For the fifth day in a row, the Israeli army continues its extensive military operation in the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City, with Palestinian fighters putting up a stiff resistance. Black smoke billows into the sky of the neighbourhood as a result of indiscriminate Israeli attacks on hundreds of remaining Palestinian homes in Shujaiya, according to locals in the territory......See Full Story>>.....See Full Story>>
Speaking to The New Arab, residents in the area spoke of how the Israeli army “insists on destroying” what remains of their neighbourhood, is not achieving its so-called goal (of destroying Hamas), and rather is seeking “to end what remains of life in the area and to prevent Palestinians from returning and living there.”
On 27 June 2024, the Israeli army launched a surprise ground military attack on Shujaiya despite Israeli forces withdrawing from northern Gaza in January after having claimed to have “dismantled” Hamas’s command structure.
The new operation is the third since the beginning Israel’s war on the besieged coastal enclave. The Israel army claims it is eliminating tunnels “that were missed during the first time through”. It also admitted that Hamas is regrouping.
Prior to the attack, the Israeli army issued evacuation orders which led to the displacement of thousands of Palestinians from the area, while others were trapped inside their homes amid indiscriminate artillery shelling.
‘Survive with my family or we all die’
The family of Mohammed al-Batniji was among dozens of families stranded inside their homes and were only able to escape after days of terror. “Suddenly and without any warning, we heard the sounds of violent shelling around our house without knowing what was happening […] At first, I thought that our house was targeted, but then, we heard the sounds of people fleeing everywhere,” the 55-year-old father of nine said to TNA.
Like his neighbours, al-Batniji tried to escape to protect his family, but Israeli tanks surrounded their street in the neighbourhood. This forced him and his family to seek refuge in one of the rooms of his house for fear of being killed by the Israeli army.
“We lived through days of real terror […] We heard the sounds of tanks moving and shelling everywhere, and the sounds of explosions resulting from that shelling. No one can imagine what we were feeling,” he said.
During this siege, when al-Batniji looked into his children’s eyes, he felt afraid for them. “The most difficult moment I experienced was when I imagined how the army would kill my children in front of my eyes, as happened with the others,” he recalled.
Al-Batniji’s family remained trapped for three consecutive days before the shelling in their street subsided, and he was able to see one of his neighbours sneaking out of his house to escape. “I decided to take a risk like my neighbour because we had no other option […] Death is everywhere and the chances of survival are few. I had to try to escape, either I survive with my family or we all die,” he said.
Using a low voice, the man asked his family to follow him without taking anything with them. They moved between the neighbourhood’s alleys and narrow streets for more than an hour before they were able to reach the Zahra area nearby.
“As soon as we reached the outskirts of the Daraj neighbourhood, we hid with a Palestinian family […] They gave us water and tried to calm us down, and we ended up spending the night with them,” he noted.
Due to the intensity of Israel’s shelling, al-Batniji and the family that hosted him fled to one of the UNRWA schools in the west of the city until the end of the military attack on the area.
‘They killed everything in our lives’
Inside the school, dozens of Palestinian families who fled Shujaiya gather to talk about the horrors they witnessed during the Israeli invasion.
Hadeel Habib, a Palestinian woman who miraculously escaped with her three children from Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment.
“The situation was relatively calm before the invasion, and we did not expect for a single moment that the army would return to our area,” the young woman said to TNA.
Habib returned to her destroyed home a month ago after displacement and moving from one school to another since October.
“Because of the war, I lost my husband, my three brothers, and my father, and I have no one left,” she says. “They [the Israelis] killed everything in our lives, and we do not know what to do or how to survive.”
Both Habib and Batniji hope that the war will end soon, and perhaps can set the stage for a new beginning for the Palestinians to rebuild their lives despite the massive destruction Israel caused.
According to Israeli media reports, Israel’s latest ground invasion of Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighbourhood is expected to last for weeks.
A report from Israel’s Jerusalem Post said the army would need “years” to dismantle the Gaza tunnel system, adding that the military has not been given enough time for the task.
The Israeli army claims to have killed several fighters and conducted raids over the past 24 hours, while its air force has targeted alleged Hamas infrastructure sites. But it has provided no evidence, and TNA cannot verify these claims.
Shujaiya: a ‘deathtrap’ for Israel
Shujaiya has long been considered to be a hotbed of Palestinian resistance against Israel, with the army taking significant losses in the area in the current conflict and during previous wars. Notably, ten Israeli soldiers were killed in a series of ambushes by fighters from Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigade, giving it a reputation as a “deathtrap” for Israeli forces.
The neighbourhood is at the site of the Tell Al-Muntar hill, which has historically been known to give the area a military advantage due to its commanding views and strategic access to the whole of Gaza City.
Since mid-March, Israeli forces have conducted four military operations in northern and central Gaza, including Al-Shifa Hospital, Jabalia and Nuseirat—all under the pretext of “destroying Hamas”.
The army has also pushed deeper into western and central Rafah in the south, which Israel had claimed was a “safe zone” for Palestinians escaping the north.