Conversations from a year in Gaza and Israel

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0:41Hello, I'm Rahul Tandon. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. This time in a special edition of BBC OS Conversations, we hear from people in Israel and Gaza who share their experiences from the past year. October 7 marks the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on southern Israel, when gunmen killed 1 ,200 people and took 251 hostage. In response, the Israeli government vowed to destroy Hamas. Since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, more than 60 ,000 people have been killed in air and ground attacks. The United Nations says that most of the population has had to leave their homes and half a million are facing starvation.

1:33Throughout the conflict, we've spoken to families of those killed by Hamas or taken hostage. And from Gaza, one of our producers, Christina, has been receiving regular messages from a 17-year-old girl called Sanibel. In this edition, you'll hear some of those messages and conversations. they've all been recorded over the past year and provide a snapshot of the devastating impact of this war. We'll hear first from Sharon. Her elderly parents were seized by Hamas militants and Simon, a survivor of the 7th October attack. I've never had a feeling of fear like that in my whole life. It's totally unbelievable.

2:18You know, we always had a thought that there will be peace one day. But this didn't happen. And now, after the 7th of October, there's no forgiving and never, ever going to forget what they did. It was atrocious, barbaric. For us, the story is not over. And it is a story in which so many things are intertwined. You know, the joy for my mom returned, the absolute devastation of my father and the way he lost his life and all the other members of the kibbutz. But also the knowledge that still at this very moment in the tunnels in Gaza, our loved one kept hostage through all this horrific and we know everything about it.

3:00We know what Arbel Yehud said about how they were treated and what Elisha Rabi told us. We know. And so for us and especially for the return hostages, we are with them in the tunnels and we are waiting for them to return to us. There have been a lot of wars in Gaza, a lot of skirmishes or smaller wars. And after everyone, Hamas and the jihad and all the extremists there have gotten stronger because their narrative is to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. And we cannot have that. The world cannot have that. So as painful as it is, I think we have to forge forward in stamping out the evil there.

3:47Sharon, do you believe that this is the right strategy for Israel? Absolutely not. It's a disaster. It's a disaster for Israel. It's a disaster for the hostages. It's heartbreaking to see what is happening to our hostages and it's heartbreaking to see what is happening in Gaza. I believe that we are between fanatics. I don't compare fanatics, but I think there are people that politically gain from the game on. In Gaza, you have the Hamas. They have a lot of food underground in tunnels. They can feed their own people. They will be the last one to survive. It is the children that are suffering.

4:32We will not rest until we bring all our hostages home by any means possible. and we will continue to defend the people of Israel from all threats on all of our borders. Tonight, the UN accused Israel of forcibly displacing tens of thousands of people in northern Gaza. There is no end in sight to this war.

5:04Hello, Christina. I hope you're doing well. This date last year, I lost my aunt Shada and her son Juma, who is four years old, and my cousin Nadia. She's also four years old, and her father, Dad. Shuma and Nadia was too young. How can muscle target these young children? They didn't even do anything. They didn't even hold a gun or doing anything against the law. They didn't even see their future, seeing their lives. Grandma was always, he was always telling me that in the future he will be a pilot. And Nadia always also tells me that she wants to be a dressmaker and a model. Mahmoud Faseeh is walking through the courtyard of a hospital in Gaza's Khan Yunus.

6:23I took her to the hospital and they told me, your daughter has been dead for an hour due to the cold. I have no clothes, no food, no drink. Only God knows our condition.

6:43Hello, Christine. I hope you're doing well. Look how beautiful painting it is. My sister Sundus, who is 16 years old, And she's drawing and painting on the package of the humanitarian aids. And I've also helped her with writing the English sentences on it. I also wrote an Arabic art, Al-Majd al-Zaytun, which means the land of dignity and olives. The yellow trees in Palestine is a big part of us because it's our logo. So we are in this war, in this painful war, spending our time to at least in good things for like studying online, drawing something that talks about our tragedy, our miserable life here in Gaza City.

7:52There's been more death and destruction both sides of the Lebanese border today. Around the town of Matullah in northern Israel, five people were killed by Hezbollah rocket fire and another two people near the city. It's easier to talk about news that have more new stuff happening. And it's easy to put aside for the public the issue of the hostages. and I feel as it's not being talked enough. And for me, every day I think about them, every day we feel the fact that they are missing and that they are not here and that all the world is so much darker right now. For me, it's my family. For me, it's people that I know and I love and I'm fearful for their lives.

