MONROE — In a war-torn land where death and destruction surround those sheltering, Anastasia Yacoub received some good news this week — well, good in a sense of 12 steps back and one step forward.

In the southern half of the Palestinian Gaza Strip, Anastasia and her family have been finding a way to survive for six weeks since the current war with Israel broke out in early October. They used to live in the northern half, but their home had been hit twice by Israeli rockets since May. Early in the conflict, the Yacoubs made the trek south through rubble to where the bombings were much less frequent.

Still stranded in the northern half was one of her closest friends. Entire areas of Gaza City in the north are not only without food, water and electricity, but Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been jamming communications — essentially keeping Palestinian civilians from reaching out and checking in with other families and loved ones.

“I was finally able to reach out to my friend,” said Anastasia, who spent the 2022-23 school year as a sophomore AFS foreign exchange student at Monroe High School. “She was able to finally able to come to the southern part, and she was able to tell me what was happening.”

Anastasia has been communicating with the Monroe Times through social media, leaving both audio and written messages throughout the ordeal.

She said her friend feared for her life on the trek south. She was among about 45,000 civilians that made the journey this week, as the IDF has launched a ground assault and military occupation in the densely populated and walled-off land.

“The Israeli tanks are everywhere and they are shooting everyone on the streets,” Anastasia said. “They had to walk a very long distance, and they were holding their ID cards in their right hand in front of their faces, and their other left hand, they had to have it up, too. Like, imagine kids having to deal with that — and they had to go with their hands up for, like, 30 minutes; a half an hour. And they had their hands up because they (Israelis) didn’t want anyone to take out their phone and tape everything to go on the news, even though they are already exposed for what they are doing and what we’re going through because of them.”

Similar accounts were recorded by international news organizations like The Guardian and Reuters, who were allowed to follow IDF soldiers on security patrol.

“They also had, like, electrical doors and they went through their stuff, like their bags,” Anastasia said. “They searched them. This is very normal for Palestinians to go through, especially in the West Bank. They go through this on a daily basis where they get searched by the Israelis — even when they don’t have anything on them. Kids, even kids on their way to school get searched.”

Simply searching passersby and checking baggage for security wasn’t the worst of it for Anastasia’s friend.

“While they were walking, snipers were aimed at them, as well as tanks were all around and also aimed at them. And they bombed all around them with, like, F-16 rockets to scare them,” Anastasia said. “While they were walking, they couldn’t look anywhere. They had to keep looking forward and walk. They couldn’t look down or anything. They were literally walking on dead bodies — that’s what she told me. She told me it was so scary that she fainted while she was walking because she could smell the dead bodies — she was walking on the dead bodies.”

Still surviving

With winter approaching, temperatures are going down, and Anastasia said it’s getting harder to do even simple tasks, like shower. Right now, her family uses cold water that’s not sanitary drinking water to shower. They have limited clothing and are still searching daily for food. However, they were able to find some shelter, living with several families and sharing things like daily tasks, and thin beds on the floor.

“We found that place after living in the shelter where there’s more than 50 thousand people there. We slept on the ground, illness was spread around. It’s very dirty there so people get very sick,” Anastasia said. 

She also is in fear when she searches for food with her father. They go from one supermarket to another, and try to catch any other pharmacy or store along the way. 

“Sadly, none of them had some, so we just went home — but we got a couple of chocolates,” she said.

Despite being a civilian, she’s also fearful of being killed by a rocket — either through unlucky timing or a targeted attack. The IDF has targeted civilians before — both in large groups migrating through the tattered streets, or even just individuals trying to find food and water.

“A friend of ours went to buy some vegetables while they were available, and he found some. While they were heading home, they bombed right next to them,” Anastasia said. The man and his family had been among those sheltering with the Yacoubs. He was badly injured from shrapnel, and was among the few allowed to be transported through the Rafah border crossing and into an Egyptian hospital.

Not all hospital patients are so lucky. The largest hospital in Gaza was sieged by the IDF this week, who claimed a Hamas base was underground. Hamas is the political/militia group that has held power in Gaza since 2006 by not allowing further elections. The United States and several others in the United Nations have designated Hamas a terrorist organization.

The worst certainly does not appear to be over for the refugees in southern Gaza, who are still trapped inside an Israel-built wall. There are only three exit points along the land borders with Egypt (1) and Israel (2). On Thursday, internet and telephone services collapsed across the Gaza Strip due to a lack of fuel for electricity and generators. It is feared by many inside and out that a long-term blackout of communications could be coming. 

The potential blackout in communications comes as Israel has signaled it may set its sights on attacking Hamas factions in the south half of Gaza — exactly where the IDF encouraged the unarmed civilian population of 2.3 million to migrate to and seek refuge. 

On Thursday, the IDF dropped leaflets across southern Gaza, telling Palestinian civilians to leave an area on the eastern edge of the city of Khan Younis, an area earlier Israel had deemed “safe” for refugees.

UN ‘humanitarian pause’ resolution passes

Calls are still coming daily for a ceasefire in Gaza by both Hamas and Israel. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for a humanitarian pause, as civilians and those hospitalized — whether it be from war wounds, disease, starvation or even newborn children — are nearing a tragic breaking point. 

Humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing has been underwhelming and slow, and should Hamas and Israel abide by the resolution, aid could increase. The vote passed unanimously, with the U.S., Russia and United Kingdom abstaining. All three hold singular veto power. It is the first resolution in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2016.

According to The Guardian, UN resolutions are in theory legally binding, but are widely ignored, and this resolution appears to be on a similar path.

“The @UN Security Council’s resolution is disconnected from reality and is meaningless,” wrote Gilad Erdan, Israeli Ambassador to the UN in a post on Twitter/X. “Regardless of what the Council decides, Israel will continue acting according to int’l law while the Hamas terrorists will not even read the resolution at all, let alone abide by it. It is unfortunate that the Council continues to ignore, not condemn, or even mention the massacre that Hamas carried out on October 7, which led to the war in Gaza. It is truly shameful!”

The political significance lies in the US willingness to back a call for an extended humanitarian ceasefire, putting some pressure on its close ally Israel. The American decision may reflect its frustration with Israel’s campaign, including the attack on al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza.

About 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 more taken prisoner on Oct. 7 in a surprise attack by Hamas. It was the deadliest raid on Israelis since Israel was recognized by the UN as its own country in 1947. 

Israel retaliated almost immediately, and has killed more than 11,500 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since. Among those are over 4,700 children. About 45% of Gaza’s population are children under age 18.

Contrary to opinions from leaders and ambassadors around much of the world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described Israel’s attempts to minimize casualties in Gaza as successful.

However, three times more children have died in Gaza in the last six weeks than Palestinian children did in all conflicts between 2006, when Hamas took over and 2022 (1,513 total).

Similarly, according to the UN, from Jan. 1, 2008 until Sept. 19, 2023, 6,407 Palestinians in total were killed by Israeli forces in all conflicts — a number a little more than half of what the current situation has accumulated. Meanwhile, during a 15-year stretch between Jan. 24, 2008 and Aug. 31, 2023, just 308 Israelis had been killed.