Gazans count human cost of war

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"I didn't hear the airstrike - it was like I was having a dream - then I was suddenly drenched in water," says Mr Baalousha, a slight man with a dark beard and almost equally dark rings under his eyes.

What started in a dream turned into a nightmare. When an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Imad Akl mosque in the Jabaliya area of Gaza City that night, it also took his house and five of his daughters.

Tahreir, 17, Ikram, 14, Samar, 12, Dina, seven, and Jawaher, four, were all killed when the mosque collapsed through their bedroom wall. Baraa, who was only 12-days-old when the war began, was saved when the force of the explosion flipped her cot over and gave her shelter.

Gazans say that the Israeli airstrikes destroyed more than 35 mosques, many of which Israel suspects of being Hamas ammunition storage centres.

With tanks pulling back to the border, Gaza City residents ventured on to the streets, struggling to assess the extent of the destruction in their neighbourhoods and to make sense of it.

Mr Baalousha and his wife, Samira, 36, returned to their old house for the first time since they buried their daughters. The family - with three remaining daughters and a son - is now staying in a friend's one-bedroom apartment, which counts a bed and foam mattresses on the living room floor as its only furniture.

"It was so unbelievable. I still feel sick right now," says Mr Baalousha. His wife does not utter a single word and only her eyes move. It is almost as if the rest of her face has been frozen in horror.

Iman, 16, who has difficulty walking because of the injuries she sustained in the attack, says she will now study for medical school, which her elder sister was planning to attend.

But the airstrike has changed Mr Baalousha's life in more than one way. "I'm ready to become a martyr now," he says dispassionately. "I'm ready to take part in a martyrdom operation."

His brother, Nafez, chimes in: "The thing is, he wasn't political at all before the attack. He even used to work in Israel. The killing of his five daughters has done this to him."

Indeed, in spite of the huge human cost of the Israeli attacks, the devastation has strengthened support for Hamas in some quarters.

"They are Muslims committed to resisting Israel and, by Hamas rule, we will be victorious against the Israelis," says Hitam, a 39-year-old housewife now living in a United Nations school-cum-refugee camp.

Some Gazans point out that Israel succeeded in targeting only two senior figures in the organisation. Although hundreds of Hamas fighters were killed, at least 15,000 foot soldiers remain.

The Islamist group says it lost only 48 fighters during the 22-day war, many less than the 500 Israel claims to have killed. It vows to fight on. "We have given the Zionist enemy one week to pull out of the Gaza Strip, failing which we will pursue the resistance," says Abu Obeida, for the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the militant wing of Hamas.

Near Mr Baalousha's ruined house, a young man who works as a bodyguard to a senior Hamas figure is defiant as he surveys the destruction.

"Before, Hamas stayed inside Gaza, but it was only after Israel closed the borders that we started launching rockets outside," says the man, declining to give his name. "Now Hamas will become even stronger because all Palestinians can see that Israel has destroyed houses and mosques, that they have killed innocent women and children."

Not everyone, however, feels this way. Ra'afad, a 27-year-old security guard who supports Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Fatah party, blames Hamas for bringing war to Gaza.

"I am so angry with Hamas, especially since we do not have any concrete results," he says in front of a concrete jumble that was once a police station. "If Hamas could agree with Fatah, the siege would be lifted and there would be no war."

By Anna Fifield

© Financial Times 2009