NEVER FORGET

[The] rules of engagement were pretty easy-going – I was shocked when I first heard them.

[The] instruction was: ‘Anyone you identify in the area – you shoot’.

*

In Gaza, 551 children were killed, and 3,436 were injured, of whom 10% suffered permanent disability as a result.

*

12,620 housing units were totally destroyed over the course of the 2014 summer hostilities and 6,455 were severely damaged, displacing 17,670 families or about 100,000 persons.

*

Multiple districts [near the border]… were almost completely razed with the vast majority of structures completely demolished… The destruction visible in these areas represents 100% of buildings and thus would have required relatively significant efforts to achieve.

*

Did you see any ‘before and after’ aerial photos?

Sure. Neighbourhoods erased. You know what joke was being told in the army at the time? The joke says that Palestinians only sing the chorus because they have no verses [houses] left. (in Hebrew, the word for verse is the same as the word for house)

*

Strategically, the Israeli public demonstrated its societal resilience by quickly returning to normal levels of function following the campaign.

Gaza was a nonissue in March’s Knesset election, with the serious dispute over the war’s management mentioned only on the campaign’s margins.

[It was] if the preceding summer had been a period of total calm. [Gaza]… wasn’t used against Netanyahu or mentioned in his favour; it just didn’t exist.

*

[As a consequence of Operation Protect Edge] Gaza’s real GDP dropped 15 percent; poverty climbed from 28 to 39 percent, despite 80 percent of the population receiving humanitarian assistance; and unemployment hit 43 percent – the world’s highest. Youth unemployment, at 60 percent, is now the highest in the region.

*

[L]ike other youth in Gaza, the war has prompted Mo’tasim to conclude that the only way is out. ‘If I got the chance, I’d leave Gaza and never return to Beit Hanoun’, he declares.

And Mo’tasim is far from alone: this urge to take flight affects young people from all walks of life. ‘I swear to you, if they open up the crossing and give us opportunities to emigrate, not a single young person would remain in Gaza – not even those with jobs’, claims one unemployed graduate from Gaza City. He borrowed some money and paid smugglers to get him to Italy, but was caught in Egypt and deported back to Gaza.

‘To sit home and wait for death, that is the definition of injustice’, he states.

*

Almost one year after start of hostilities, not a single totally destroyed home has been rebuilt in Gaza.