GAZA CITY:

In his makeshift tent in Gaza City, displaced Palestinian Jamal Abu Mohsen says the bombs are falling less often these days.

Since Israel launched its military campaign against Iran — which has since widened to Lebanon — the 33-year-old Palestinian has noticed a lull in the devastated Palestinian territory.

“Air strikes have become fewer,” Abu Mohsen told AFP from his tent in the north of Gaza.

But the quiet is only relative.

Despite a US-brokered ceasefire in place since October 10, explosions still rock Gaza, Abu Mohsen said.

Blasts from house demolitions and artillery shelling reverberate across the territory, alongside the constant hum of warplanes and reconnaissance drones overhead.

According to Gaza’s civil defence agency, Israeli forces killed one woman and injured another individual in the Al-Mawasi area Saturday, and injured “several” by live fire in the central Al-Bureij refugee camp.

But for Abu Mohsen and other Gazans, it is the daily living that has gotten more arduous, with borders once again tightened since the war on Iran began.

On Saturday, when the US-Israeli attacks on Iran started, Israel shut all entry points into the Palestinian territory for several days.

‘Want to live like human beings’

In the southern coastal area of Al-Mawasi, 59-year-old Abdullah al-Astal said the drop in strikes had been overshadowed by a new squeeze on essentials.

“It’s true that the Israeli bombardment has become much less, but Israel is preventing the entry of food aid and fuel,” Astal told AFP.

“We want to live like human beings.”

Gaza depends almost entirely on aid trucks for food, medicine and fuel. When the crossings close, even briefly, local markets react instantly.

A source in Gaza’s crossings authority confirmed to AFP that “a small number of trucks” were able to enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom Wednesday, but that his agency was not officially notified of the crossing’s opening.

Panic-buying

Felipe Ribero, head of mission for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the Palestinian territories, said that Gazans rushed to stock up on essentials when Kerem Shalom reopened on Tuesday.

“There was a hyperinflation of prices over a few days”, partly because storage capacity in Gaza is low, and a break in the flow of goods quickly creates shortages, he said.

In a displacement camp in Gaza City, retired teacher Safiya Hammouda described panic-buying as soon as the Iran war began.

“From the first day of the Iran war, people were afraid and began buying anything in the market. Basic goods are available but have started to run out,” she told AFP.