Gaza City \u2013<\/strong> Near a burned-out car that had been targeted in front of their home, Faiq Ajour stood with other family members cleaning up scattered debris and shattered glass.<\/p>\n Faiq had been on his way to buy a few items from a nearby vegetable stall when the Israeli strike hit on Saturday.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cI survived by a miracle. I had just crossed the street,\u201d he told Al Jazeera. The Palestinian described his shock \u2013 and his fear that it was his house that had been hit by the Israeli attack.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t the case, and as he ran back towards the scene, he found his family, physically unharmed. But his three young daughters shook with fear, worried that Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza \u2013 which was supposed to have been suspended after the introduction of a ceasefire in October \u2013 had returned.<\/p>\n Israel has repeatedly attacked Gaza since that ceasefire began, accusing the Palestinian group Hamas of ceasefire violations. Hamas denies that, and Palestinians point out that it is Israel that has used overwhelming force since the ceasefire began, violating it 500 times, and killing more than 342 civilians, including 67 children.<\/p>\n The five killed in Gaza City\u2019s al-Abbas area, where Faiq lives, were among 24 killed on Saturday across the Gaza Strip by Israel.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a nightmare, not a ceasefire,\u201d Faiq said. \u201cIn a single moment after some calm, life turns as if it\u2019s a war again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou see body parts, smoke, shattered glass, killed people, ambulances. Scenes we still haven\u2019t healed from and that haven\u2019t left our memories.\u201d<\/p>\n Faiq, 29 years old and originally from eastern Gaza City\u2019s Tuffah neighbourhood, has suffered immensely during the war. He described losing 30 members of his extended family in February 2024, including his parents and his brother\u2019s children, after an Israeli strike on a house they were all staying in. The strike severely injured his wife, forcing doctors to amputate one of her fingers.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother and father were killed, my brother\u2019s son, my aunt, my cousins \u2026 the whole family was gone,\u201d Faiq recalled.<\/p>\n Faiq has since moved his family across Gaza City and to central Gaza to escape Israeli forces, all in search of \u201ca safety that doesn\u2019t exist\u201d, as he puts it.<\/p>\n Since October, he has been trying to adapt to what he calls \u201cthe so-called ceasefire\u201d, but says there is still no safety.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery few days, there\u2019s a wave of bombardment and targeted strikes, and everything is turned upside down without warning.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are exhausted,\u201d he added. \u201cLife in Gaza is 99 percent dead, and the ceasefire was just 1 percent of an attempt to revive it. But we have lost hope in everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Faiq used to work with his father in the clothing trade, but the war has meant that they have lost everything. He can\u2019t reach his home, which is inside what Israel terms the \u201cyellow line\u201d, under total Israeli control, with access for Palestinians heavily restricted.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no construction there, no work, no infrastructure, no life, and no safety,\u201d Faiq said. \u201cSo, where is the end of the war?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cToday I just sit at home 24 hours a day, and there\u2019s no sign of life,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019re surviving on bitterness \u2026 We\u2019re not just frustrated. We\u2019re in a catastrophe. Let us live \u2026 let us reopen our shops \u2026 reopen the crossings \u2026 let us live our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n The question of what comes next in Gaza continues to be endlessly debated, both inside and outside of the Palestinian enclave.<\/p>\n United States President Donald Trump\u2019s 20-point\u00a0plan\u00a0for<\/span> Gaza now calls for a transitional technocratic government, made up of \u201cqualified Palestinians and international experts\u201d, all under the supervision of an international \u201cboard of peace\u201d, to be headed by Trump himself.<\/p>\n The plan also talks about an economic development strategy and an international stabilisation force, all designed to signal that stability and progress are on the cards for Gaza.<\/p>\n But the details are still unclear, particularly as the US and Israel reject any future role for Hamas, and the sheer amount of devastation left behind by Israel in Gaza, meaning that a rebuild of the territory will take years.<\/p>\n Israel itself is also unwilling to fully commit to an end to the war, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under pressure from his far-right political allies.<\/p>\n Ahed Farwana, a Palestinian political analyst and a specialist in Israeli affairs, believes that Israel wants the current state of limbo in Gaza to continue and avoid moving on to the reconstruction of the Strip.