Aya Al-Ghazzawi: After the nightmare of the Gaza massacre, what comes next?
We were all so excited. Ramadan was coming to an end, and preparations for the Eid al-Fitr holiday were underway. As the eldest daughter in my family, my parents sent me shopping with my sisters for new clothes for Eid, while my father went out to bring ingredients for sumaqiyya and feseekh. Meanwhile, Israel was undergoing its ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at 28 Palestinian families – 500 Palestinians – in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, intending to replace them with Israeli settlers. It didn’t stop there. Following protests in Jerusalem, Israeli occupation forces stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque and brutalised worshippers.
Here in Gaza, resistance forces retaliated. Israel collectively punished the two million Palestinians in Gaza with heavy bombardments and indiscriminate airstrikes. Instead of celebrating Eid, we spent 11 days terrified by warplanes and drones hovering overhead at low altitudes, devastating Gaza...