clear the land, uprooting the orange tree groves. Many people, including children, were picking through the rubble, salvaging belongings and trying to collect oranges. At one point, people began shouting at Audrey, warning her that she was standing next to an unexploded rocket.

The doctor put his head in his hands, after listening to Audrey’s report. “I told them to wash everything very carefully. But these are new situations. Really, I don’t know how to respond,” he said.

Yet he spoke passionately about what he knew regarding families that had been burned or crushed to death when their homes were bombed. “Were their babies a danger to anyone?” he asked us.

“They are lying to us about democracy and Western values,” he continued, his voice shaking. “If we were sheep and goats, they would be more willing to help us.”

Dr. Saeed Abuhassan was bidding farewell to the doctors he’d worked with in Gaza. He was returning to his work in the United Arab Emirates. But before leaving, he paused to give us a word of advice. “You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your country is that American people paid for many of the weapons used to kill people in Gaza,” said Dr. Saeed Abuhassan. “And this, also, is why it’s worse than an earthquake.”

Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence and can be reached at kathy A T vcnv D O T org.

“Where can I bring him a father from? Where can I bring him a mother from? You tell me!”

These are the desperate words of Subhi Samuni to Al-Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent. Subhi lost 17 members of his immediate family, including the parents of his seven-year-old grandson. Shockingly, even as I write this article, corpses of the Samuni family are still being retrieved from under the rubble — 15 days after the Israeli occupation forces shelled the two houses. The Israeli army locked 120 members of the family in one house for 12 hours before they shelled it.

Subhi’s words echo the harsh reality of all Palestinians in Gaza: alone, abandoned, hunted down, brutalized, and, like Subhi’s grandson, orphaned. Twenty-two days of savage butchery took the lives of more than 1,300 Palestinians, at least 85 percent of them civilians, including 434 children, 104 women, 16 medics, four journalists, five foreigners, and 105 elderly people.

What can one say to comfort a man who has the harrowing task of having to bury his entire family, including his wife, his sons, his daughters and his grandchildren? Tell us and we will relay your words to Uncle Subhi because his loss has made our words of condolences meaningless to our ears.

Think also of words you want to say to 70-year-old Rashid Muhammad, whose 44-year-old son Samir was executed with a single bullet to the heart in front of his wife and children. The Israeli army refused to let an ambulance pick up his corpse for 11 days so his family had to wait for the assault to stop before they could bury him. Rashid had the excruciatingly painful experience of looking at, touching, kissing, and then burying the decomposed body of his son. Tell this family how to make sense of their harsh reality — say something to make the children sleep, to ease the anguish in the father’s heart, to help the wife understand why her husband had to be taken from her.

You might prefer to talk to 14-year-old Amira Qirm, whose house in Gaza City was shelled with artillery and phosphorous bombs — bombs which burnt to death three members of her immediate family: her father, her 12-year-old brother, Alaa, and her 11-year-old sister, Ismat. Alone, injured and terrified, Amira crawled 500 meters on her knees to a house close by — it was empty because the family had fled when the Israeli attack began. She stayed there for four days, surviving only on water, and listening to the sounds of the Israeli killing machine all around her, too afraid to cry out in pain in case the soldiers heard her. When the owner of the house returned to get clothes for his family, he found Amira, weak and close to death. She is now being treated for her injuries in the overcrowded and under-resourced al-Shifa Hospital.

You can try to comfort 10-year-old Muhammad Samuni who was found lying next to the bodies of his mother and siblings, five days after they were killed. He would tell you what he has been telling everyone — that his brother woke suddenly after being asleep for a long time. His brother told him that he was hungry, asked for a tomato to eat and then died. Are there any other 10-year-olds in the world who are asked to carry this experience around with them for the rest of their lives? Of course not — this “privilege” is reserved just for Palestinian children because they were born on the land that Israel wants for itself. But it is these traumatized children who will deny Israel what it wants because their very survival is a challenge to that apartheid state. It is these same children who will surely inherit Palestine: it is their birthright and no assault can change that fact — not today, not ever.

And through it all we were subjected to Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, adamant in her defense of the world’s most “moral” army. “We don’t target civilians” she lied. “We don’t want the Palestinians to leave Gaza. We just want them to move within Gaza itself!” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert too had something to say to Palestinians in Gaza: “We are not your enemy. Hamas is your enemy.”

