Author: admin

People Speak

30 January 2025

For two hours I have been inspecting Kamal Al-Adwan Hospital, the courtyard in which patients, doctors and their children were buried, and in which the wounded and those captured were lying naked in the darkness of the night, the Emergency Departments, the reception that is reduced to ashes, the Oxygen and Maintenance rooms, the Intensive Care Unit where the nurse, Hassan Al-Dabous, was killed while caring for his patients, the Children’s Department, the oxygen generation unit where people were burnt alive.

In the vicinity of the hospital on the four sides, there is the path that Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya took like a Christ-like redeemer and there are the houses, none of which were spared from bombing and more bombing. How much the besieged people who had been steadfast for 80 days have suffered! What terror and fear did they experience!

Is it possible that death will spare our city tomorrow. I mean, even normal death? Is it possible that our city can take a break from daily losses? Our city has no more space for sadness. Our city needs to be left alone in order to weep and cry.

The question that keeps being asked of the people returning to their homes in Gaza: how do you feel? I don’t know who can link the value of an event with the feelings people have about it, but if there can be an answer, the answer would be: I am the one who prepared his suitcase without knowing where to go.

 

It is the feeling of the first time you enter your home when your mother is not there anymore.  The feeling of the one who has no home. The feeling of being left by all those who cherished you for your resilience, left alone at your front door, the door of Gaza.

In some minutes I will meet Karam’s mother, who doesn’t know where her son, Karam, is in Gaza.

People died unwilling to leave their homes; they died having been displaced from their homes; they died waiting to return to their homes; they died returning to their homes, and they died when they saw the rubble of their homes.

I have been obsessed since this morning with the scene of the mother who grabbed her son’s bones and his skull and held them to her chest while screaming: ‘Oh God, my love, my son is my only one. I came to you, and no-one looked for you except me, and oh God, I am not afraid of you.’

Whoever thought that the war on Gaza had stopped was mistaken. In fact, it is starting now, but it is a different kind of war, more deadly than the war of bombs and missiles!!

People in Gaza have now returned to an erased city, empty neighbourhoods, and destroyed homes. There are no mosques, no schools, no universities, no hospitals, no roads. Not even bakeries nor markets, and even water and electricity, which are the simplest necessities of life, do not exist!

People go to see the rubble of their homes and return to the tents again. The scale of destruction is unimaginable.

There are people in Gaza who died of cardiac attack after their children took out skeletons from under the rubble. Some of them died in shock after seeing their destroyed homes completely wiped out, not even any rubble left.

All I see in this whole scene is a child who suffocated to death under the rubble and a woman who lost her mind after all her children died of hunger.

I see in the picture nothing but this rubble spreading as far as the eye can see and the skeletons by the thousands forming a new layer on the earth that geologists have not yet classified!

A homeland whose limbs were gnawed away, a lost generation, souls that lost their compass, and large areas of their minds and their humanity.

Because I am pessimistic, bad, lacking patriotism and politeness, defeatist, and do not have the vision to see the aim behind everything that has happened.  I do not see what you see, gentlemen. Lend me your eyes, please!  I don’t see my house. I don’t see the life that was inside us all.

Was I killed in an air raid without knowing it? And do I now see you from eternity surrounded by all the nakedness of the earthly reality around you?

Am I blind?  Or am I the only one who sees?

Or am I the last of the crazy people in a village where everyone has been cured of their humanity?

From the Bloomberg Global Network report on the destruction of Gaza and reconstruction, the economist at Rand International, Daniel Rigel, says:’A building can be rebuilt, but how can the lives of a million children be rebuilt?’

We called it a catastrophe, then we found this name too narrow. We called it a disaster; then we found this name too timid. We called it a holocaust and we found this name too strange. We called it murder and we found this name too diplomatic.  Please give it it’s real name: genocide 

A family, including four children, was recovered from under the rubble. They had been suddenly surrounded by the occupation army’s tanks in North Gaza. They found their skeletons. They were all wearing backpacks in order to flee with their lives. They were unable to survive. Israel killed them. Then their bodies decomposed, and the backpacks remained on their bodies. Their bones bear witness to the ugliness of this occupation and the vileness of the hypocritical world.

Today’s event at a tent encampment: after they prayed for him in absentia months ago, he returned today, alive and well, but he returned and found no one waiting for him!

For how many years will we have to live in a tent?

People thought that, with the end of the war, the suffering would end but the fact is that the suffering has become more shameless and sustainable than before.

