My Year Under Fire as a Peace Activist in Gaza

On the morning of Oct. 24, 2023, an Israeli missile struck my father’s house in Rafah City in the southernmost part of Gaza, then designated a “safe zone” by the Israeli military. The missile exploded only 5 ft. from where I sat with my children.

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The attack killed my 13-year old son Abdullah and six others; my 10-year-old niece Joud, my stepmother Intisar, my aunt Fatima, my aunt Khariyya, my cousin Fawziyya, and our neighbor Hamad. It also seriously injured 10 of us, including myself and two of my other three children. Only my son Abdelrahman was spared; he was out of the house in a long line waiting to buy bread. 

Those of us who survived grabbed what little we could scramble together and made our way across the city into a small apartment that my brother had rented before the war, which I and many experts consider a genocide. This tiny two-bedroom apartment was never meant to house 20 people, but we had no other choice. Rafah was overcrowded with displaced Palestinians as, weeks into Israel’s war, the Israeli army ordered everyone from northern Gaza to evacuate south.

With poor medical infrastructure in Rafah due to the war, I spent several weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza, recovering from injuries and filled with grief from the loss of my dear son Abdullah. My children Mohammad and Batool, and my sister Banan, whose leg was amputated after the airstrike, were miraculously able to leave Gaza to receive medical treatment abroad. They were lucky to get out before Israel seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt in May, and destroyed it in June. Tens of thousands have not been so lucky.

The amount of suffering I saw in the hospital is beyond human endurance. The influx of corpses was endless. Without enough ambulances to carry them, body after body of the dead arrived in private cars or donkey carts. Mothers, fathers, and loved ones arrived to fetch their children’s remains, screaming from their shock and grief.

Read More: The Struggle to Save Lives Inside Gaza’s Hospitals

In those early days of the war, I wondered if it was possible to grow accustomed to these horrors. But then a mother’s screams would pierce the air and disabuse me of the thought. It’s hard to imagine that the world has gotten used to it, either.

I left the hospital at the beginning of December, returning to Rafah as Israel threatened to launch a ground invasion into the city, where 1.5 million displaced people were taking refuge. Like other families, we were scrambling: Where could we go if the Israeli army invaded Rafah?

My family and I began to make a plan to go back to Khan Younis, where I had an apartment. It was our only option. But before we could depart, Israel invaded Khan Younis, killing this last hope of shelter. My apartment was destroyed only days after leaving the hospital, along with thousands of other homes.

Our only option was to set up a tent at the north tip of Rafah. But the bombing once again followed us. So we decided once again to attempt the harrowing journey to Khan Younis. We have been homeless since May, living in tents in Khan Younis, as most buildings have been destroyed. That same month, the Israeli army made good on their promise to invade Rafah.

The conditions we face are miserable. We have little access to water, no good food, no sewage systems, and no furniture.

Sadly, my family’s ordeal is not unique. Some in Gaza have been displaced as many as 20 times. Today, most people can find no shelter and sleep in the streets. The constant displacement has left us exhausted. This is one of the most unbearable ways we have suffered. Most people have no source of income or food and have no transport. The Israeli army spokesperson continues to announce evacuation orders of wide swaths of land via Facebook posts. But more and more Palestinians risk their lives by staying put. We have grown too tired to move again and have nowhere else to go.

At least 41,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past year, the majority women and children, and over 10,000 people are missing under the rubble of their homes.

Israel is not waging a war on Hamas but against all of the people in Gaza. Perhaps that should not be a surprise when, just two days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, Israeli Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was fighting “human animals” and ordered electricity, fuel, water, and virtually everything to be cut off from Gaza. Ever since, the Israeli war machine has operated with unwavering and seemingly unlimited funding and support from the Biden Administration.

The conditions Israel has inflicted upon us have made our lives unbearable, something their leaders seem proud of. We die from every possible form of death. We die from airstrikes, from hunger, from disease. We die in anguish from the world’s complicity in our genocide.

As we enter the second year of this war, Israeli generals have said they wish to completely empty the north of the Gaza Strip of its residents. They appear to be implementing this plan already, ordering all civilians in the north to flee south in this endless cycle of displacement.

Israel has consistently dehumanized my people and turned Gaza into a killing field with the help of its powerful friends. Most of the world’s public rejects these policies. But as long as Western governments continue to support Israel with weapons and political cover, there will be no respite.

This article was originally written in Arabic and shared via WhatsApp due to the limited resources in Gaza. The op-ed was translated by ReThink Media.