CAIRO/RAMALLAH — Samira, a mother of two, yearns for her old life when she was an Arabic teacher and had a comfortable home — before the attack by Hamas on Israel a year ago plunged Gaza into suffering and chaos.

She has joined a growing number of Gazans asking whether they have paid too high a price for Hamas' assault on Oct 7 last year. The Israeli offencive that followed has flattened Gaza, killed tens of thousands, and driven more than a million Palestinians from their homes.

"Despite all the hardships, our life was going well. We had jobs, houses and a city," said Samira, 52, who declined to give her family name for fear of retaliation.

Samira describes Israel as "our prime enemy... the source of all our ills" but she also blames Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct 7 attacks, for what she sees as a huge miscalculation.

"What was he thinking? Didn't he expect that Israel would destroy Gaza?" she said.

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