Last summer, Hazem and Sanaa Shafai traveled to Gaza from their longtime home in Massachusetts so that their three U.S.-born children could live near the rest of the family for a year, practicing Arabic and learning about their Palestinian heritage. Now the family is sheltering in a United Nations school near the Egyptian border as Israel wages an intense campaign of airstrikes it says is aimed at dismantling Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that carried out a series of attacks that Israel says killed 1,400 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. More than 7,300 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry there.

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Persons: Sanaa Shafai, Israel Organizations: United Nations Locations: Gaza, Massachusetts, Israel, Palestinian