Both Israel and Gaza are marking the first anniversary of Operation Protective Edge that took place between July 7 and Aug. 26, 2014. Family and friends of Lt. Hadar Goldin, among them distant relative Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, arrived at the military cemetery in Kfar Sava to visit the gravestone for Goldin, whose body is being held by Hamas. Standing by the cenotaph erected in his son’s memory, Goldin’s father said, “I remind you that the IDF left two bodies behind in Gaza and Rafah [Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul]. In the name of the sacred covenant between the parents and the state, I pledge that we will return his body [home].”

Another ceremony was held on Aug. 12 at the Western Wall, where 75 Torah scrolls, some of which survived the Holocaust, were dedicated in memory of the fallen — soldiers, Israeli civilians and foreign workers — during the operation. Jews from the Diaspora donated the scrolls. For its part, the Israeli media also did its own reflection concerning the lessons, misguided assessments, the Hamas tunnels and even the spikes in real-estate prices and tourism [after the Gaza war].

In Gaza, the picture is complex and difficult. There, too, the residents were marking the first anniversary of the operation during which more than 2,000 Palestinians were killed, according to assessments (other assessments evaluate 2,400 casualties). Tens of thousands were wounded. Houses and buildings sustained unprecedented damage that is yet to be repaired. Thousands of Palestinians, mainly in the Shajaiya Gaza neighborhood and the Gaza Strip communities near the Israeli border, remain homeless.

Adnan Abu Amer, an Al-Monitor contributor in Gaza, traveled to Shajaiya. His impressions from the neighborhood one year after the operation were published in Al-Monitor on Aug. 13. “The fighters of [Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades] are now more convinced that in any future war the Shajaiya experience will repeat itself in all of Gaza’s regions, and that Israel will face major losses,” Abu Amer wrote after interviewing Hamas fighters and praising their heroism for what they claim was their ability to stop IDF forces from moving deep into the Gaza Strip. Strangely though, Abu Amer did not see — or saw and chose to ignore — the great devastation in the neighborhood that is still licking its wounds. According to Palestinian accounts, hundreds of people were killed in that neighborhood. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that some 421 residents were killed around Gaza City and its environs, most of whom from Shajaiya.