For Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, it is about living through apartheid and ethnic cleansing for 75 years, writes Haneen Harara, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza.
Gaza is a small city with simple people who want to live. They have dreams. They have whole lives to live. They have mothers who love their children, just like the mothers in the rest of the world. We have dreams to achieve. It is hard for me to express this. I am sorry.
On the first day, October 7, we woke up to the sound of rockets launched by Palestinian fighters in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip as a response to the ongoing escalations against Palestinian people in Jerusalem and the West Bank. It was crazy. It was unprecedented. After an hour, Israeli airstrikes began and then heightened. They bombed several areas in the Gaza Strip, and targeted civilians, innocent people, mosques, churches, streets, restaurants, and every single place in Gaza. They even attacked schools, supposed to be safe shelters for people who are displaced from their homes.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced that people have to evacuate from their homes in the north, east, and west rings of the Gaza Strip to schools in the south. Unfortunately, they targeted these very schools.
When we evacuated to the south, we had no idea where we had to go. The neighbours here are helping each other constantly. We are currently living with a group of friends in their home. We are lucky to even have this house because some people couldn’t even have this chance. They are living in tents in this harsh and extreme winter; that too without blankets, without enough clothes as layers to protect them.
Over 17,000 people have been killed and thousands more are still under the rubble. It is hard to witness the screams of babies, children, and women who are still under the rubble. No one can be reached. Even the ambulances couldn’t reach them because Israel targeted the medical staff who were trying to help the wounded. We have no idea how long we will be alive because everyone has become a target now.
The social circumstances we are witnessing are miserable. It is getting worse day by day. There is no clean water to drink, and not enough food. We have to stand in long lines or walk for two-five hours for food or to get just one gallon of water. There is no power or fuel to run bakeries that can provide food to people. Without these resources, we are trying to make food in the traditional Palestinian way, by baking bread with paper fire.
There is a huge shortage of supplements in the market because the borders are closed, and humanitarian aid is so limited to reach those families.
I have a simple home, but I have no idea if it is the way I had left it because there is no news from the Gaza Strip about the damages. So, I have no idea what is the future of my family. I don’t know if I will get the chance to return to my home, my bed, and to sleep normally as I used to with my three babies.
It is not about the 7th of October. It is about 75 years of occupation. It is about living under these 75 years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. For Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, it is genocide. So, when evacuation to the south was ordered, people were trying their best to escape amid a constant bombardment of rockets and shelling, and yet they were being bombed from everywhere. They fought hard to escape from death and move to a safe zone.
Unfortunately, there is no safe space in Gaza anymore, because they have targeted the south, the north, everywhere. We have thousands of people being killed in the south that the Israelis had earmarked as a safe zone.
As a freelance journalist, it is hard to tell the world how the Palestinian people are suffering here and how the situation really is. It is really risky because every place has become a target. Israeli authorities are not taking human rights into consideration. Dozens of journalists have been killed. Even as a journalist, we do not have a free right to movement. It is terrifying.
Gaza is full of brilliant people. We have professors, doctors, engineers, and scientists. A majority are farmers and fishermen, who are trying their best to feed their children. But they are under the largest siege in the world, the largest open siege controlled by Israeli authorities and ignored by the rest of the world.
(As told to Anisha Reddy)
(This appeared in print as ‘Crazy and Unprecedented’)