As the effects of the American and Israeli war with Iran rippled across the Middle East, people in one corner of the region, Gaza, were feeling sidelined, stuck in a kind of limbo.
The fighting has set back the already slow progress toward a more peaceful reality in postwar Gaza. Israel briefly closed all the crossings into Gaza. Now only one cargo crossing is operating. The sole crossing for people entering or leaving the territory — including patients seeking medical treatment abroad — was closed for nearly three weeks after the war with Iran broke out on Feb. 28. It reopened last week for limited numbers of passengers.
The Palestinian enclave was only just emerging from a devastating Israeli campaign that killed tens of thousands of people, according to Gaza health officials, and reduced much of the coastal territory to rubble.
Now, the new strife has left residents of Gaza feeling ever more abandoned.
“The bitter truth is that Gaza has been forgotten,” said Fuad Shahin, 40, who runs a small cafe in Deir al Balah, in the southern half of the territory.
Adham al-Mabhouh, 46, a soccer coach who trains amputees injured and displaced by the Gaza war and during previous fighting, echoed the sentiment. “The eyes of the world are on Iran and the Gulf,” he said.
“Whatever happens, Gaza seems to lose,” he added.
The price of food and other basic goods has surged as people have returned to panic buying, afraid that crossings into Gaza would not reopen, or would close again. Unscrupulous merchants have hoarded stock, apparently hoping to profit from high demand should there be shortages.
“People rushed to the markets and bought everything they could with all the money they had — people with money of course,” said Hussain Ghaben, 37, a father of three from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City.
Mahmoud Bolbol, 43, a father of six from Gaza City, has no work and relies on charity to feed his family. “I worry more about getting some cooking gas than what happens to Iran,” he said.
Gaza has been slowly trying to recover from the two-year Israeli offensive prompted by the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
A fragile cease-fire went into effect five months ago, though the Israeli military carries out near-daily strikes, saying it is responding to violations by militant groups.
The next stages of President Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which was endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, appear to have stalled. A committee of Palestinian technocrats meant to replace the Hamas administration has still not entered Gaza, and an international stabilization force intended to bring security has yet to materialize.
Any progress hinges on the thorniest issues, including disarming Hamas and ensuring a withdrawal of the Israeli military, which controls about half of Gaza.
Israel has conditioned the start of any meaningful reconstruction on disarmament. Hamas is reluctant to part with its weapons, which are core to its identity as a fighting force against Israel. The militant group also relies on its guns to maintain its hold over Gaza’s roughly two million people. President Trump’s Board of Peace is waiting for Hamas to respond to a proposal for relinquishing its weapons.
Gaza’s residents feel stuck between the competing demands of Hamas and Israel. “We are living inside a vicious circle, caught in a whirlpool,” said Rami Abu Reida, 46, a nut seller from the southern Gaza town of Khuzaa.
Mr. Ghaben, the father of three in Gaza City, said that his house was completely destroyed during the Gaza war. He and his family are sheltering in a tent near the rubble of their home.
“I could not buy anything, as I had no cash at all. I totally depend on charity,” he said. Before the war he was selling clothes in a stall on the street, but now he is jobless.
Like others in Gaza, Mr. Ghaben remembers the months of severe hunger that gripped Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas. He recalled not eating for four days and being shot in the leg while waiting for an aid convoy near a crossing. Others around him were killed, he said.
He said he had five bags of flour and enough beans stored in his tent to last about three months. Prices for staples have skyrocketed, he said.
The United Nations says more crossings into Gaza must be opened to aid the humanitarian response.
While the intensity of fighting has decreased considerably, Israeli strikes still pose a danger. More than 670 people have been killed in Gaza since the cease-fire in October, according to local health officials, whose data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Some residents worry that after the focus shifts from Iran, Israel could resume the Gaza war to try to defeat Hamas completely.
“We still haven’t escaped either our past or our present crisis,” said Hanin al-Qishawi, 29, an unemployed university graduate who returned from southern Gaza to her damaged home in Gaza City.
“Gaza is always affected by whatever happens in the region,” she said. “It moves with the wind.”
Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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