Amira, Muhammad, Rashid, Subhi and the more than 40,000 families whose houses have been demolished know differently. Those people who rushed to the cemetery after it was bombed and found the body parts of their dead relatives exposed to the elements know differently. They know that they were deliberately targeted because they are Palestinian. All the rest is propaganda to appease the conscience of those with Palestinian blood on their hands — those who are both inside and outside Israel.

For 22 long days and dark nights, Palestinians in Gaza were left alone to face one of the strongest armies in the world — an army that has hundreds of nuclear warheads, thousands of trigger-happy soldiers armed with Merkava tanks, F-16s, Apache helicopters, naval gunships and phosphorous bombs. Twenty-two sleepless nights, 528 hours of constant shelling and shooting, every single minute expecting to be the next victim.

During these 22 days, while morgues overflowed and hospitals struggled to treat the injured, Arab regimes issued tons of statements, condemned and denounced and held one meaningless press conference after another. They even held two summits, the first one convened 19 full days after the assault on Gaza began and the second one the day after Israel had declared a unilateral ceasefire!

The official Arab position vis-a-vis the Palestinians since 1948, with the exception of the progressive nationalist era (1954-1970) has been a lethal cocktail of cowardice and hypocrisy. Their latest collective failure to break the two-year old Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip and their lack of action to support Palestinians under brutal military assault must be questioned.

Arabs must demand answers from the spineless Arab League because there was no brotherly solidarity shown to Gazans during the Israeli assault. There was no pan-Arabism evident in their platitudes. Some, shockingly, even found it an appropriate time to blame Palestinians for the situation they found themselves in, instead of demanding that Israel stop its merciless assault.

In Gaza today, we wonder how the expressions of support for us in the streets of Arab capitals can be translated into action in the absence of democracy. We wonder whether Arab citizens of despotic regimes can nonviolently change the system. We torment ourselves with trying to discern the means that are currently available for democratic political change. With the ongoing massacre in Gaza, and the construction of an apartheid system in Palestine (in all of historic Palestine, including the areas occupied by Israel in 1967), we know that to survive, we must have the support and solidarity of our Arab brothers and sisters. We saw the Arab people rise to that challenge and stand by us for 22 days but we did not see their leaders behind them.

Archbishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” The UN, EU, Arab League and the international community by and large have remained silent in the face of atrocities committed by Apartheid Israel. They are therefore on the side of Israel. Hundreds of dead corpses of children and women have failed to convince them to act. This is what every Palestinian knows today — whether on the streets of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank or refugee camps in the Diaspora.

We are, therefore, left with one option; an option that does not wait for the United Nations Security Council, Arab Summits, or Organization of Islamic Conference to convene: the option of people’s power. This remains the only power capable of counteracting the massive power imbalance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The horror of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa was challenged with a sustained campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions initiated in 1958 and given new urgency in 1960 after the Sharpeville Massacre. This campaign led ultimately to the collapse of white rule in 1994 and the establishment of a multi-racial, democratic state.

Similarly, the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions has been gathering momentum since 2005. Gaza 2009, like Sharpeville 1960, cannot be ignored: it demands a response from all who believe in a common humanity. Now is the time to boycott the apartheid Israeli state, to divest and to impose sanctions against it. This is the only way to ensure the creation of a secular, democratic state for all in historic Palestine.

This is the only answer to Uncle Subhi’s puzzling questions: it is the only way to give his grandson a future, a life of dignity and equality, a life with both peace and justice, because like all children, he deserves nothing less.

Haidar Eid teaches English literature in Gaza City. He is also a political commentator and activist.

Medics working in the Gaza Strip have condemned Israel’s use of suspected “new weapons” that inflict horrific injuries they say most surgeons will not have seen before.

Dr Jan Brommundt, a German doctor working for Medecins du Monde in the south Gazan city of Khan Younis, described the injuries he had seen as “absolutely gruesome”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Brommundt said surgeons had reported many cases where casualties had lost both legs rather than one, prompting suspicions that the Israelis were using some form of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (Dime).

When detonated, a Dime device expels a blade of charged tungsten dust that burns and destroys everything within a four-metre radius.

Brommundt also described widespread but previously unseen abdominal injuries that appear minor at first but degenerate within hours causing multi-organ failure.

“It seems to be some sort of explosive… that disperses tiny particles… that penetrate all organs” Dr Jan Brommundt

“Initially everything seems in order… but they will present within one to five hours with an acute abdomen which looks like appendicitus but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all of their organs,” he said.”It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles at around 1×1 or 2×1 millimetres that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.”

