A year into the war between Israel and Hamas, the people of Gaza have lost almost everything: their loved ones, their homes, their jobs and their dreams.
AFP spoke to a student, a paramedic and a former civil servant in the Gaza Strip to hear how the conflict has destroyed their lives.
Here is their story:
Fares Al Farah, 19, was ambitious and a good student.
Two months earlier, on October 7 last year, he had graduated with top honors and enrolled at the University of Applied Sciences in Gaza to study artificial intelligence and data science.
“I had a lot of ambitions and goals and I always knew that one day I would achieve them,” he said.
Israeli forces bombed parts of the university just days after Hamas attacks sparked the Gaza war.
Farah and her family were forced to flee their home in the southern city of Khan Yunis after it became a battleground and spent months taking shelter in a makeshift camp.
After Israeli forces withdrew, they returned to their home, but it was then bombed, destroying the wall, breaking Farah’s arm and killing her best friend, Abu Hassan.
“He always looked out for me,” Farah said of her friend who went through the eviction with her. “He was a good guy.”
The hardships of war undermined Farah’s optimism and hopes for an education.
“It feels like all avenues are closed,” he said.
He fears that once the war is over, his dreams will no longer be a priority.
“There will be more basic needs to be met,” he said.
Still, he said he is eager for the conflict to end so “his dreams and goals can be achieved.”
Maha Wafi, 43, said she “really, really loves” her job as a paramedic in Khan Younis, saying she finds meaning in being able to help others.
“We go to people and tell them, ‘We hear you,'” she said.
She also loved life with her husband of 24 years, Anis, their five children, and their beautiful home.
But the war has forced her family to flee their home and seek refuge in camps, and relentless bombardment has led to an increasing influx of wounded and sick people, putting an increasing strain on Gaza’s ill-equipped medical staff.
Then in early December, Wafi’s husband was arrested and she has not seen him since.
Although she cares for her partner, she must face the hardships of war alone, working as a paramedic and caring for her five children.
“We’re living in tents. We have to carry water, get gas, make fires and deal with all the challenges,” she said.
“All these things put psychological pressure on working women,” Wafi said, sitting next to the ambulance and wiping blood off the floor.
During the war she saw people being killed and injured, and narrowly escaped death when a car right next to her ambulance was bombed.
All she wants now, she said, is for her husband to be released and for her life to return to the way it was before the war.
“We don’t want things to go any further than they were before Oct. 7,” she said.
Until October 7, 39-year-old Maher Gino was working as a civil servant and living what he calls a “beautiful everyday” life with a decent wage.
Together with his wife, Fatima, they were raising three children in Gaza City.
A year on, they have been forced to flee “countless times,” he said, speaking at a shelter in an olive grove in central Gaza.
The family moved from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south, to Rafah on the Egyptian border, and then back to central Gaza, having to start from scratch each time.
“We have to pitch tents, build toilets, buy basic furniture and find clothes because we left everything behind,” he said.
Sometimes they could find a hiding place before nightfall.
Gino said that before the war, “we didn’t need anyone’s help” and some people had to sleep on the streets.
In the shelter where they now live, Gino and his wife have managed to create a home-like environment with a place to sleep, a water tank and a temporary toilet.
He, too, said he would like things to go back to the way they were.
“I became a beggar,” he said, begging for blankets to keep his family warm and searching for “charity kitchens that would give me enough food to feed my children.”
“This is what the war has done to us,” he said.
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