MONROE — Former Monroe High School exchange student Anastasia Yacoub is still trapped inside Gaza as the most recent conflict between Hamas and Israel leads into its third week.
Yacoub spent the 2022-23 school year as a sophomore at Monroe High School through the AFS Intercultural Exchange Program. She returned to her family in Palestine this past June, however, their home had been destroyed in May by an Israeli rocket hunting for a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Hamas is the ruling party of Palestine and Gaza, though much of the world identifies the party as a terrorist organization. The PIJ is a rival terror group and political organization of Hamas.
On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds hostage. The Israel Defense Force (IDF) quickly retaliated, sending tens of thousands of rockets and artillery shells into the densely populated Gaza Strip. The region, about 1/4 the size of Green County, is home to 2.3 million people, and is considered the third most densely populated metropolitan in the world. In fact, nearly half of the Gaza Strip are children.
The IDF has now killed over 7,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 1,900 children. Israeli leaders have also withheld water, food, fuel, electricity, cell service and internet from Palestinians, many of whom have lost their homes to the bombings. United Nations officials and international humanitarian organizations have called the measures of shutting off civilian access to basic items for survival, like food and water, a war crime. Israel has also pushed about 1 million civilians to the southern end of the Gaza Strip in order to continue bombing the northern half.
Since the war broke out, Anastasia and her three family members have survived by sharing about two bottles of water a day. She and her best friend take turns trying to find a phone signal in order to update friends and relatives on social media that they are still alive. They charge their phones using solar charging packs. Her last post on social media prior to the Monroe Times press time was at about 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 26.
Anastasia said her family had to migrate more than 15 miles south of their home through rubble in order to get to the southern half of the strip, but that there is no true safe shelter anywhere. She and her family desperately want to leave, but there are no paths for refugees to escape to the outside world. Gaza is fenced in, and the western border of the Mediterranean Sea is heavily guarded by Israeli defense.
Egypt, Gaza’s southern neighbor, would not allow refugees to access the country through the lone border crossing. After numerous calls from the worldwide community, including the UN, aid was allowed to start being delivered into Gaza this week, though very few truck shipments had penetrated deep into the state.
On Oct. 24, Israel continued its vow to destroy Hamas, rejecting a UN call for a cease-fire in order to safely deliver humanitarian aid. Israel went so far as to refuse visas to UN officials after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres acknowledged Palestinians have been “subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”. Amnesty International surmises Israel’s occupancy rule over Gaza as apartheid.
ActionAid, an international charity organization, said that families in Gaza will be out of food by this weekend. Among the targets for Israeli bombs: Bakeries, hospitals, churches and other places of worship, as well as housing complexes.