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Israeli occupation is working to entrench a situation similar to what is happening in southern Lebanon by escalating matters every now and then and through continuous assassinations,\u201d said Farwana.<\/p>\n Israel agreed to a ceasefire with the Lebanese group Hezbollah in November 2024 after a one-year conflict that saw most of the latter\u2019s leadership killed. However, since then, Israel has continued to periodically attack Lebanon, including on Sunday, when a Hezbollah military commander was killed in Beirut, and at least 13 people were killed in an attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on November 18.<\/p>\n Farwana believes that Israeli attacks in Gaza are not merely a military tactic, but part of a long-term vision to perpetuate chaos and avoid any upcoming political obligations.<\/p>\n \u201cNetanyahu does not want to move to the second phase,\u201d the analyst told Al Jazeera, referring to the next phase of the ceasefire, where sensitive topics such as the reconstruction and administration of Gaza would be addressed. Instead, he thinks that Israel plans to expand the area under its control \u201cto seize as much land as possible from the Gaza Strip so that it has the upper hand in any future arrangements\u201d for the enclave.<\/p>\n Many observers believe that Netanyahu\u2019s desire to avoid moving forward with the ceasefire deal is partly the result of domestic political calculations.<\/p>\n With Israeli politics divided more by whether a politician\u2019s stance is for or against Netanyahu, rather than left or right, the prime minister knows that a fall from power could spell the end of his political career and lead to investigations into his role in the failures that allowed for the October 7 attack. He currently faces multiple trials for corruption, a legal process that would likely speed up should he lose the upcoming elections, expected sometime before October 2026.<\/p>\n But despite the Netanyahu government\u2019s evasion tactics when it comes to the ceasefire, Farwana says it is unlikely that the scale of Israel\u2019s attacks in Gaza will return to what they were before the implementation of the agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are significant pressures, especially from the US administration,\u201d said Farwana. \u201cDonald Trump wants his plan \u2013 the so-called [board of peace], stability forces, and other components \u2013 to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe situation will remain limited to expanding the yellow zone and to ongoing targeted attacks every now and then. It may expand gradually, but not to the point of returning to square one.\u201d But that state of limbo, Farwana said, means that the people of Gaza will ultimately not be able to feel \u201cany real calm\u201d.<\/p>\n It is a situation Raghda Obeid, a 32-year-old mother of four, knows all too well.<\/p>\n She has already been through endless cycles of displacement, and her home in the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City is completely destroyed. Now, what terrifies her the most is that the war will return.<\/p>\n Raghda is currently living with her family in a tent in western Gaza City. An Israeli strike hit the area last week.<\/p>\n \u201cThe moment of the last strike was terrifying, just like the first day of the war,\u201d Raghda said, recounting how her children were terrified.\u00a0\u201cWe could see the smoke from afar, people were running and screaming in the streets, carrying the killed and their torn bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was also terrified. I\u2019m an adult, and I was scared. I said, \u2018That\u2019s it, the war is back, and it\u2019s our turn now,’\u201d she added with a sad smile.<\/p>\n Like most of the population of Gaza, Raghda and her family are at the mercy of aid organisations, relying on them for food, with few opportunities for work available.<\/p>\n The reality is that they will be living in a tent for the foreseeable future, including during the winter, and the harsh weather it will bring.<\/p>\n Each day, Raghda and her husband\u2019s mission is to find food and fetch water. Their children run from place to place looking for a community kitchen to secure a meal.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know what is expected of us. It\u2019s been more than two years, and we are entering the third, displaced and broken like this. Isn\u2019t there any solution for us?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have no income,\u201d Raghda said. \u201cOur life is nonexistent. We live off the community kitchen and water. Our life is a war without an actual war.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gaza City \u2013 Near a burned-out car that had been targeted in front of their home, Faiq Ajour stood with other family members cleaning up scattered debris and shattered glass. Faiq had been on his way to buy a few items from a nearby vegetable stall when the Israeli strike hit on Saturday. Recommended Stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/873A8043-1764111775.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Lost hope in everything\u2019<\/h2>\n
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No second phase<\/h2>\n
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Internal motives<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"