Young Gaza Resident: ‘We Have to Fight Back’

Anchor Aaron Schachter speaks about the situation in Gaza with one you resident of the Palestinian territory. 17-year-old Karmel Asad Shamallakh moved to Gaza from the Britain last year.

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Aaron Schachter: To get a different perspective we spoke to a young resident of the Gaza neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa, Karmel Asad Shamallakh is 17 and only moved to Gaza last year, having grown up in the UK.

Karmel Asad Shamallakh: Frankly it is very unexpected. You just wake up to a huge bomb, the floors are always shaking, and the children here like my little cousins and brothers – they’re so worried. They don’t know what to do. We have to pretend every time there is a bomb – we have to pretend that it’s something normal. We have to [??] pretend it’s fireworks – pretend everything is going fine when it’s completely the opposite. They really don’t know what’s going on.

Schachter: Are you able to go out to shops, or are your brothers and sisters and cousins able to go outside and play, or are you all stuck in the house?

Shamallakh: No, no one is able to go out because they know [??] if they go, anything can happen – no one knows who’s next. So everyone’s starting to go – everyone yesterday, they went shopping to buy a huge amount of supply of food just to keep it in their house for a month or two so that they don’t have to leave their homes, because they know it’s not good for them. And if you look out the windows – all the streets, there’s nothing – it’s empty.

Schachter: Do you get the impression that people there are angry at Hamas for bringing this into Gaza?

Shamallakh: I know what you’re saying, but I don’t – there’s two different views. Some people may be angry at Hamas because they think they’re putting their lives at risk, but my opinion is that we shouldn’t be angry at them because they’re just defending our country. And, like when they shoot their rockets, we can’t just leave it like nothing happened because we just can’t keep getting more injured people, more killed people – we have to fight back, we have to do something back. Let’s just fight for our country.

Schachter: Gaza resident Karmel Asad Shamallakh…

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