Gaza's scars have been frozen in place since Israel waged war a year ago to subdue Hamas and stop rockets from hitting its towns. Entire neighborhoods still lie in rubble, and traumatized residents can't rebuild their lives.

A man who lost two daughters and his home can't visit his surviving 4-year-old girl in a Belgian hospital because Gaza's borders remain sealed. A 15-year-old struggles to walk on her artificial limbs, while dozens of other war amputees still await prostheses.

Couples postpone marriage because not enough apartments survived three weeks of bombing and shelling. Thousands are homeless,and damaged systems mean electricity and water are sporadic. Untreated sewage pours into the Mediterranean.

A three-year-old blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt makes any large-scale rebuilding impossible, because the embargo includes steel and concrete.

The unprecedented use of Israeli firepower against the Palestinians has had repercussions far beyond the pain inflicted on Gaza's long-suffering 1.5 million people.

It emboldened Gaza's Hamas rulers by failing to topple them, and weakened their Western-backed Fatah rivals, whom Palestinians increasingly see as subordinate to Israel. It deepened the political split between Hamas-ruled Gaza and the Fatah-governed West Bank, making a unified Palestinian government _ a prerequisite for any peace deal _ even less likely.

Israel largely succeeded in stopping the rocket fire, and its towns and villages that lived under constant threat have blossomed. But the quiet is fragile, and the screams of Palestinian civilians and bloody scenes in Gaza that filled TV sets and Web sites worldwide badly damaged Israel's international standing.

By the time a cease-fire took effect Jan. 18, more than 1,400 Gazans had been killed, among them hundreds of civilians, along with 13 Israelis.

A U.N. fact-finding team and international human rights groups accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes, including the deliberate targeting of civilians. Both sides have denied wrongdoing.

Israeli politicians and generals must think twice before traveling abroad in case activist groups seek their arrest for alleged war crimes. Tzipi Livni had to cancel a London trip this month because she was foreign minister during the war and faced an arrest warrant.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are coming under tougher European criticism, and a Palestinian-led campaign to boycott goods made in settlements has gained momentum.

President Barack Obama's hopes of jump-starting peace talks have made no visible headway.