8:43It's really disheartening just hearing the talk about them as just another point in the overall conflict. I mean, it wasn't just that our families are being sort of treated as a kind of bargaining chip or as a kind of, you know, one factor or one facet of a complex Middle Eastern problem. But it's also the reason why we're stuck here, why we're still here a year later, because it's only ever talked about in those terms. You only ever talk about the hostages in terms of some kind of commensurate deal or ceasefire agreements or whatever. And after a year of captivity, we know that the conditions that the hostages are in is extremely dire.

9:24The last six hostages that have been recovered after being executed by Hamas were found to have been severely malnourished. Edin Yurl Shami, a 26-year-old woman, was found at 36 kilos, which is about 77 pounds. She should be double that in weight. She was starving to death. Their bodies were riddled with bullet holes, signs of torture and abuse. And we know that every day that they're not home, their lives are in jeopardy. It's a purely humanitarian issue. They should be returned on purely humanitarian ground. We can't talk about ceasefire and aid and other conditionalities associated with the conflict if we don't have the hostages home.

10:05By bringing the hostages home, it allows us to start opening up possibilities, other pathways. And I think that that is the swiftest, quickest way to achieve a number of the other objectives in terms of ceasefire and aid, reconciliation, allowing the families to grieve, allowing Israel as a society to kind of come together and process what's just happened and progress things. Elon and Adam, whose relatives were captured by Hamas. That conversation was recorded late last year. At the moment, there are believed to be 48 hostages still being held in the Palestinian territory by Hamas. Only 20 are thought to be alive.

10:46You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service, with conversations recorded over the past year during the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

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11:36At the end of a week full of despair and uncertainty,

11:43an outpouring of relief and joy. In January this year, a ceasefire deal was reached. Hamas released Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners by Israel. Meanwhile, some of the displaced people in Gaza returned to see what was left of their communities. And convoys of lorries began delivering humanitarian aid. For people on both sides, it was a moment of hope, as you can hear from Sanibel in Gaza. Unfortunately, as we now know, that peace deal did not last. I'm not dreaming. I'm not dreaming. Finally, after, like, I woke up from this nightmare. After 450 days, we're now free. Palestine, Gaza, it's free.

12:39I hope that the hostages will be the families and spending more time with the families after a year. And we really want peace between them and us. We don't need a conflict. We don't want to live a new conflict, a new war. We just want peace. Now can I say Happy New Year for the girls and people? Like in the last week, I was praying God to live a peaceful life and safety life and getting a ceasefire soon for the innocent people in Gaza, for us, for the teenagers, for the children, for the women, for the elderly people, for the orphans who lost their parents. So finally, we can start over, start a new life, a new beginning, a new goal.

13:38Spending more time with the people we love the most. I can't even imagine that I will hug my past friend tightly when she will come in the next week from the south of Gaza Strip. It has been a year and I didn't even hug her at going outside together, spending more time with each other, opening up everything for each other, especially what is happening now and express my feelings, my emotions. hair.

14:16In the past 15 months I've dedicated my life to making sure that the hostages are released. I couldn't be happier for seeing these, not just these women getting their lives back, but also their families getting their lives back. I know these people intimately. I feel like I know the hostages as if they were my sisters. This is a huge, I would say, alleviation or, you know, a quick breath of fresh air in order to continue this struggle. After all we've been through, that just signing a piece of paper can bring people back alive without risking soldiers, without risking their own lives, that was a huge relief.

15:06At the same time, I think that the state of Israel failed on October 7. It failed to defend its citizens. It failed to protect them from being taken from their beds. It failed to send the military in time, which cost many, many lives, and the lives of soldiers and civilians. And sadly, and I do say it with great sadness, that is the only way to bring back the hostages. You know, some of the families of the hostages said, we can breathe finally. The war and the hostages really touch us deeply in our everyday lives. lives. You know, when I saw them coming back yesterday, I sat and I cried and I cried and I cried.

16:01It has to be done, no matter what the price is. I would like to say that I hear what both Udi and Roma have to say, and I agree and I disagree. I disagree because we didn't try everything that we could have tried. When we are fighting our enemies, and they are horrific enemies, we saw what they did on October 7th, and it was a mini-holocaust for the Jews and for Israel. Do we have to play a game, a fair game with them? Are we playing a basketball game that one side uses their legs to kick the ball and the others don't? I don't even call it, it's not a game, but we're fighting a war under rules that we cannot win the war.

16:42We're bringing in food, and we're helping humanitarian aid into Gaza while we're fighting a war with the Gaza people. We're not only fighting the Hamas, they keep on showing us we are Hamas. We, the people of Gaza, are Hamas and Hamas is us. We saw that when they released the girls just a few days ago. We saw them on the streets and we saw the videos coming out of there. And we saw it on October 7th. So we're fighting a war, but we're not fighting a war. And we're tying the hands of our soldiers in the way they're fighting the war. Thank you for joining us. And we want to start with some breaking news at this hour.

