
Taghreed Harazin, 34, sat under a gazebo with her six-month-old son, Diaa, in the car seat in which she had carried him on foot until finding a taxi. She said she had believed the evacuation order was only for the eastern part of the neighborhood, and mistakenly thought she would be safe at home. Moving was frightening, she said, because of airstrikes.
But during the night, as the family prepared their predawn Ramadan meal — only bread, since there was no electricity to cook with — heavy shelling started. They went to the basement for three hours, then ventured out at dawn.
As the family dashed through the streets to avoid crashing shells, Ms. Harazin, said, she saw the decapitated body of a boy who looked about 4, and a wounded woman in a black abaya nearby, both lying on the sidewalk. An ambulance came and took them both away.
“We are not Hamas, and we are not with the others,” Ms. Harazin said. “We just want to live in our homes. The people are not Hamas. Israel has a problem with Hamas. What’s the fault of the other people? We have nothing to do with it.”
Asked what she thought of Hamas’s handling of the current war, she said, “Sometimes it’s difficult to express your opinion.”
She faulted Israel for shelling civilian homes, but said of Hamas’s actions, “If you say any word, it’s held against you.” She said her husband had been beaten for complaining about Hamas.
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A lab technician, Ms. Harazin had brought a medical kit with her, along with her son’s diaper bag, in case anyone needed help. She had bandaged the foot of an elderly woman sitting next to her, who cut it on glass as she fled barefoot.
The woman, Wadha Abu Amr, said her family were refugees from what is now Beersheba. They fled from there in 1948 during the war over Israel’s founding.
“I’m afraid that this is another 1948,” she said, “God forbid. We were driven out in 1948 and we are being driven out again now.”
via Both Sides Report Deadliest Day in Gaza War – NYTimes.com.
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