Rockets Light Up Skies on Israel-Gaza Border On New Year's Eve Amid Prayers For A Better Tomorrow

Dozens of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip targeting Tel Aviv and southern Israel as the country rang in the New Year on Monday. The attack on southern Israel came at midnight and another targeting Tel Aviv occurred a minute later.

Air-raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv as Israeli missile defence systems intercepted the rockets. Some of the people, who had gathered on the streets to celebrate New Year’s Eve, took shelter.

“I was terrified, like it was the first time I saw missiles, its terrifying,” Gabriel Zemelman told AFP outside a Tel Aviv bar where he had come to celebrate with friends. Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for both attacks in a video posted on social media. They said they used M90 rockets in “response to the massacres of civilians” perpetrated by Israel.

‘No Happy New Year’

The Israeli military confirmed the attack. Hamas “decided to start 2024 by launching a barrage of rockets at Israel”, the military said in a post on social media. “New year, same Hamas terrorism. While 129 Israelis are still being held captive by Hamas in Gaza, Hamas also decided to start 2024 by launching a barrage of rockets at Israel. There is ‘no happy’ New Year until they are all home,” IDF wrote on X.

The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack on October 7, which left around 1,140 people dead in Israel. The latest rocket attacks came as Israel continues its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 21,822 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. As they turn from a year that could barely have brought more bitter hardship after 12 weeks of a pulverising Israeli assault, people in Gaza have little hope that 2024 will bring much relief.

‘I wish for peace’

“In 2024 I wish to go back to the wreckage of my home, pitch a tent and live there,” said Abu Abdullah al-Agha, a middle aged Palestinian man whose house in Khan Younis was destroyed and who lost a young niece and nephew in an Israeli air strike, according to Reuters. “I wish for our children to live in peace and security, to go back to school, back to university, for workers to go back to work and find a source of income,” he added.

“Since October we’ve been struggling in tents in the streets, after our homes were demolished,” said Suzan Khader, weeping, adding that she wished the new year would bring an end to the war. “Our whole lives are now on the streets, we eat in the streets, we live on the streets, we die on the streets, and even our children are on the streets and we’re all displaced. So many struggles in 2023,” she added.

(With agency inputs)