Palestinian and Israeli citizens have related their experiences of the new war raging in the Holy Land.
Guerrillas from the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a massive rocket attack on Southern Israel before out from the besieged Gaza Strip on Saturday, wiping out several Israel Defense Forces (IDF) outposts. They captured nearby towns, taking more than a hundred Israeli troops, police officers, and civilians prisoner.
More than a thousand Israelis have been killed so far in five days of fighting, including women, children, and young people at a dance music festival held on the edge of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Hamas during the weekend, ordering that electricity and water supplies to Gaza be cut off and for the IDF to begin round-the-clock bombing of the enclave, home to more than two million people, in preparation for a ground invasion.
Issa Amro told Sputnik that residents of the Israeli-occupied West Bank where he lives have been suffering heightened violence and oppression from the IDF and Jewish settlers since the latest outbreak of fighting.
"As Palestinians, we are suffering a lot. All checkpoints are closed. Palestinians are not able to visit each other in different cities and different communities. In Hebron, where I live, the 22 checkpoints are closed," Amro said. "The soldiers shoot live ammunition at any Palestinians who try to move or to get food. Many Palestinians don't have enough food. Me, personally, I don't have enough food in my house now."
The human rights defender said that when he ventured out to buy food on Saturday, he was arrested by IDF troops and settlers, held for 10 hours, and tortured. He was blindfolded, gagged, and handcuffed so tightly that his hands were still numb days later, and he was still unable to hold anything and his eye was injured.
"It's not about Gaza. It's not about Hamas. It's about us as Palestinians who are suffering from the Israeli occupation and apartheid, and they want to shut our voices," Amro stressed. "More than 20 Palestinians [have been] killed in the West Bank since Saturday. Every day the Palestinians [are] being killed without even any excuse."
He said Palestinians sympathized with Israeli families who had lost loved ones during the Hamas offensive. But he also said the Western media was ignoring the suffering of thousands of civilians in Gaza killed or injured by Israeli bombing — with almost 300 children killed to date.
"All the media is talking about the Israelis who were killed during the first day, and we are very sorry for that," Amro said. "You know, we are not targeting civilians, but we, the Palestinians, we are civilians as well. We, the Palestinians, we deserve attention. We the Palestinians deserve freedom. We deserve justice. We deserve equality. We want to be treated as a nation, not as animals."
He questioned why Israel's backers in the US and Europe have allowed its occupation of Palestine to continue since 1967 — while accusing Russia of seizing land from Ukraine.
Tel Aviv-resident and US citizen Rachel Kastner told Sputnik that she had just come from a press conference with four American families whose children were among the hostages taken by Hamas — but had to take shelter when sirens warned of an incoming rocket attack.
"One of the families of the American citizens who are missing is a friend of mine," she said. "His son was taken to Gaza, and we have not heard from him in several days."
The American said she had taken part in recent mass protests against attempts by Netanyahu's government to reform the judicial system — but that was forgotten once an external threat to Israel appeared.
"Everyone wants the war to end and everyone wants our hostages and our loved ones back. There is no politics happening right now in Tel Aviv," Kastner stressed. "There is an emergency government that is forming and that government will be solely focused on defending Israel from future terrorist attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas, and also trying to get our loved ones and their dead bodies back."
Kastner said she had Palestinian friends who told her that Hamas — which governs Gaza in alliance with the Fatah party-dominated Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank — "has so little regard for their citizens' lives and is putting them all in danger."
She underscored that while every Israeli "wants this war to end," what that meant was that "nobody wants to wake up in the middle of the night to bombings and to terrorists infiltrating their homes, and Israel will do whatever it takes to make sure that Hamas is not able to do this."
The US citizen said it was "inevitable" that Israel would launch a campaign of air raids against Gaza in "self-defense."
"There is going to be loss of life on both sides. Innocent civilians are going to die. It is incredibly sad," Kastner said. "I'm just hoping that this changes the tide and Hamas is no longer going to maintain power. That's just the best that we can hope for."
She rejected comparisons to previous conflicts in the Gaza Strip, such as the three-week Operation Cast Lead incursion over the 2008-2009 Christmas and New Year season or even the seven-week 2014 invasion that left 67 Israeli soldiers and some 2,000 Palestinian civilians dead — but failed to neutralize Hamas and other militant groups.
"Nothing about this is similar to anything that has happened in the history of Israel," Kastner insisted. "There has never been a day that more than this number of Jews has been murdered at once since the Holocaust. This is our 9/11. This is our Pearl Harbor."
"So to compare it to 2014, when... three soldiers were kidnaped and killed — this is not the same thing. This is hundreds and hundreds of families that were slaughtered in their beds. So to make the comparison is honestly very, very irresponsible," she added.
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