MONROE — For more than a month, Anastasia Yacoub and her family have had to seek shelter and scavenge for food. Anastasia was a sophomore foreign exchange student at Monroe High School for the 2022-23 school year.

When the final trimester came to a close, she returned to her home country of Palestine — specifically in the Gaza Strip. Just a month earlier, her family lost their Gaza City home in a rocket attack by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) — collateral damage as they sought to kill an anti-Israeli extremist.

Fast forward to early October: Anastasia is back to her regular school with her regular classmates while her 5-year-old brother and her family were living with friends. Meanwhile, their home in the bombed-out apartment complex was beginning to be fixed. 

Then on Oct. 7, Hamas, the far-right extremist party that seized control of Gaza back in 2007 and hasn’t held an election since, launched a surprise attack on Israel, launching thousands of rockets while insurgents climbed the Israeli-built wall, entered Israel, killed thousands and kidnapped hundreds more. The number of dead for the first several weeks suggested 1,400 Israeli civilians were killed, though quietly this past week that number was revised to about 1,200.

Meanwhile, the IDF hardly waited to counterattack. Within days of Hamas’ intrusion, the IDF began launching thousands of missiles into the walled in Gaza Strip, killing many thousands more while leveling entire blocks of housing, hospitals, schools and places of worship.

Gaza is the third-most densely populated location on the planet, with over 2.3 million people trapped inside an area about 1/5 the size of Green County. “Trapped” is not hyperbole — of the four sides of the region, three are walled off and heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers. There are only three road crossings in and out of Gaza — two into Israel and one into Egypt. The third side is the Mediterranean Sea, where Israeli soldiers also keep Palestinian fishermen from going beyond five miles from the coast even to fish.

Palestine was split into two portions in the 1940s after thousands of years as its own sovereign land along the east coast of the Mediterranean. When World War II ended, the United Kingdom and United Nations started divvying up the land, which now holds several nations, like Jordan, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and Israel. Israel was founded as a home for Zionist Jews wanting to retake the land they felt was theirs from thousands of years earlier during the supposed days of the Bible’s Old Testament. The rest of the region is made up of primarily Muslim populations.

Each year Israel tries to gain a little more land, occupying the West Bank (Palestine’s eastern block of land), while also delegating much of the life of all Palestinians. According to Amnesty International, a global humanitarian organization, Israel’s day-to-day presence in Palestine is nothing short of apartheid. 

Throughout the years, small battles have waged between the heavily militarized IDF and extremist insurgents from Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries. Palestine has no official military, and extremists and terrorists that hide inside the walls of the state and in underground tunnels have long smuggled arms in from other terrorist organizations in other countries.

The Oct. 7 attack by Hamas was the deadliest on Israel in years, and the Israeli retaliation has been even more brutal. Officials in the UN have routinely called for a full ceasefire due to the emergent need of humanitarian and medical aid among Gaza civilians. More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 4,600 children. In fact, just under half of Gaza’s population is under age 18. Many at the UN and other international humanitarian organizations have called Israel’s response a “collective punishment” for the terrorist work of a small few.

Among the retaliations by the IDF are brutal bombings, the cutting off of food, water, fuel, electricity and communications for any to the outside world.

While some humanitarian aid has come in through the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, the rate of about 30-50 trucks a day is less than 10% of the regular daily need of the populace.

According to The Guardian and Reuters, Israeli forces reached the gate of al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital that is currently treating hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies. All are trapped inside, with IDF soldiers stifling aid and not allowing those needing treatment to be relocated. According to Gaza’s health ministry, over last weekend, at least 32 patients have died, including three premature babies.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Monday that al-Shifa “must be protected” and called for “less intrusive action” by Israeli forces.

The health ministry said on Monday that all of the hospitals in northern Gaza are “out of service” amid fuel shortages and intense combat. It was reported that two major hospitals in northern Gaza — al-Shifa and al-Quds — have closed to new patients due to Israeli airstrikes and heavy fighting around both facilities as medical staff were left without oxygen, medical supplies or fuel to power incubators.

IDF forces are not just outside the hospital, but have all but surrounded Gaza City in a ground attack. Among the buildings destroyed was a UN school that hundreds of families had been sheltering in.

Israel claims it has uncovered a Hamas operation beneath a children’s hospital in Gaza, with evidence some of the Israeli hostages are being kept in the bunker.

Watching it from the front row has been Anastasia, who’s home was struck and destroyed again in the first days of Israel’s counterattack. She and her family then trudged from the northern portion of Gaza into the south, but still have no shelter  and struggle every day for food, liquids to drink, and even a service signal to let friends in America know she is alive. Anastasia and her family have seen death up close and personal, and she told the Monroe Times she doesn’t see it getting better anytime soon.