The Israeli news media has done a spectacular job in chronicling the fallout from their government's brutal invasion of Gaza. But for the grace of god, this story could be about any of us.
The author didn't do anything to deserve having her life destroyed by the right-wing nut jobs running Bibi's government.
Like My Grandmother 75 Years Ago, I Now Live in a Tent in the Gaza Strip
Olfat al-Kurd, Haaretz Media
Jan 16, 2024 12:09 am IST
Seventy-five years ago my grandparents were forced to leave their village, Majdal, which was on the western shore of Lake Kinneret. They became refugees in the Gaza Strip, and my grandmother used to tell me about the pain of abandoning the village and the harsh winter they experienced that year in the Strip in a tent she shared with my grandfather and his sisters. She told me about her longing for Majdal, for the life she had and that no longer existed.
Now, living with my family in a tent made of plastic and cloth in the southern Gaza Strip, I don't stop thinking about her. I'm sure that she never imagined that her granddaughter would also have to live in a displaced persons camp, not even for a short time.
Two and a half months have passed since we were forced to leave our home. My life, my husband's and our children's lives have shrunk, and only the suffering remains. Accursed camp, I despise you, I despise the tent that has become my entire world. Life here doesn't deserve to be called life.
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We sit here together in the tent, my husband Mohammed and I, and our children: Hiya, 19, Yasser, 18, Zayna, 16, and Yusuf, 14. Sometimes we recall the life we had until recently, and who knows if we'll ever return to it. I miss my Gaza City so much, I'm waiting and hoping that I'll be able to return to my beloved city.
I never believed that I would be a refugee. We're living in conditions that are impossible to get used to. We have no electricity and no water, and almost no phone service or internet. All of a sudden we've become needy people who depend on food packages. I bake the bread on a bonfire, on which I also cook the little food we receive. My palms and my arms are covered with burns.
Do you know that women here don't even have sanitary pads? The little that I get I give to my daughters, and I make do with strips of cloth. Waiting in line for the bathroom takes 30 minutes to an hour every morning and every evening, so my husband improvised a basic toilet for us next to the tent, to spare us the humiliating trek at night. Do you know how hard it is to feel your way to the bathroom among the tents in the darkness and rain?
For three weeks I haven't heard a thing from my father, Mohammed al-Kurd, 75, nor from my sister Wafa, who should be in her eighth month of pregnancy. She remained in Gaza City with her husband Salah and her 2-year-old son Tayem, because the trip to the south was too difficult for them.
I don't even know whether they're alive or dead. I don't know if they have anything to eat or water to drink. Do they have any way to keep warm? Are they able to get formula and diapers for the child?
This accursed war has turned me into a bereaved sister for the second time. My dear brother Ahmed was killed in the 2009 war. Now I've also lost my beloved brother Sawat, who was killed with his wife and his only daughter when the house they were staying in was bombed. Their bodies still haven't been extricated from beneath the ruins.
Such news is now part of our routine. I've already become accustomed to hearing about the deaths of relatives, friends and neighbors. Israeli fighter planes circle above us night and day, their cannons don't rest and the bombings thunder. Under this horror we eat, drink and sleep.
This accursed war has made me homeless. I lost the house where I grew up and lived until the age of 20, and I also lost the family home that I built. Both houses were bombed after all the family members fled from them.
There was no more beautiful place for me than the house where I raised my children. I miss the winter days there, when we sat together around the stove, my husband, the children and I, and drank tea.
Now I hate the winter. We're forced to sleep on the sand, my children don't have enough blankets, they don't all have shoes. Every day I look for shoes for them, but in vain. At night my husband and sons hold onto the tent poles for fear that the winds will uproot them. When it rains we stay awake to make sure that the tent won't be flooded.
I am humiliated, insulted and heartbroken, I feel that the entire world has conspired against us. I've lost all feeling, I've become a body without a soul. Am I losing my sanity? My grandmother died without being able to fulfill her dream of returning to her village. Will that be my fate too?
The writer is a B'Tselem researcher in the Gaza Strip.
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