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October 7 Hamas Attacks: How Life Changed at Israel's Borders, One Year

Suffering Across Israel and Gaza's Borders
While the fates of the remaining hostages are unknown, aid organizations are clear: the picture inside the Gaza Strip for the millions of displaced Gazans is bleak.
"There is no single word that can describe the past year," Sondos Alashqar, a program assistant with the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians organization—which is working with emergency medical teams inside Gaza—told Newsweek.
Gaza has been largely destroyed by IDF strikes that Israel said aimed to take out Hamas' infrastructure and commanders. "I'm not entirely sure that people grasp or understand the level of destruction that Gaza has endured over the past one year," Juliette Touma, communications director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, told Newsweek.
Humanitarian bodies have consistently reported a debilitating lack of water, food, medical care, vital hygiene supplies and other essentials reaching the territory's uprooted population, many of whom have been forced to relocate several times.
During at least one point in the war, people in Gaza had no choice but to eat animal feed to survive, said Alashqar. Israeli officials have said repeatedly that aid is flowing into Gaza and have dismissed reports of hunger in the territory.
Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. One year on, aid organizations say the situation for Gazans remains bleak. MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty
"People leave everything behind and just go and have to start from scratch over and over again," Touma said. Rain from mid-September caused flooding, meaning tents many are forced to live in were swept away. Residents of Gaza then become more vulnerable to seasonal diseases that there is scant medicine to treat, Touma added.
"We sleep in tents—an experience we never dreamed of, not even for fun," said Alashqar, who is sheltering in central Gaza after fleeing Gaza City. A heavily pregnant colleague, Alashqar recounted, gave birth amid an evacuation from southern Gaza, then returned with an hours-old child "to a tent while it was raining heavily, instead of a secure home."

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