Feature: One year after war, Gazans' hope for changing fate dims

Mo'tasem Abu Asser, the 31-year-old father of four children, has been living in his half destroyed house in eastern Gaza city neighborhood of el-Shuja'ia for one year, seeing no hope that his situation would change very soon.

The second floor of his home was completely destroyed during the large-scale Israeli military operation started last July 8 on the Gaza Strip. The operation was to rein rockets fired from the enclave into Israel and tunnels used for military purposes.

Abu Asser's whole family now lives in the first floor of the building, which was also badly damaged. The man, his wife and their four daughters stay in one of the damaged rooms after he managed to partially fix it. He said he rebuilt one of the destroyed walls of the room, and put beds for his family to sleep in.

According to Mufid al-Hassayna, the Gaza minister of housing and public work, during the 50-day war, more than 20,000 Gaza houses were completely destroyed and some 30,000 houses were partially damaged.

"We were informed by Israel and the United Nations that construction raw materials will be allowed in Gaza soon as a first stage for building 663 housing units for those who had their homes completely destroyed," said al-Hassayna, who announced that the wheels of the construction plan began to move.

Abu Asser slammed the official statements that reconstruction plan has begun or will start very soon. "All are just promises but nothing is moving. I don't believe them. Look at me and my neighbors, it has been already a year and we lost hope that one day our homes will be rebuilt," said the man.

Abu Asser said during the war his family moved to a UN shelter in Gaza city for one week. But as life there was miserable, in one of the ceasefires, he went back to the house to pick up things useful.

"Then I rented a small apartment in Gaza city and paid 200 U.S. dollars a month," said Abu Asser.

He went on saying that after the war ended, he moved with his wife and four children to their old house, fixing one of the rooms and living there till now. His parents, brothers and sisters are still living in the rented apartment.

Besides the large destruction in housing and infrastructure that were left by the war last summer, the eight-year-old blockade imposed on the enclave kept the rates of poverty and unemployment growing to more than 50 percent.

"I can't find a job these days. Before the war, I used to work as vegetable vendor and now I'm unemployed," said Abu Asser, who have been living on foreign and local aids received from the United Nations and other countries.

Poverty, unemployment, the ongoing endless blockade, the stalled Middle East peace process and the internal Palestinian division, all create a status of despair among the Gazans that their daily living condition and the situation in the Gaza Strip will never change.

"If you ask me do you expect another war, I would say no because we had enough wars. We passed three wars in 2009, 2012 and 2014, and we gained nothing but destruction and poverty," said Yasser el-Hajj, a 26-year-old Palestinian from Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip. He lost all his family and his house during the last war.

"Believe me, our situation has become hopeless, because we have been talking about unity for eight years and nothing has been done. We have been talking about a permanent peace solution but things are getting worse. So the only solution is to accept what is available now," said el-Hajj in despair.

The international donors who pledged 5.4 billion U.S. dollars for Gaza reconstruction haven't been able to fulfill their promises due to the complicated political situation between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority as well as the internal split between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank.

"I don't see any exaggeration when we say that Gaza populations are poor. It is really clear. Look at me and tens of thousands of people like me. We all live a horrible life and die slowly," said el-Hajj, adding that "I can't say there is starvation in Gaza. Everyone in Gaza has food, but lives miserable life."

El-Hajj is the only survivor of his family that had eight people. He said that all other family members were killed on one Israeli airstrike on their house. He still can't forget the day when the house was struck and all his family were killed.

"Nothing remained, I lost everything. I never heard of a child in Gaza that died of starvation like in Syria or Ethiopia. People here die of stress and outrage because the situation is not improving," he said as he stood on the debris of his destroyed home. Endit