Too Little, Too Late

The four-day-long humanitarian pause allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza after nearly two months of indiscriminate bombing and 16 years of blockade offers bare respite for civilians, no more than that

- Rakhi Bose

PHOTOGRAPHS of bombed public shelters, food being cooked on makeshift hearths, and leaflets with ominous threats to leave Gaza falling from the skies pop up unceasingly on Palestinian lawyer and activist Ahmed Bassiuni's X (formerly Twitter) handle. On October 8, a day after the deadly Hamas attack in Israel, Ahmed was one of the thousands of Gazans to receive terse air-dropped text messages from the Israeli government, asking them to evacuate and leave Gaza immediately. At the time he thought the messages were absurd. But deep within, Ahmed knew that things were about to get much, much worse. And they did.

Soon, bombs came hurtling down on residential areas in the Gaza Strip. The enclaves turned to rubble. It has been over six weeks since. The duration has seen over 15,000 Gazans killed. About 60 per cent of these casualties have been women and children. Ahmed has, however, managed to survive one of the most brutal assaults on Palestinian soil in his lifetime.

On November 20, Ahmed survived the massacre at Dar Al-Basiouni in Beit Hanoun, a city located to the northeast of the Strip. "My family and I are still alive," he said in a social media post to reassure his loved ones. But on November 25, on the first day of the 'truce'-a four-day ceasefire for exchange of hostages and prisoners-Ahmed got news of death.

As both sides braced for the exchange, Ahmed announced the death of his nephew Diab, along with his cousins Yasser and Adam. "My sister's son (Diab) is a 15-year-old child. The army arrested him the day before yesterday on Salah al-Din Street while he was travelling with his family from northern Gaza". His brother, Yamen, has been missing for two weeks.

Ahmed is among the thousands of people living in nightmarish conditions for nearly two months since Israel's offensive.