The doctors said many patients succomb to septicaemia and die within 24 hours.

Dr Erik Fosse, a Norwegian surgeon who worked at the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, also told Al Jazeera there was a significant increase in double amputations.

“We suspect they [Israel] used Dime weapons because we saw cases of huge amputations or flesh torn off the lower parts of the body,” he said.

“The pressure wave [from a Dime device] moves from the ground upwards and that’s why the majority of patients have huge injuries to the lower part of the body and abdomen.”

Cancer fears

Fosse described the injuries as “extreme” and “much more dramatic” than those inflicted by landmines as “legs are blown off to the groin, it’s like they have been cut to pieces”.

He described them as “new injuries” that most doctors will not have come across, although he noted similar wounds were reported in the 2006 Lebanon war.Noting that Dime explosives are precision weapons that are supposed to minimise civilian casualties, Fosse said: “The problem is that most of the patients I saw were children. If they [the Israelis] are trying to be accurate, it seems obvious these weapons were aimed at children.”

Fosse called on the UN to establish a body in Gaza to monitor survivors to see if they developed cancer, following claims Dime devices contain radioactive material.

Medics and observers have also accused the Israelis of using white phosphorus - banned from use near civilians under international law - in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Human rights organisation Amnesty International (AI) said on Monday that delegates it sent to Gaza had found “indisputable evidence of widespread use of white phosphorus in densely populated residential areas in Gaza City and in the north”.

“We saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phoshorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army,” Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert touring Gaza as part of AI’s four-person delegation, said.

White phosphorus is a toxic chemical that causes severe burns and sparks fires that are difficult to extinguish.

It is dispersed in artillery shells, bombs and rockets and burns on contact with oxygen and is used to create a smokescreen to hide the movement of troops.

War crimes?

Israel fiercely denies using weapons in such a way as to contravene international law.

Major Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military, reiterated Israel was using “munitions that other militaries in the world are using” and that weapons were deployed ”according to international law” .

Pressed on the number of civilian and child casualties in Gaza, she accused Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the territory, of hiding fighters within civilian areas and using ordinary Gazans as “human shields”.

“Israelis in responsible positions, as well as Palestinians … are going to be looking over their shoulders in the days and weeks to come” Mark Taylor, international law expert

Leibovich also said the international community needed to ask itself whether Hamas and other Palestinian factions had committed war crimes by firing rockets at Israeli citizens for eight years.More than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in the 22-day offensive, many of them woman and children, and 5,340 injured. Thirteen Israelis, including 10 soldiers and three civilians, have been killed in the same period.

The number of civilian deaths has provoked an international outcry, with senior UN officials demanding an independent investigation into whether Israel has committed war crimes.

The likelihood of either side being subject to a war-crimes action seems remote as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has no jurisdiction to investigate because the Gaza Strip is not a state.

In addition, Israel has not signed the Rome Statute that enshrined the ICC so any investigation would require a UN Security mandate - likely to be vetoed by Israel’s ally, the US.

However, Mark Taylor, an international law expert, told Al Jazeera that individual commanders and politicians on both sides could be subject to legal actions lodged abroad.

“I think that Israelis in responsible positions, as well as Palestinians in responsible positions, are going to be looking over their shoulders in the days and weeks to come,” he said.

As the UN and human rights groups demand independent investigations into the conduct of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, the world’s attention is focusing on whether Israeli or Hamas officials could face prosecution for war crimes.

Whatever the inquiries find, bringing suspected war criminals to court will be far from straightforward.

There is a world of difference between establishing that war crimes have been committed, and then holding those responsible to account, says Mark S Ellis, the executive director of the International Bar Association (IBA).

“Often, people view these as the same, but they are not under international law. There is a gap … regarding the issue of accountability,” Ellis says.

Even if independent inquiries do establish that gross violations of the laws of armed conflict have taken place during the war in Gaza, the mechanisms to ensure those responsible on either side are brought to justice “simply don’t exist”.

Four options

There are four main options open to states, groups or individuals seeking to launch legal proceedings against suspects should investigators find war crimes have been committed during the 22-day assault on the Strip, Ellis says.

All four routes are fraught with complexities, particularly in relation to the Gaza conflict.

