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.