They found the remains of one of their martyred sons. They did not find the remains of his brother. They split into two halves, one half saying he was Mahmoud, the other half saying that he was Ibrahim. The mother said with strange calmness: ‘Ibrahim.’ When they asked her about the evidence, she answered: ‘My heart.’ In her silence, the truth was deeper than any question. 

We are a very lucky family in the genocidal war on Gaza. When the Israeli occupation army destroyed our house, we were not at home. We fled before it was levelled to the ground. But for others, the occupation army bombed their house, and they were all killed.

The occupation army destroyed our house, which consisted of only 4 floors, but we are we lucky. There were buildings with 10 floors that were levelled to the ground.

We are lucky because the occupation army only killed one of my brothers. It is true that it killed my uncles, my cousins, my aunt’s children, and my cousin’s children, and it executed our brother-in-law, his parents, etc., but only one of my brothers was killed.

Many people envy us because we found my brother’s body, and when did we find it? Just one month later. Many people in Gaza are still searching for the bodies of their brothers.

We were lucky that the stray dogs did not maul him because they could not reach him, as he was buried under huge pieces of concrete.

We were lucky because we found my brother’s complete body. No head, leg, or arm was missing, and it had not even decomposed. Our good luck was that the weather was cold.

We are very lucky because we found a place to bury our brother. It is true that the four mourners did not find room in the cemetery, but they opened the grave of my brother, Adel. He was martyred in the January 1987 uprising. They placed it next to him. Thank you, my brother Adel.

We are lucky because we were displaced to the south. It is true that we were hungry, but we have not eaten animal feed yet, nor wild grass.

We are fortunate that, when we were displaced, we were able to eliminate the lice that invaded my child’s hair due to the lack of water.

We were lucky because we were able to kill a snake that tried to sneak into our shelter, killing it before it bit one of us.

We are lucky because no-one has stopped us at night – yet – and taken away everything we carry, including phones and money.

 

Genocide recipe

8 October 2024

If you want someone not to care, keep showing him the same events, let him listen to the same news, expose him to the same images, and he will get tired and stop watching; he will stop listening.

Recipe contents: 

1. Play on time 

This is what Israel has depended on during its genocide against Gaza, that all the world news would cover the massacres they committed against the Gazan people, day by day, hour by hour, showing and talking about the children killed, the homes destroyed, the famine created, the attacks and invasions of hospitals and schools. The whole world watched and the whole world rejects what is happening, the whole world protests against what is happening. But Israel knew that they would be supported by the superpowers of the world, so they continued the killing, the destruction, and the starvation. They prevented the food, the medicine, the medical supplies from entering Gaza. They pushed 2 million people to live in less than 30 Km². They attacked ambulances, and aid vehicles. And they kept increasing the daily toll of murdering and injuring, destruction and bombing. They knew that time will make people care less and less, that people will become bored with the same news, people will escape from watching horrible images of shredded bodies, heads of children, destruction and the smoke of explosions. People will get busy with other things in their lives, people can’t keep being exposed to this terror for long, so Israel continues.  

2. Shift attention to something else 

Claim that the UNRWA is a terrorist organisation. The news will give more space to cover the argument about the UNRWA, with less talk and images about the genocide. Claim that hospitals contain militants and military items. The news will give time for arguments about whether it is right or wrong. Talk about a deal for the release of hostages. It will take up more space in the news. Procrastinate during negotiations, make them last forever without end. This will take up time on the news. Create new false accusations and keep the world talking about anything and everything except what is happening inside Gaza. 

3. Create a new enemy, open a new front 

Provoke Iran, Hezbollah, open a new battle front. The news will give more coverage of the new war, and Gaza will be out of the news. Continue the killing, the destruction, the famine, the genocide, with no worries. The world is busy with many other things

4. Take a strong ally 

Before committing the genocide make sure that you have a strong ally who will back you up whatever you do, and who could be better than the USA and the double-standard hypocritical Western countries, as allies and partners in genocide?   

  

Basel Almaquosi, one of my closest friends, is an artist, a painter and a photographer. He spent most of his life working with and for children with hearing and speaking difficulties, using his art to provide them space for self-expression and relaxation through painting. Since the war started on Gaza, Basel has continued doing what he knows most, what he likes to do most, doing painting workshops with children and mothers in the displacement camps. He receives no pay for this, he does not wait to receive anything for what he does, he does it because he loves it, he is doing it because he believes that this is the least he can do to support children and mothers under bombing and displacement.

Basel, my friend, wrote this:  

Oppression

Do you know what oppression is??? 

