Two years on the spectre of war still hangs over Gaza (Feature)

By Saud Abu Ramadan Dec 27, 2010, 2:06 GMT

Gaza City - It has been two years since Ibrahim Samouni lost his wife and five children in the three-week Israeli army operation against Gaza Strip militias - and he still bursts into tears when he talks about them.

'They were all killed in a minute and were buried under the rubble for 17 days,' says the grieving farmer who lives in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighbourhood. An Israeli air raid pulverised his and other homes in the neighbourhood and killed 28 members of the Samouni clan.

In cooperation with rights groups, Samouni and other families who lost either family members or had their homes destroyed in the offensive have applied to sue Israel for compensation.

'It has been two years already and we have not received a word from Israel,' says Samouni, who now lives in rented accommodation for which he pays 200 dollars a month.

'Whenever I pass by our house, I remember my wife and my children,' he says.

Israel launched the Gaza offensive - which it called 'Operation Cast Lead' - on December 27, 2008, in what it said was an attempt to end years of rocket fire from Gaza militants on its towns and villages adjacent to the Gaza border.

The offensive began with a week of airstrikes before ground troops were sent in. Hamas and other Gaza militias continued to shower Israel with rockets throughout the war, some of them reaching cities dozens of kilometres from the Strip and previously untouched by the missile barrages.

By the time the fighting ended, on January 18, around 1,400 Palestinians had been killed and 13 Israelis.

Much of the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely-populated areas in the world, was left in ruins.

'3,500 housing units were completely destroyed during the war, and 50,000 were partially damaged,' says Mohamed al-Askari, a director general in the Hamas-run ministry of public work.

Rebuilding has been complicated by the ongoing Israeli blockade imposed on the Strip, and by the political feud between Hamas, which has administered the salient since 2007 - when it routed security officers loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas - and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which sits in the West Bank.

The feud resulted in the PA delaying in sending 7 billion dollars worth of donations pledged by countries at a summit in March 2009 for reconstruction work in Gaza.

Israel's blockade severely limited the rebuilding process by not allowing in materials used for construction.

An Israeli cabinet decision in June this year, to ease the blockade, said that only construction materials intended for projects authorised by the PA and under international supervision, would be allowed into the Strip from then on.

Two years on, according to al-Askari, the Hamas administration in the Strip has managed to rebuild 70 per cent of the partially- destroyed homes, thanks to money from several relief organizations, but could only build five new ones.

Less than a year after the war ended, the Hamas administration in the Strip had removed the rubble of the destroyed buildings and homes and recycled it into gravel and iron bars, which can be used for construction.

Ahmed Yousef, a deputy minister in the Hamas government, said the Islamist organization had given 'priority' to reconstruction.

He called on Israel to end its siege of the Strip and for the money earmarked for Gaza at the March 2009 conference to be released.

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