First, individual war crime cases would ordinarily be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“The ICC simply doesn’t have jurisdiction over this conflict,” says Ellis, “because Israel has not signed up to the Rome Statute [that enshrined the ICC].”

As the ICC requires states to adopt the court’s jurisdiction, it is unable to bring any actions against non-signatories itself, unless the UN Security Council votes to refer specific cases for potential prosecution.

While that happened when ICC prosecutors accused Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan - another non-signatory state - of committing war crimes in Darfur, it is unlikely to occur in relation to the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Gaza is not formally recognised as a state by the UN and “the US, and perhaps other [security council] member states, would veto any resolution that would ask for the ICC to investigate Israel,” says Ellis.

“The ICC option is effectively closed.”

The second route would be for the UN General Assembly to request an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also based in The Hague, on the legality of specific actions taken by states.

However, the ICJ has no enforcement powers, as was witnessed by its inability to act following its ruling that Israel’s construction of a separation barrier breached aspects of international law.

The ICJ requested Israel rectify elements of the construction, which Tel Aviv ignored - something any state can choose to do, Ellis notes.

Geneva conventions

The third option involves states trying their own citizens or soldiers for war crimes – a requirement under the Geneva Conventions.

“That’s unlikely to happen on both sides, but that is still a responsibility of the state, body, or entity that’s responsible for, or has authority over, the individuals who have committed these crimes,” says Ellis.

The survivors of the Israeli offensive in Gaza have slowly begun to restore a semblance of normalcy to their daily lives.

Public facilities are operating once again, the streets are being cleared, tractors are at work removing piles of rubble, power lines are being fixed and electricity and water services are being restored to homes in Gaza.

Government employees went back to work on January 21 and arrangements are being made for those whose offices have been destroyed.

Palestinian ministries are recommencing their work despite the destruction of some of their facilities.

Schools reopened on January 24 but many classes were overcrowded as they attempted to accommodate students from buildings which had been destroyed by Israeli air raids.

Meanwhile, the police have pledged to return to the streets in full uniform in a matter of days.

However, the return to a sense of normalcy in Gaza, despite the siege and threat of renewed Israeli attacks, has been slow in coming.

In the first 24 hours following the Israeli announcement of a unilateral ceasefire many Gazans exercised caution and did not venture out.

Those who did leave their homes, headed to the nearest store or moved from one home to another in order to reunite with their families; the majority stayed put and decided to wait.

The city looked and felt deserted. It was not until the next day that people began to slowly emerge and examine their immediate surroundings.

Residents of neighbourhoods that were occupied by Israeli forces during the ground offensive feared returning to their apartment buildings and houses in case the ceasefire failed to hold.

They only visited their homes in the daytime to survey the extent of the damage.

Garbage and debris

It was no small shock to see the state of destruction levelled on Gaza City. The streets were filled with garbage, rubble and debris. Pavements seemed like they had been pulled out of the ground.

The roads were strewn with overturned cars, fallen lampposts, trees, windows and bricks that had been blown out of homes.

Driving through the city centre, where several government buildings had once been, was like driving through a junkyard. Every street, every alley, every corner bears evidence of mayhem and upheaval.

While the central areas of Gaza City were badly affected, the scale of the destruction in the outlying areas and towns is incomparable.

Beit Lahya a town with orange and olive groves, factories and residential areas was laid waste.

You could not walk more than a few metres without passing a home, school, warehouse, public service building or mosque that had been flattened. In some parts of the town, entire clusters of houses had been demolished.

Other houses which were left still standing are now uninhabitable because they had their windows blown by shrapnel and artillery shells which fell nearby.

The orange groves were not spared the destruction; tens of trees had been uprooted and some fields were bulldozed - leaving no trace of local agriculture.

Human rights group Amnesty International has accused Israel of war crimes, saying its use of white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip was indiscriminate and illegal.

The accusations from the London-based organisation came as the scale of the destruction caused by the Israeli assault on the Palestinian territory overwhelmed Gazans.

Amnesty is not the first group to accuse Israel of using white phosphorus.

Human Rights Watch made the accusation on January 10 and the UN has also said Israel used the munition during its offensive in Gaza.

Donatella Rovera, a researcher with Amnesty, said: “Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza’s densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate.”

“Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime,” she said.

Ample evidence

The use of white phosphorus is not prohibited under international law, but the indiscriminate use of any weapon in an area crowded with civilians could be used as the basis to make war crimes charges, legal experts have said.

