TEL AVIV — Tragedy envelops Gaza and its people.
Despite the catastrophic war that has killed thousands of his fellow residents, Nawaf Muttar says he would never leave the enclave even if he had the chance.
“I cannot go to Sinai,” he told NBC News’ crew on the ground, referring to the arid Egyptian peninsula bordering Gaza to the south. “Neither I nor my family nor anyone I know wants to go there.”
The war, precipitated by the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks that killed some 1,200 people and resulted in the kidnapping of some 240 people in Israel, according to Israeli officials, has also killed more than 21,000 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. More than 100 of those kidnapped are believed to remain in captivity.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes and ground operations have leveled entire neighborhoods, displaced an estimated 90% of the enclave’s residents and plunged an estimated 1 million into hunger and starvation, according to the World Health Organization. Residents have been ordered to leave crowded, urban refugee camps as Israel announced it was expanding its ground offensive into what it called “a new battle zone.”
The mass displacement has pushed thousands of Palestinians like Muttar and his family into Rafah and other areas bordering Egypt. It has also fueled worries that civilians will be forcibly displaced into Egypt, imperiling the Palestinian cause, which for many is the long-cherished vision of an internationally recognized independent Palestinian state, partly in Gaza.
“Do we abandon the dreams of our ancestors?” Muttar said.
If they are forced to cross the border to flee the bombing, hunger and chaos, many fear the possibility of a new “Nakba,” the Arabic word for “catastrophe” used to describe the displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled from their land in what became Israel in 1948.
Muttar says his immediate priority is to stay in the place he calls home.
“Where will we go? To…
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