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KIBBUTZ BEERI: The staggering suffering, death and destruction of six months of war since Hamas’s Oct 7 attack has widened the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians, leaving both feeling that the prospect of peace is ever more elusive.
Israeli farmer Yarden Zemach, 38, said he felt safe when picking avocados with Palestinians on Oct 5 – just two days before the attack.
But ever since the violence that claimed his brother’s life in the devastated Beeri kibbutz some four kilometres from the Gaza border fence, he views Gazans as a threat.
“Maybe in many years peace will be possible, but not right now,” he said next to burned-out homes.
Israeli shelling of Gaza thundered nearby.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted with Hamas’s Oct 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed over 33,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
“(Our suffering) only increased after Oct 7, after 33,000 martyrs and after the destruction and siege,” said 27-year-old Palestinian Fidaa Musabih, whose north Gaza home was destroyed by an air strike.
She now shares a house with 27 relatives in southern Gaza’s Rafah, where she lives in fear of Israel’s planned offensive into an area packed with 1.5 million people, most of them displaced.
“How can I hope for peace to come? There’s nothing more for us to lose,” said Musabih.
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