One year on, Gazans express that the war has left them feeling like “bodies without souls.”

A sense of despair grips many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, enduring dire humanitarian conditions after enduring 12 months of Israel’s bombardment of the enclave.
“We have spent a year at war,” said Abdallah Hmeida, a cancer patient who was displaced from Beit Lahia, in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah. Hmeida stated that he had lost his parents, his brother, and his sisters in the conflict.
“It’s torment. We don’t know where to go, and we’re living in tents,” said Nabila Shunnar, a displaced woman from Sheikh Radwan. She mentioned that she has spent the last year in fear, terror, hunger, and tragedy.
Residents of Gaza did not expect the fighting to last for a year and some now worry it may be endless, as they see no concrete efforts to establish a ceasefire.
Some residents have been waiting for months for the war to end so they can bury their dead or retrieve their remains. Um Fadi, a displaced woman from northern Gaza who now shelters in Deir al-Balah, said she has lost hope in the world’s ability to act in the face of the bloodshed. Living in tents with her husband and five children, Fadi fears the coming winter, saying her family has no clothes to shelter them from the cold.
For Gazans, it has been 365 days of suffering, poverty, hunger, disease, instability, and lack of security,” she said. “We are souls without bodies,” she added.