Even as Israel signals that it is moving its focus to its northern border with Lebanon, there has been no pause to its bombardment in Gaza, where residents are facing another winter with little access to food or shelter.
After nearly a year of war, fear marks everyday life for Palestinians in Gaza. There is fear of the Israeli warplanes that tear through the skies and carry out deadly airstrikes. There is fear of famine with only a trickle of aid coming in. There is fear of being displaced, yet again, by Israeli evacuation orders.
And now, there is increasing fear of being forgotten.
International attention has been diverted, first by deadly Israeli military raids into Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank this month, and this week by coordinated attacks against the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s leaders have increasingly signaled that they intend to shift their focus from the Gaza Strip to their northern border with Lebanon, in what the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, described this week as a “new phase of the war.”
But the war it is already waging in Gaza has not gone away. Israel, which says it wants to eradicate the armed group Hamas that led the Oct. 7 attack, has not stopped its airstrikes or ground attacks.
And some Gazans worry that the already sputtering efforts to reach a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas will be sidelined as tensions rise in other areas of the Middle East.
“Unfortunately, people see the attention going to the West Bank or Lebanon,” said Muhammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who has been forced to flee numerous times. “We don’t know what is going to happen here. It’s not just depression or misery. It’s a catastrophe in a terrifying way, and the situation is getting worse all the time.”