Israel said last week that all weapons used during its three-week campaign in Gaza complied with international law, but said it would carry out an internal investigation following Amnesty’s accusations.”In response to the claims … relating to the use of phosphorus weapons, and in order to remove any ambiguity, an investigative team has been established in southern command to look into the issue,” the Israeli army said.

Amnesty’s accusations are made on the basis of an on-the-ground study by Chris Cobb-Smith, a British weapons expert who visited Gaza as part of a four-person Amnesty team following the start of a ceasefire on Sunday.

Cobb-Smith said he had found widespread evidence of the use of the incendiary material.

“We saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still-burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army,” he said in a statement.

“White phosphorus is a weapon intended to provide a smokescreen for troop movements on the battlefield. It is highly incendiary, air burst and its spread effect is such that it should never be used on civilian areas.”

‘War crimes’

When white phosphorous lands on skin it burns through muscle and into the bone, continuing to burn unless deprived of oxygen.

Amnesty said that one of the places worst-affected by the use of white phosphorous munitions was the UN Relief and Works Agency compound in Gaza, which Israel shelled on January 15.

In another incident on the same day, a white phosphorus shell landed in the al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, causing a fire and forcing hospital staff to evacuate patients.

At the time, the UN had accused Israel of using white phosphorus, but the Israeli army refused to comment.

Israel faces potential claims in international courts for its actions in Gaza, where it launched an offensive against Hamas on December 27 with the stated aim of stopping the Palestinian group from firing rockets into Israel.

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, said on Monday that she was “at peace” with the actions Israel had taken during the conflict.

The Gaza Strip is a land in ruins, devastated by 22 days of Israeli assault and an ongoing siege.

It is almost a week since the end of this latest war, yet the death toll is still rising. Each day more bodies are found under the rubble.

For the survivors, at least 100,000 now find themselves homeless.

At least 21,000 commercial, public and private buildings have been damaged or levelled - almost 1,000 for every day of the war.

The cost of rebuilding is likely to run into billions of dollars, according to the UN.

The ultimate goal for the people of Gaza is to achieve an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip have gone back to school for the first time since the 22-day Israeli offensive that killed more than 1,300 people, at least 410 of which were children.

About 200,000 children returned on Saturday as the UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) reopened its 221 schools in the devastated territory.

Public schools operated by the Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip were also reopened.

Three UN schools were hit by Israeli missiles and shells during the Israeli aerial, naval and ground offensive, including one attack in Jabaliya that left more than 40 people dead.

Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from that school, said hundreds of students had gathered as Palestinians struggle to get their lives back to normal.

“A Muslim aid organisation has come and is performing songs and dance, trying to lift the spirits of the kids,” he said.

Psychological trauma

Maher Wahba, a psychologist with Muslim Aid, said that one of the first tasks would be to address the psychological trauma being suffered by children who had lost family members and friends.

“We are here to let the children act out their stress and relive what has passed during the Israeli invasion,” he told Al Jazeera.

As students filed into the courtyard of Asma elementary school in Gaza City for the first time since the Israeli offensive began, they were greeted by a bleak reminder of the violence that left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands injured.

A hole punched by an Israeli rocket scarred the courtyard latrine and blood soiled the wall beside it.

Asma is one of over 600 schools in Gaza - most of which reopened on January 24 - that is today facing a large number of post-war operational challenges.

Educators across the Gaza Strip are now considering whether to reschedule exams which were abandoned when Israel began bombing the territory on December 27.

Teachers are also faced with the task of teaching in rooms which had served as shelters for dozens of refugees.

During the course of the Israeli air, ground and sea assaults on Gaza there has been a considerable shift in the nature of the offensive.

The aerial and ground attacks have risen in volume and ferocity and have shifted focus from civil security offices, public service buildings and mosques, to random bombardment of entire neighbourhoods, empty fields within the periphery of these neighbourhoods and vacated or partially vacated buildings.

Now, Israeli forces have taken to directly targeting and destroying residential buildings and homes, civilian cars transporting entire families and schools that provide shelter for the thousands of displaced families in the Gaza Strip.

‘Tomorrow never comes’

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) schools turned shelters have provided cover from the rain and cold for many displaced Gazans but they have failed to provide protection from Israeli missiles.

Although 45 people were killed when a UN school in the northern city of Jabaliya - where 350 Gazans were taking shelter - was hit, those that survived have had little option other than to remain living in the building.