Few who saw award-winning photographer Heidi Levine's photo essay of life on the Gaza Strip nearly a year after Israel's seven-week military campaign would fail to have been impressed, both by the continuing desperate nature of life for the 1.8 million inhabitants and by their sheer resilience.
Traversing Saladin Road, the main highway linking the border crossing with Israel at Erez and the Egyptian equivalent at Rafah, 45km away, gave her the chance to revisit places she had photographed during a pause in the conflict.
“Sadly, many of my images of destroyed homes look identical to the ones I photographed a year ago,” she said. “The changes are few and subtle.” In one case, the only difference was that purple wildflowers had colonised the rubble of a family home.
This is despite $3.5 billion (Dh12.86bn) being pledged to rebuild Gaza at a conference in Cairo nine months ago. Only a fraction of the money materialised and as recently as two months ago, not a single one of the 160,000 homes hit by Israeli fire had been rebuilt. As a result, 100,000 Gazans remained homeless.
While the situation illustrates the Gazans’ indomitable spirit to make the best of things in the face of living conditions that were desperate long before the latest Israeli offensive, it also speaks loudly about Israel itself. As a country that projects itself as a victim of oppression that acts morally and with restraint in the face of constant existential threats, Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon maintained as recently as last month that there is “no humanitarian crisis in Gaza”.
Ms Levine’s photographs reveal the shallow farce of that claim, which is why they ought to be seen by the entire world.
The damage wrought by Israel in Gaza goes far beyond wrecked buildings. From grieving families of those killed through to a generation growing up with their potential hindered by the blockade, Israel’s policies increase the appeal of extremism and perpetuate the festering sore that helps cause so much radicalism in the Middle East.