What does a war with Lebanon and Iran mean for Gaza?
Displaced Palestinian artist Jamil al-Baz, paints a mural on the rubble of destroyed homes in Khan Younis expressing solidarity with Lebanon, 26 September 2024
Tareq S. Hajjaj writes in Mondoweiss on 2 October 2024:
As Iran launched a barrage of hundreds of ballistic missiles toward Israel on Tuesday night, the people in Gaza’s shelters and displacement camps flooded the streets to watch the rockets rain down in the distance. Videos on social media showed the elated crowds cheering and celebrating, elated that, for once, they weren’t the ones being bombarded, and that it seemed as if the allies of the resistance had finally come to Gaza’s aid.
These feelings were mirrored on October 8, 2023, when Hezbollah opened a “support front” for Gaza in an attempt to divert a portion of Israel’s military forces to the north. As the Israeli onslaught evolved into a genocide, people in Gaza started hoping that Hezbollah would take an even more active role and enter the war fully in order to lessen the pressure on Gaza. Those hopes turned out to be misplaced, as the goals of the support front came to be one of attrition rather than an all-out war.
For emotional reasons, Palestinians in Gaza continued to hope that the Lebanese resistance would enter the battle more fully in order to alleviate the people’s suffering and preoccupy the Israeli army.
The recent expansion of Israel’s war on Lebanon, however, has proven the exact opposite. While the army’s field presence in Gaza has been reduced, not only have the airstrikes on Gaza continued, but escalated. Over the past week, while the world was preoccupied with the events in Lebanon, the Israeli army committed horrific massacres in Gaza in complete silence, with only modest coverage from international media.
Over the past week, the Israeli army bombed displacement centers in Gaza City, Jabalia, and Nuseirat refugee camp. On September 26, the army bombed the Hafsa School in the Faluja area in northern Gaza, killing over 15 people. On September 22, the army bombed two schools in Nuseirat sheltering the displaced. A day before it, another massacre took place at the Zeitoun School in Gaza City, in which a member of Gaza’s Civil Defense held a lifeless fetus that had come out of its slain mother’s womb.