17:18Israeli warplanes have launched dozens of airstrikes on cities across Gaza. There have been explosions in several areas of the territory. Hello, Christina. How are things? I hope you're doing well. Like the situation here in Gaza is still worsening. Like the people who are displaced from their homes, from their areas now in the street. They are living now in a tent. And you know, the weather today is too cold, so how can they feel warm? All I want is to achieve my dreams before I die. I'm worrying about, like, what if I die? What if I be killed before achieving what I want, before passing my exams in June, before joining to the university and studying my future career, going to be an English translator?

18:13later. I'm too frightened of this thing. I really want to achieve what I wish for before I die. The United Nations-backed group which monitors global hunger confirmed for the first time famine in Gaza City, which it predicts will expand to much of the rest of Gaza next night. I'm too frightened really to leave my home. A lot of people around us are displaced to the south again, leave their homes. So, as you know, they were talking the news that Israel, Saudi tanks break into Gaza again. Also, there are no fuels. We don't even like the people here in Gaza return to eat canned food. There are no bread.

19:01The bakeries are going to be closed because there are no fuel. So, we He took everything on fire. Now on Monday, Nasser Hospital, the largest in southern Gaza, and one of the few still partially operating in the strip, was hit twice by Israeli strikes. At least 20 people were reportedly killed.

19:26The situation in Gaza? The situation in Gaza is too bad. I'm not in my home. I evacuate and I don't know what is happening in my area. They're talking about that the Israeli army will just pump all this choir. I see fire now. It's burning, fire burning, a lot of things now in my area. I don't know if my home is still or not. I didn't take anything, my personal things, my cocks, that I'm going just to have my final exams the next month. We're human until when I should wait for the human right to tell me if I had the right to live or not.

20:26There's been widespread outrage after Hamash released videos showing two Israeli hostages alive but emaciated. the EU Foreign Affairs Chief, called the videos appalling.

20:39Carmel was still alive when we said that this war should end. And I think we had a chance to save her. We had a chance to save the other hostages who were murdered. We had a chance to save so many innocent civilians on both sides of the border who were killed due to the war. And we lost this opportunity. We now have an opportunity to end this war. And all the horrible things that are happening in Gaza, which I can tell you most of the Israelis don't want to know about, but they are very concerned with this as well. Innocent people on both sides of the border have said enough is enough. This war should end and we need to get all the hostages back home, including Tal.

21:18I completely agree with what Gilad said. The one and only way to get all the hostages back is by making a deal. Now, we have reached a point that if the sense Israel has put two objectives to this war, one is to make sure that Hamas no longer rules Gaza on the day after or is defeated. And the other one is bringing back all the hostages. And today it is more evident than ever before that if we don't prioritize, we will not be able to reach these goals. Now, we've got to remember, as we converse, both Gil and I, we say that we are making demands of our government because they represent us and they're responsible for us.

22:03At the same time, had Hamas put down its arms and decided to bring back all the hostages, then the war would end tomorrow. But sadly, Hamas is a terrorist organization that had shown and proven day after day that it has zero regard to human lives. Well, I believe that Hamas is a terror organization and the people of Gaza deserve a much better future than Hamas controlling them forever and ever. and even for one, two or three more years. But I think the only way right now to defeat Hamas would be to first get all the hostages back to end this specific war and then deal with either diplomatic solutions or military solutions to defeat them.

22:45But right now, the war that we're having, the hunger that we see in Gaza, the fact that hostages are still there, I can clearly say this is not the way to get the hostages back and this is not the way to defeat Hamas. October 7th is what I hate the most And because of this date, I lost everything in my life Literally everything Hamas destroyed us and still doing that thing All I want is, I don't want Hamas to rule us again Let the Palestinians, the civilians, the young people He even goes as me who lost their dreams because of the war decide who will rule us. And for me, I just want to live in peace.

23:38I'm sick of just forcing myself to stay positive. To say, yeah, it's going to be, the war is going to end soon. Johnson prompts it in his speech that he really has a chance, a real chance to do something that will happen in the East for the first time. What is it? I hope that it will be a ceasefire that lasts forever.

24:10That's the latest message we received from Sanibel in Gaza. She mentions the US plan to end the war outlined by President Donald Trump earlier this week. Already accepted by Israel, it stipulates that Hamas disarm and have no future role in governing Gaza. As we record this on Friday lunchtime, Hamas is yet to respond. Thank you so much to Sanibel in Gaza and to all our guests in Israel. I'm Rahul Tandon and you've been listening to the documentary. From the BBC World Service.

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