After leaving Rafah under the bombing, the shelling, the air strikes and heavy shooting from drones and tanks, with the bodies of killed people and injured along our route, we survived and arrived at a new place to stay at Zawaida in the middle area, myself and my family, next to 3 garbage containers, the only empty spot I found in Zaweida. I set up my belongings, which were some mattresses, some wooden sticks and plastic sheets, trying to make a sleeping place for my wife and my children. They slept and I kept awake guarding them all the night from street dogs and cats and passing cars. How I felt was beyond words: oppressed, defeated, conquered, humiliated, no words can express what I felt. I cried, nothing could prevent me from crying. My tears fall slowly on my cheeks, hot, burning. Crying for my manhood that I don’t feel anymore, crying for the promise to my family to protect them and my failure to keep the promise. 

The second day, a friend of mine helped me to find a better place in Deir Al Balah. We moved. It was dark when we arrived. I slept, could not do anything but lie down and sleep. In the morning, we realized that the place was a barn for sheep and cows. It had been cleaned by some NGO and several families use it as a residence. We felt some familiarity with other people around us, but we could not forget that this place is a barn for animals and cattle, not a residence for human beings. Every single minute I felt that we are those cattle that the Israelis decided to slaughter, and that the world is watching silently. And the reason for that is nothing except that we are Palestinians… from Gaza.

I am there and don’t know how the time passes, how days pass, day after day, days of horror, fear, panic, bombing, shooting, death and destruction every single minute. The place is not far from the Salahaldeen road, where Israeli tanks are positioned, not far from Al Aqsa hospital. You can’t avoid seeing injured people and dead bodies arriving at the hospital by ambulances, cars, donkey carts, or even carried by people. People like me: women, elderly people, children, boys and girls bombed while sleeping, while walking, while sitting somewhere. Expecting death any time like all the people of Gaza, who do not know that it is the moment to die in the most brutal way.

   

I don’t know what they felt at the last moments of their lives, what they felt when the rocket hit them, and I live with this oppression, I feel the oppression, I breathe the oppression all the time, sleeping with one eye shut and the other eye on my wife and children. 

We remained at that place for 3 months, until a new invasion occurred in Deir Al Balah. We had become practically the front line, bombing, and shooting everywhere, with people running everywhere, no one knowing where to go.

We left our place carrying whatever we could, leaving what we could not carry, knowing that we will be in another search for another place, leaving behind other essential things we need. The Israeli army is calling for evacuation, naming areas which are supposed to be safe, while they know, we know, everybody knows that there is no safe place at all in the whole of the Gaza Strip.

We arrived to Zaweida village, in the middle area of Gaza near the sea. We were in the street for 2 days until we found a spot to install our tent. During these 2 days, I moved from Zaweida to west of Deir Al Balah to Khan Younis. No place, no empty 4 square meters for my tent, only a big place for my disappointment, weakness, and helplessness. 

Two days homeless with my wife and my children moving from place to place, from town to city to camp, until finally one of Zaweida’s residents allowed us to install our tent on his land. It did not take me long to realise that the place was a garbage dump station with a sewage pipeline underneath. Two days cleaning and cleaning, and the smell does not leave the place, and my tears do not leave my eyes. The tears that I do my best to hide from my wife and my children.  

How can we continue living in this place with this disgusting smell, a smell that invades our noses and soles.

I felt that everyone and everything is agreeing about torturing us without cease, the Israelis, the Americans, the West, the Arabs, the UN, nature, and even ourselves.   

After days of continuous searching, I and some families found an empty place to rent, a place between olives trees and in the shade of orange trees.  

We paid the rent to the landowner, a monthly rate that would be enough to rent a nice furnished flat for 6 months in normal times, but this is not normal times, it is a time of war and death, where war merchants take advantage of everything. 

On the second day at this new residence, we realised that the landowner has a place for his donkey just near our tent. Now we are neighbours with donkeys.

I could not tolerate the situation, I kept looking for a better place, no matter how much the rent will be, I will see later how to secure the money, but I can’t stay here. 

Eventually we found a room for rent, only one room, one old dirty toilet, with a little space that we can use for cooking. The cost is 300 Shekels, not worth more than 30 in normal times, in fact it would be worth nothing as no one would ever think to rent it if it were not for the war, the destruction and the continuous displacement. We settled in this place. 

I can’t stop thinking about my son, who is stuck in Egypt since he went for few days of vacation before the war. I miss him so much. Here, I look after his wife and newborn daughter and I wonder, “How does he feel when he hears the news, how does he cope with being away from us, what fear and terror does he live in?” And at the same time, I feel relieved that he is there, safe.   

