1699186487 Children without childhood in the Gaza Strip Cuba in the

Children without childhood in the Gaza Strip Cuba in the news

It was 28 days of dust and ash, rubble, chaos and crying, bombs and deaths. Scenes from bombed neighborhoods reveal a tale of disaster and devastation…

Jessica Mesa Duarte Exclusive May 11, 2023

The Gaza Strip is a self-contained territory with a hermetic and militarized border. Located on the coastal edge of the eastern Mediterranean between Israel and Egypt, it is an autonomous Palestinian territory that has been administered by the Palestinian Islamist party Hamas since 2007. More recently, Hamas launched Operation Al Storm Aqsa on October 7, 2023. which triggers another conflict with Israel.

A city remains almost dark. Above the buildings, the reddish tones merge with the approaching dawn amidst a deep black sky. Like fireworks, the rays of light travel from one corner to the other of the image that the computer returns to me, seeming to exchange one another in a kind of digital animation.

This could seem like a scene from a video game, the script of a feature film, or the description of a beautiful photograph, were it not for the unspeakable horror contained in what we cannot see further into the almost dark city in the snapshot.

It was 28 days of dust and ash, rubble, chaos and crying, bombs and deaths. Scenes from bombed neighborhoods tell a story of disaster and devastation.

Photo 2 Gaza

Nearly 700,000 people have been displaced by the conflict between Israel and Hamas

Since October 7th last year, there has been a nightmare in the Gaza Strip, 10,689 kilometers from Cuba, that seems to have no end. It only took one night to reduce a neighborhood to rubble. By October 10, just three days after Israeli bombing began in the area, there were almost 2,000 deaths.

Infographic + 70 years of conflict

In one of the most densely populated areas in the world with 2.3 million inhabitants, the death toll is now over 10,000 and rising with every minute. More than 20,000 injured, 2,000 missing, around 35,000 houses destroyed and 690,000 displaced are further consequences of the hell experienced and suffered in the conflict.

Infopography of the victims

On the other side of the world, the reality couldn’t be more chaotic, considering that more than 40 percent of educational institutions are damaged; 14 of the 35 hospitals and 51 of the 72 primary care clinics in the area have been forced to close and the health system has collapsed due to the growing number of victims and lack of medical care.

In the midst of air strikes, the population risks their lives to buy the few remaining foodstuffs; drinking water and fuel are in short supply. But that is not even close to the bleakest reality of this unjust war against defenseless civilians with nowhere to go, in the middle of a table where those who show partners care little about humanity, respect for life and civil rights.

Photo 3 Gaza

In just under a month of conflict, nearly 5,000 Palestinian children have lost their lives.

I tried to stay away from the information, from all the pain, despair and terror that the images are now causing me. A few meters away from me, my 3 and 4 year old daughters are sleeping peacefully and I, finally a mother, reflect on their rest and can’t stop thinking about the almost 5,000 children who lost their lives in a war that… not theirs and their mothers, in the more than a thousand who are believed to remain missing under the rubble, in the many who have seen the deaths of their parents, the disappearance of their homes, the destruction of their lives by a confrontation that took place in theirs Unable to understand innocence, in the were-line They have shown up at hospitals to have their names written on their arms and legs so they can be identified if they become victims of impending bombings.

Photo 4 Gaza

Nor will I be able to understand the barbarism that has led to the destruction of a city, the shedding of innocent blood, a desolate landscape where white sheets cover the corpses in the middle of the street and the hope of a humanitarian ceasefire begins to dissipate.

I will never understand how the night veil of a sky with reddish hues, contained in the image that one might consider beautiful, becomes the most eloquent symbol of death and hatred; much less that the lives of so many innocent people are extinguished in the name of a conflict they did not want, or that the genocide remains unpunished despite the condemnation of more than half the world.

Even less could I try to explain to the little girls resting safely near me that the happy world we are constantly trying to build for them could also become a scenario more than 10,000 kilometers away from here Terror and death take their lives. Childhood to those who should play and learn like them and not watch their smiles gradually fade in the middle of a city where others are plunged into the darkness of war.