Israel

Asim Rafiqui in Gaza, for the Pulitzer Center

Are you from Pakistan?

I am not sure how he knew for we had not met nor spoken to each other.

I was just about the get up to leave Al-Awda mosque in Rafah, Gaza when a man sitting behind me introduced himself and asked if I was from Pakistan. Nothing about my appearance that day - I in my conventional trekking pants and checkered shirt, suggested my background.

How did he know?

Elliott D. Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Gaza City — It's too early to start talking about burnout, but let's face it — it's already here. It's not just me, it's the whole of the Gaza Strip.

Seven-year-old Ahmed Haslan was playing at a neighbor's house last week, in the village of Shujayeh, near Gaza's border with Israel, when a bullet struck him in the head, leaving him within an inch of his life.

Dr. Omar Al-Manassra, a trauma physician at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where Haslan is in critical condition, held an x-ray of Haslan's head, pointing to the bullet that remains lodged in his skull.

Note from the photographer:

"The images are meant to go beyond 'current events'. The panels were made to capture the living, those left behind by the dead, to carry out tasks of finding their buried dead, reconstruction, burial, mourning, sorrow, and stoicism. The images are about the living, not about the dead or the mayhem. About what is left behind when both the violence ends and the news media walks away, the aftermath situations to which we rarely pay attention, and the sheer human courage needed to live through it." - Asim Rafiqui

"Elliott Woods arrived in Gaza two days before Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire, ending its devastating twenty-two day offensive against Hamas. While in Gaza, he has photographed the damage left in the wake of Israel's air and land campaign extensively. He is currently covering Gazan politics and culture for the Pulitzer Center."

Elliott Woods and Asim Rafiqui, for the Pulitzer CenterThere has been a lot of talk about allegations of Israeli war crimes during Israel's recent three-week war on Hamas.  Obviously, as journalists, we are not in a position to prosecute or arrest suspected offenders — but we do have a responsibility to report what we see, and to not shy from the evidence and the real story of violent and unnecessary destruction here for the sake of appealing to American media audiences, who may have little or no interest in stories about human suffering, wanton demolishing of civilian structures, or anything else that portrays the Israeli operation as anything other than a normal modern military action against a discrete threat.Working in the wake of the Israeli offensive — among the heaps of wrecked homes and wrecked lives — is not easy, though obviously Asim and I are keenly aware that our professional difficulties pale in comparison to the sorrow and hardship that Gazans are experiencing at the moment, as they try to piece together their broken world, as they struggle to collect themselves from a brutal beating without any justification. 

Asim Rafiqui, for the Pulitzer Center

On the Getty Images archive you can type in 'Gaza Destroyed' and retrieve over 5,500 images to select from. If you run the query 'Gaza Funerals' you will get back over 7,000 images. I was unable to check the Corbis archives because at the time of writing this entry their site was undergoing maintenance. But I am confident that I would find a similarly large number of images for both the queries above.

Asim Rafiqui, for the Pulitzer Center

The water pipe has many names.

A month ago, when Abdel Al-Arkan looked out of his living room window, he saw groves of olive and orange trees stretching toward the Israeli border, their branches sagging with fruit.

Al-Arkan’s window is gone now, shattered by an Israeli air strike. The trees are gone, too, torn up by tank treads, replaced by fields of reddish dirt. When he peers through the shards, Al-Arkan, 31, sees the post-apocalyptic wreckage of his neighbors’ homes, reduced to tangled heaps of concrete and re-bar.

Mohammad Awad was so happy when the lights came back on that he didn't want to go bed.

A trickle of electricity started flowing into Gaza City four days ago after Israel announced a unilateral cease-fire. Gazans such as Mr. Awad, 23, an engineering student, are relishing the whir of refrigerators and the distraction of television - conveniences they had to live without during three weeks of Israeli bombardment.

Elliott Woods, for the Pulitzer Center

Ahmed Abu Arida, 41, was standing on the roof of his apartment building at 11:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve, watching Israeli jets pound the city around him.

"The explosions were very loud," Mr. Arida said, "but they seemed far away."

Then he heard screaming from the rooms below.

"Ahmed, Ahmed, Ahmed, I am here," he said, remembering the words of Iman Arida, 32, the mother of his seven children. "Those are the last words she ever spoke," he said.