My daughter with her husband and my grandchildren are in Mawasi near Khan Younis. I must visit them twice a week, at least. Those grandchildren, the joys of their grandfathers, are filling a space in the heart that we did not know existed. I can’t stop thinking about them, and don’t have the ability to bring them here with me.

I rented this place, and I don’t know how I will secure the next month’s rent. By the way, I have not received any salary from my job as an art teacher at a rehabilitation association since March 2023. We will see what is going to happen  this month, maybe we will have to evacuate again, who knows?   

Despite everything, we are still alive, until further notice. And I still have this feeling of oppression, helplessness and panic for my family, and this feeling is only growing and growing.   

Basel Almaquosi 

20^th September 2024 

12 September 2024

Israel Allowed Polio Vaccine to Enter Gaza.

I am 56 years old, and I have always struggled and found it so difficult to explain to non-Palestinians what it means to be under an occupation. The title above, “Israel allowed Polio vaccine to enter Gaza” explains it all. The USA and Europe cherish and are grateful to Israel for allowing the vaccine to get to the children of Gaza.

This statement shows the reality – that Israel ‘allows’. Yes, they do ALLOW. Because they have the power to allow, as well as the power to not allow.

Since 1967, Israel has occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, and since then they have controlled our lives, the life of another people, another nation; the Palestinians. And since then, Israel allows or doesn’t allow. They control not only our lives, but our resources and our borders. They decide what enters our territories and what goes out. They decide what quantity of water we can use from our water resources. They decide who can travel and who can’t. They decide what type of food and goods we can import or export, and they decide from whom we can export or to whom to export. They decide what type of factories we can build and what we can’t. They decide how much electricity we can generate and can’t. They decide that we are obliged to import and purchase their goods, their products, their electricity with the prices they decide. They decide if a student can travel overseas for education or not. They allow or don’t allow one to go to Jerusalem, or to pass through the more than 400 military checkpoints in the West Bank. They decide who can have access to work and who cannot, they decide who can be employed by the civil administration they force on us and who can’t. They decide who can build a home and who can’t. They decide that whoever raises a Palestinians flag in Palestine will go to prison for 6 months. They allow us to have a nationality or not have; my travel document is issued by the Israeli authority and has my name, my ID number, my mother’s name, my religion, and my personal photo, but in front of the title ‘nationality’, it is written ‘unidentified’. They decide, they allow or don’t allow whatever they want for us, for our present life and for our children’s future, and any act of objection is called terrorism. This is how it is even after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and the arrival of a so called ‘peace’. Still, the Israelis have the same power over our land, over our natural resources, over our export and import, over the funds which reach us from the world, who can donate to us and who can’t, and how much is allowed and how much is not.

10 September 2024

Parents and children

‘Where are they? Where are they?’ She was screaming, trying to get into the morgue.

Some men managed to bring her out. She kept calling, asking, screaming, ‘Where are they?’ The men start to mumble, ‘May God give her patience!’ She said, ‘Don’t ask God to give me patience, ask him to take me with my 4 children! Why were they killed? Why!?’

‘My son did not stop crying for 2 hours as he could not use the spoon to eat like his brothers. His arms were amputated after a nearby bombing.’

‘There is no one to play with. All my friends, brothers and sisters were killed.’

‘I was at Shifa hospital after the first invasion on November 2023 with a UN delegation visiting the place, part of my job with UNOCHA. Thousands and thousands of people around us, all of them wanting to reach us, to talk, to tell us about the agony they went through during the invasion. Suddenly a man reached me carrying a small coffin, he brought the coffin near me shouting, look what they did to my son, look, he moved the cover from the coffin, andpushed the body of the dead child towards my face. I can never forget what I saw. A dead body of a 4 – 5 year old without arms and without legs; he was killed during one of the Israeli bombardments. I turned my face away, I could not tolerate the scene, I felt dizzy. I thought I will fall unconscious. I am a father of 3 children, the youngest is 6 years old. Since that day I wake up at night panicked, almost every night I wake up and I count the legs and the arms of my child, making sure there are still four.’

Again separated

In Cairo with my wife Abeer, away from home, away from my mother who is now completely disabled, can’t move, can’t talk, can’t eat or drink, (she is fed via a tube through her nose). This is exactly the time that I want to be beside my mother, to hold her hand and let her know that she is not left alone.

