In northern Gaza, Palestinians have to make an impossible choice after an Israeli attack: leave the wounded to die, or risk their lives trying to save them.
By Ibrahim Mohammad for +972
On the morning of May 11, the Israeli army spokesperson announced that the military had begun a new operation in Jabalia, the city and adjacent refugee camp in northern Gaza. Evacuation orders were issued to Palestinian residents of several neighborhoods, but many have been unable to leave; others have decided to stay, given the lack of any safe areas throughout the Strip.
The northern half of the Strip bore the initial brunt of the Israeli army’s bombardment in the first weeks of the war, and, on Oct. 27, was the first region of Gaza to be targeted by the Israeli ground invasion. By March, the north was facing a Phase 5 famine — the highest level measured by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, designated as ‘catastrophe.’ Nearly no humanitarian aid is reaching northern residents, and an estimated third of all children there under the age of two are suffering from acute malnutrition.
The situation is perhaps most dire in the Jabalia refugee camp, the largest in Gaza, with a prewar population of over 100,000 Palestinians living in an area of just 1.4 square kilometers. Indiscriminate Israeli attacks in such a densely populated region thus have a massive deadly impact. In October, two 2,000 pound bombs were dropped on Jabalia, killing at least one hundred people. Less than two months later, another attack had a similarly high toll. And, just in the last two weeks, Israeli bombs have destroyed homes, a kindergarten, and the emergency wing of a hospital.
The latest Israeli attack on the camp, involving both aircraft and ground troops, has had devastating consequences: the army has bombed and bulldozed entire residential squares, markets, and food warehouses, exacerbating the already desperate humanitarian crisis, while corpses remain scattered in the streets.
Sabri Abu Al-Nasr, 43 years old, is a resident of the camp who took refuge in the UNRWA-affiliated Al-Fakhoura School, in an attempt to escape the Israeli bombing. ‘The conditions in the camp are terrible, and no one is spared from the artillery and air bombardment,’ he told +972. ‘Israeli snipers are on high buildings — they shoot at every moving object.
‘When the Israeli attack began,’ he went on, ‘the camp awoke to the sound of huge explosions. The sky was filled with black smoke from the intensity of the shelling, with residents fleeing to escape.’
On October 29, Abu Al-Nasr lost his wife Nisreen (40) and his children Nisma (16), Hamza (14), and Mohammad (13) when Israel bombed a residential square adjacent to the family’s home. Their bodies remain trapped under the rubble, preventing Abu al-Nasr from being able to properly bury his loved ones. Seven months later, amid a new Israeli assault, he says ‘the smell of death and blood wafts throughout the camp.’
Abu al-Nasr has been living with his surviving family members, who, alongside tens of thousands of others, have refused to leave Jabalia, despite persistent illness and a lack of clean drinking water. ‘We cannot bear what is happening to us now,’ he said.
‘The sound of laughter has been replaced by the sound of missiles’
Nazmi Hijazi, a resident of Al-Hoja Street in Jabalia, was forced to leave under fierce bombardment, as Israeli military vehicles advanced toward his home; he then sheltered in the Yemen Hospital, west of the refugee camp.
Hijazi described what is happening in Jabalia as a second Nakba, with the camp’s streets overrun with the dead and wounded, and no one able to retrieve the bodies or save the survivors. In the aftermath of a bombing or shooting, the residents have to make an impossible choice: they must either leave the wounded to die, or to risk their own lives by trying to save them.
‘There is no safe place in Jabalia,’ Hijazi says.’There is no school or hospital that the army reached without storming it to attack defenseless civilians.’
On May 17, Hijazi’s son Basil was shot by Israeli soldiers while trying to recover what was left of the food from inside his house to help feed their family of eight. According to Hijazi, an Israeli armored vehicle then ran over his son until his features were no longer recognizable. Hijazi could only identify him by the shoes he was wearing.
Like everyone in Jabalia, Hijazi and his family have been unable to properly grieve: they still face brutal hunger and thirst, and have to focus on locating the most basic necessities. ‘The residents resorted to eating animal and bird feed, but even these began to run out as the Israeli military invaded and besieged the camp,’ he said. The majority of families have not eaten flour, bread, wheat, or even barley for over a week.
As Israel blocked humanitarian aid from entering northern Gaza, Palestinian children have been hit the hardest. Nisreen Abu Al-Aish, 37, was forced to make soup from hibiscus, a plant that grows nearby, in order to provide lunch for her children. She took refuge with her family in the Abu Hussein School, which is also affiliated with UNRWA. Her two children have symptoms of hepatitis, an increasingly common ailment among Gaza residents and the result of poor nutrition and hygiene.
‘We are surrounded,’ Abu al-Eish said. ‘The bombing does not stop, so we do not leave the school shelter. We are afraid that we will be killed at any moment.’ That state of terror has consumed her children: ‘The sound of their laughter has been replaced by the sound of bombing and missiles raining down on the camp.’
For Sami al-Batsh, 41, the toll of the invasion has also been especially heavy on his children. ‘We can’t sleep due to the bombing, and we fear that the army could suddenly storm our house…My children suffer from terrible psychological conditions. Some of them suffer from involuntary urination due to the severity of their fear, and they often remain without food for several days at a time.’
Abu al-Eish, the mother of two, described Jabalia as a refugee camp no longer fit for human habitation. ‘The army is systematically destroying all the homes in Jabalia,’ she said, ‘to the point that the camp has become like a ghost town: devoid of its residents and full only of destroyed homes.’ And for those that remain, Al-Batsh predicted, ‘whoever does not die of hunger will be killed by the bombs.’