23rd March 2025
Tel Al Sultan / Rafah
7 in the morning I wake up. Before leaving my bed I go over the news headlines on my mobile. On this day there was an evacuation order for the people in Tel Al Sultan, south west of Rafah; another displacement, another agony and another quest for new shelter and some safety.
Do you know what displacement is? From experience people know that there is no time to take down the tent and collect their belongings, the bombing will start soon. People immediately start moving with whatever they can carry in their hands. They carry mattresses, blankets, jerry cans for water, some bags with some clothes, their young children and babies, their disabled relatives, their parents who can’t walk. They don’t have the time or the ability to take down their tents or carry it with them. No transportation of any kind, they have to walk with what they can carry.
With the borders closed and no goods entering Gaza, people will not find any alternative for what they have left behind. They will not find a tent or a water tank or food or clothes.
I left my bed with these images in my head, finished my shower and walked my dog, then came back home to find these massages from my colleague Suleyman from Gaza
“We are in a very dangerous situation. We have one of us dead and several injured. Please call some one to help us”
And this massage from our colleague, Hadeel:
“Please call someone. We are afraid and we have children with us.”
I did not know how to answer him. All I said was: “Oh my God, oh my God”
Suleyman then sent another massage to say that we couldn’t reach two of our colleagues in Rafah, Ali and Yasser
“Oh my God, oh my God.”
This time the Israeli army did not give people any time to leave. They started bombing Tel Al Sultan, leading to many people being killed on the roads. Then they invaded the area and surrounded it, installing a military check-point and forcing people to pass through it.
At noon, our colleague Hadeel passed through the checkpoint on his way to Khan Younis with her mother and children. Her father was shot dead and they did not allow them to take his body with them. He was there, lying on the road. Her husband and brother were caught by the Israeli army. They let women and children pass and kept all the men.
The news from Tel Al Sultan is devastating; bombing, shelling, killing without mercy.
Our colleagues in Gaza and us here in Cairo kept calling the ICRC, the UN Protection Cluster, to get them to intervene, to find a way to let people leave safely, to ask for a safe passage from Tel Al Sultan. We received no answer. They have no power to do anything. Neither do we.
What a day, what a long day, I just think of my colleagues in Rafah and it makes me cry, I can do nothing but cry, cry of helplessness and despair.
At 7:30 pm Suliman sent me a massage that our colleagues Ali and Yaser are released, they are safe in Khan Younis. I don’t know any more what is the meaning of the word “safe” I only know that they are not dead for now.