Alone, my daughter Salma left 2 days ago for Lebanon to finish the last three months of her Masters degree. She arrived at a hostel that she rented online. it is apparently a very bad, dirty place. This happens. The last 2 days Salma went through panic attacks several times, not because of the place she lives in, but because of being in Lebanon with all this talk in the news about a possible war on Lebanon, the threat against the airport and the nightmare scenario of being stuck there alone and not being able to leave and get back to Cairo. I am here in Cairo and again this feeling of helplessness. What can I do? Away from home, away from my mother, brothers and sisters, away from my daughter, unable to assure her safety and unable to give her a hug that could calm her and release her panic. What can I do? What can anyone do? Why are we so weak? Why can’t we fly? Maybe then I can go and hold my mother’s hand,  maybe then I can be with my daughter to give her the hug she needs, the hug I need?

Why is this happening to us? 

15 July 2024 

Akram Surani

That’s not right, that’s absolutely not right! What is happening? What is this silence!? Until when? How can this be accepted? Even slaughterhouses take vacations! They stop from time to time, on weekends, on holy days, what the hell is happening? 

Getting used to it!? Has it become normal to see children cut in pieces? Women killed, cities destroyed, men bombed? 2.3 million people hungry?

I am unable to continue writing about this hell, there is no point anymore. 

I see posts from friends from Gaza and I feel that all that I am writing is cheap, is nothing, it doesn’t express anything. I have decided that now, at least for now, to share posts of friends from Gaza.

This is from Akram Sourani, a writer from Gaza: 

“Huge numbers of martyrs, body parts in the trees – as the media reporter said. What is left of my mind can barely follow and bear the news. My heart is with my son Khaled, diagnosed with hepatitis. The name of this disease was enough to spread panic at home among my whole family, but with this judgment day which has started in Gaza, it became a little thing. After war nothing scares us. We injected the needed medication through Khaled’s veins inside the tent; he refused to go to the hospital, and it seemed that he was right, the hospital is exhausting. But we need a large bed, as large as the size of our tent! 

We began Khaled’s treatment protocol according to the doctors’ advice, Google’s advice, and the advice of those who have had the disease before him. The most important of which is to eat honey and dates and juice. There were those who disagreed about watermelon juice, although it is no big deal deal to disagree about watermelon juice because, anyway, there are no watermelons in Gaza. 

Symptoms of frustration, lethargy, and loss of appetite began to appear in Khaled after he heard the news of the martyrdom of professor Wahiba, the English language teacher at the Rosary Sisters School. Professor Wahiba had different tastes for all her students, colleagues and everyone who knew her. The last thing she wrote on her private page on Facebook was, “I wish I had a plate of salad.” Her greatest wish before her death in Gaza was a tomato, a cucumber and a hot green pepper! 

Khaled is sad and weak although his condition is stable. In the coming days he will improve. It is a matter of time. In Gaza, this is how people get sick, and this is how they get well. They get sick from being patient; it kills them sometimes and cures them at other times. Amani also seems to have begun to suffer from the same symptoms. The hepatitis epidemic is devastating Gaza, just like the terrifying bombing. 

Friends of ours, including Amani’s colleagues at Al-Aqsa University, were martyred in the Al-Mawasi massacre. The bodies flew from place to place, scattered, fell, and only quarters or halves of them remained.

One friend, Rami Al-Madhoun, a colleague who was mourned by his male and female colleagues at Al-Aqsa University, was ambitious, loved life, and was an example of toil, patience, and the endurance of suffering. 

He lost his family, his children, his university, and his simple barn in which he toiled until the explosion that turned the earth and buried people alive under the sand and under the tents. We always used to say metaphorically, ‘we are buried alive…’ but never did we imagine that they would actually bury us alive.  

Loss is pain, and sadness clouds our hearts from all directions. The future is behind us, and our ambitions and dreams are in the past. 

We feel pity for ourselves. We are no longer worried about anything except running out of our ability to withstand all this oppression. We die in different forms and from different instruments! We die from the toxic smoke of the firewood and plastic, from the smell of shit, the garbage and sewage surrounding us. We die from the high prices of food and basic needs. We die from the bombing and destruction. We die from the rampage of thugs. We die from cholera, from strange skin rashes, mosquitos, from itching and allergies, from all National Geographic insects that we don’t yet recognize.   

Colic almost never leaves us, as if we are eating sandwiches of abdominal pain and diarrhoea.

In the midst of all this mud, my children ask, ‘Dad! Why is this happening to us?’ 

In the sky there are intense flights of war planes and drones, sounds of explosions, and news about renewing the truce negotiations.”

Akram Sourani: Gaza, Palestine; Khan Younis, Rafah, Mawasi, Deir Elbalah, tents and unknown areas…. 

Note: Akram’s son is 11 years old.