Obama’s comments come as thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to return to destroyed homes. On Thursday, thirteen-year-old Dalal Abu Aisha visited the site where her parents and three younger siblings were killed, their home now reduced to rubble.

Dalal Abu Aisha: “What remains from my sister’s mattress is only the iron springs. My sister’s body was stuck together with my mother’s body, and they couldn’t separate them, so they left them together. They couldn’t separate them, so they buried them together.”

Dalal had missed the attack on her home because she was visiting an aunt whose young daughter had been killed the day earlier by an Israel tank. The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza has put the Palestinian toll at more than 1,400 killed and 5,500 wounded. One of Gaza’s leading human rights groups, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, says nearly 70 percent of the deaths were civilian. Overall, thirty-four health facilities — eight hospitals and twenty-six clinics — were damaged or destroyed in the Israeli attack.