Heavy fighting continues in the centre of Khan Younis as 2024 begins.
Displaced Palestinians found little to celebrate on New Year’s Eve in Muwasi, a temporary camp in a largely undeveloped area of southern Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline declared a safe zone by Israel. Kamal al-Zeinaty, huddled with his family around a fire inside a ten, said:
From the intensity of the pain we live, we do not feel that there is a new year. All the days are the same.
As 2023 drew to a close, Palestinians in Gaza prayed for a ceasefire but had no hope that the new year would be better. Zainab Khalil, 57, a resident from northern Gaza now in Rafah, said:
Tonight the sky in world countries will be lit by firecrackers, and joyful laughs will fill the air. In Gaza our skies are now filled with Israeli missiles and tank shells that land on innocent, homeless civilians.
Israel said it would withdraw reservists from the ground invasion of Gaza so troops could “build up strength” for future battles.
The scale of the destruction and the exodus south have raised fears among Palestinians and Arab countries that Israel plans to displace the people of Gaza and prevent their return.
Israel’s finance minister said on Sunday that it should “encourage migration” from Gaza and rebuild Jewish settlements in the territory from which it withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005.
At least 21,822 people have been killed and 56,451 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October. The revised death toll from Israel’s 7 October attack is 1,139.
