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By Lawahez Jabari, Saphora Smith and Yuliya Talmazan
TEL AVIV, Israel – Palestinian militants controlling the Gaza Strip exchanged gunfire with Israeli soldiers during Tuesday's most intense fighting, which provoked a surge of bloodshed.
The outbreak – apparently triggered by an Israeli sloppy raid in Gaza – killed seven Palestinians and one Israeli before the announcement of a ceasefire by militant groups.
A truce would provide an indispensable respite for civilians on both sides of the barrier between Israel and the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
Mohammad Al Hatoum said that he had tried to distract his two young girls from Israeli air strikes by playing cartoons on television, with high loudness. It did not help.
"The bombing was so intense that my daughters did not stop crying," said Al Hatoum, 33, who lives with his family in the western Gaza Strip.
The government employee not only heard the explosions, he felt and smelled them.
"I felt the whole building shaking," he told NBC News, describing this effect as a magnitude 7 earthquake.
Violence is not new to civilians living in the extremely poor and populated Gaza Strip run by Hamas militants since 2007, or to the inhabitants of neighboring Israeli communities. Israel has waged three wars in the enclave over the last decade and fears more and more that a new conflict is only coming.
Since Monday, Hamas and other armed factions have fired more than 400 rockets or mortar shells across the fenced border – the most intense rocket fire on Israel since the 2014 war – said the United States. Israeli army. This occurred after militants launched a missile attack on a bus that injured an Israeli soldier.
This follows months of fires caused by hundreds of incendiary kicks and explosive balls sent from Gaza. The fires have burned thousands of acres of nature reserves and farmland.
On Tuesday, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin went to the Netivot border community to tell Israeli citizens to "take good care of themselves" and follow the Israeli Defense Forces' order.
Israel's Ministerial Committee for National Security Affairs issued a statement that they told the Israeli army to "continue operations if necessary."
The recent fighting appears to have been sparked by a failed Israeli Special Forces raid on Gaza on Sunday that claimed the lives of seven Palestinians, including a local Hamas commander and an Israeli army officer. Israel is on constant alert for militant tunnels and attacks from Gaza.
Al Hatoum was born during the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising against Israel, and estimates that he has spent nearly half of his life in a bitter conflict. He is not optimistic for the future.
"There will be an escalation in Gaza, there will be more calm after that," he said.
Israelis are also scared.
Hila Fenlon, a farmer in the small Israeli village of Netiv Haasara located a few meters from the separation fence, said her family was shaken by Israeli and Palestinian gunfire.
She said she turned her children's room into a missile shelter so they could get safe in time before the rockets fell.
"Whenever I hear the sirens, my heart beats wildly," she explained, explaining that it was difficult to persuade her children to stay in or near the shelter from the shelter at any time.
"We are constantly at war, not just for a few days," she said. "My children are exposed to rockets, incendiary balloons and burnt land."
Fenlon said she hoped for peace. "I would like us to become neighbors again as before," she said.
Even before the exchange of fire in recent days, fear reigned in what is called the Gaza envelope – the area of Israel surrounding the Gaza Strip.
Adele Raemer, a 63-year-old English teacher who lives in the community of Nirim, also on the border with Gaza, said she could not do anything.
"We are used to riding this roller coaster," said Raemer. "Nobody likes the roller coaster, but we are there, and the problem is that you never know when you are going to ride on it and when the ride is over."
In Gaza, as we can see from Nirim, despair is a way of life.
About 70% of Gaza's population is refugees or descendants of refugees, and a similar proportion depends on humanitarian aid. Those who live there can not leave without authorization and the blockade has made life intolerable for many of Gaza's 2 million people.
Almost no water is clean, untreated sewage is pumped directly into the sea, and worsening electricity shortages mean that Gazans only have electricity for about four hours a day on average. Unemployment rates are close to 50% – more than 65% among those under 30.
Since March, thousands of Palestinian protesters have made their way to the barrier separating Israel from the Gaza Strip, demanding the right to enter Israel and recovering the homes of their families left behind after the country was founded. in 1948. About 220 people were shot dead and about 24,000 wounded, according to health officials in Gaza. Israel claims that many people injured and killed on the fence are in fact militants posing as peaceful protesters.
Despite regular violence, Ma'amoun Shawaf, owner of a cafe in Khan Younis, 23, knew that Sunday night was "something big".
Hearing gunshots and people shouting, "Israeli forces, go back, go back," Shawaf said that he had rushed to the scene. "I started telling my friends that the war was going to start tonight."
Lawahez Jabari reported from Tel Aviv. Saphora Smith and Yuliya Talmazan have been reported in London.
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