Israel today is a nation heavy with shock, looking for answers and often also for vengeance. The streets are slowly coming back to life, but they feel anything but normal. Young reservists must take their weapons as they go about their business. The faces of the Israeli hostages are reproduced in shop windows and on government buildings alongside three words that are now a rallying cry: “Bring them home.”
Newsstands and television screens show over and over the scenes of Hamas’s crimes. They show the Israeli army in Gaza. But they rarely show what is happening to civilians.
Palestinians there are frantic and bone-tired. The pace of death is so fast, the possibility of famine so close, that residents say they have little time to mourn or to process their losses. Fear — how to survive the night, how to find a little food — is a more pressing constant.
With more than two-thirds of homes now destroyed, much of Gaza is effectively gone.
About this story
Photography in Israel and West Bank by Salwan Georges, and photography in Gaza by Loay Ayyoub. Story text by Louisa Loveluck. Design and development by Yutao Chen. Editing by Olivier Laurent and Reem Akkad. Copy editing by Martha Murdock.
