There was a humanitarian ceasefire that went into effect at 6:00 AM. I remember they told us at 5:15 AM, “Look, we’re going to put on a show.” It was amazing, the air force’s precision. The first shell struck at exactly quarter past five on the dot, and the last one struck at 5:59 AM and 59 seconds, exactly. It was amazing. Fire, nonstop shelling of the ‘Sevivon’ neighborhood, (east of Beit Hanoun) which, if I remember correctly, ran down more to the west and south of where we were in there. Nonstop. Just nonstop. The entire Beit Hanoun compound – in ruins.
When you saw this neighborhood on your way out [of the Gaza Strip], what did you see? When we left it was still intact. We were sent out of Beit Hanoun ahead of the ceasefire, ahead of the air force strikes.
And when you went back in, what did you see of that neighborhood? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. Like the opening scene in [the film] “The Pianist.” There’s that famous photo that they always show on trips to Poland (organized trips in which Israeli youths visit Holocaust memorial sites) that shows Warsaw before the war and Warsaw after the Second World War. The photo shows the heart of Warsaw and it’s this classy European city, and then they show it at the end of the war. They show the exact same neighborhood, only it has just one house left standing, and the rest is just ruins. That’s what it looked like.
Were you attacked while inside that neighborhood? Yes. There was a lot of resistance, relatively. It was an area which [Hamas], at least this is what it looked like to me, had designated for combat. a