Gaza- “I feel anxious about every call, fearing it might be the last,” is how Umm Aed, a displaced person in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, describes her condition during the three weeks of the ongoing ground military operation on the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
With great difficulty, this displaced woman from the “Al-Jarn” area, adjacent to the Jabalia camp, was able to make a successful call to one of her family members, who refused to be displaced and have been forced to remain in their homes since the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip following the attack on October 7 of last year.
For the eighteenth day in a row, the Israeli occupation forces besieged Jabalia camp and its adjacent areas, and committed horrific massacres against residents and displaced people in homes and shelter centers, arrested numbers of men, and forced women and children into forced displacement.
Umm Ayed says, “By God, I sleep on the island and wake up on the island,” meaning that she follows the news bulletins on Tel Aviv Tribune at all times to find out what is going on in the camp, and to check on her family of 30 members, the majority of whom are women and children.
The woman preferred not to reveal her family’s identity in anticipation of what Gazans are circulating that the occupation is targeting anyone who publicly declares their rejection of displacement and calls for steadfastness in Jabalia and the northern Gaza Strip.
Farewell call
In her tent, where she resides with her eight family members in the city of Deir al-Balah, which is crowded with about 800,000 of its residents and those displaced there, Umm Ayed tunes in to a local Palestinian radio broadcast live from Tel Aviv Tribune satellite channel. She says that the aggression against Jabalia has robbed her of sleep, and she gets up every night to perform the Qiyam prayer. She prays for her family and the camp residents, and sends short messages to her family’s phones to check on them in light of the difficulty of making phone calls.
Thousands in Jabalia camp and areas of the northern Gaza Strip governorate are suffering from deteriorating communications and Internet services due to the occupation forces’ tampering with and destroying the network. This has been reflected in communication between families displaced by war and displacement between the north and south of the Gaza Strip.
While Umm Ayed and her family made the decision to flee south in the second month of the war, her parents, brothers, and sisters decided to remain steadfast in Jabalia. She recalls that night, which she describes as a “night of death,” which was the reason for her displacement to the south of the Gaza Strip. She says, “We miraculously escaped death. My home was… Threatened with bombing, my family and I were all displaced in a house that was exposed during the night to intense bombardment with artillery shells, and an air strike destroyed the upper floor. After that, they rescued my mother from under the rubble, and my uncle’s wife and my niece were martyred, and most of us were injured.”
On the morning of that night, Umm Ayed and her family were displaced to the areas of what the occupation called “southern Wadi Gaza.” She moved from one place to another, and is currently residing in a tent in the building of the Technical College in Deir al-Balah, but she does not know which was better and closer to the truth, her decision to flee or her family’s survival and steadfastness in North of the sector.
“Death follows us everywhere… and in light of the war, we have lost the ability to think and be safe,” Umm Ayed says while holding back tears in her eyes. She adds, “I am the eldest among my brothers and sisters, and when I hear words of love from them, I feel very worried that it may be the last call, and that These are his farewell words.”
Displacement and massacres
On the other hand, after days of intense anxiety, Umm Omar Abd Rabbo calmed down a little when she was certain that her family, consisting of 16 members, was able to flee from the outskirts of Jabalia and reach the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City. She says, “The roads were terrifying, and they escaped certain death. At every step, artillery shells fell around them, and aircraft flew above them.”
Umm Omar, who was previously displaced from Jabalia to the Al-Qarara area in the northwest of the city of Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip, narrates from her sister, who accompanied her father, mother, and three brothers with 5 neighboring families, raising white flags, “We are surrounded by intense fear and death from all sides.” We could not look back, and we did not speak to each other for a long distance until we left Jabalia.”
Umm Omar narrates from her family that when they arrived in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, they hugged each other and said to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “They were not sure that they had all arrived safe and alive, as white flags have no immunity, and they had witnessed the day before their displacement the field execution of a girl from The neighbor tried to leave her house carrying a white flag.”
Since her displacement with her family of 7 members in the second month of the war from Jabalia, towards the city of Rafah in the far south of the Gaza Strip, through the Israeli military “Netzarim Barrier”, which separates the Gazans from the north and south, Umm Omar has not felt as afraid as she has felt since the start of the Israeli military operation. Current against Jabalia and the northern Gaza Strip.
“I have a constant fear for my family of death by bombing or starvation,” says Umm Omar, and this feeling increases in her with all the massacres that the Gazans are exposed to in the northern Gaza Strip, as well as starvation, as the occupation prevents them from all means of life, and its stranglehold on them has increased since the start of the current military operation.
This is the third ground operation by the occupation forces within a few months against Jabalia camp, which is the largest in terms of population density among the eight refugee camps in the Strip, and was inhabited by about 165 thousand refugees before the outbreak of war, in an area of less than one and a half square kilometers.
Constant worry
Umm Omar has been suffering from a constant headache for several days, which she attributes to the anxiety that overwhelms her, fearing for her family, and the question that echoes in her head to which she does not know the answer: “What do I want? To be with my family in the north, or to have them here in the south?”
This displaced woman often says, “I wish I had stayed – even if I died – in the north,” but she goes back and remembers her children and the intense fear that afflicted them after the night of terror following the first ground entry into Jabalia camp, traveling a long distance along roads strewn with the bodies and remains of martyrs, and passing a “terrifying inspection.” Through the Netzarim checkpoint, before arriving at the city of Rafah, where she spent a few months before being displaced, following the ongoing Israeli military operation there since last May.
She added, “We are a mighty people capable of living anywhere and under the most difficult circumstances, but the feeling of fear for family and loved ones is what kills me and deprives me of sleep and rest.”
Local and international estimates indicate that about 400,000 Palestinians are still in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip. They have refused to comply with displacement warnings since the outbreak of the war, which caused the displacement of about two million Palestinians, the majority of whom are crowded into tents and shelter centers in the southern Gaza Strip.
According to monitoring by local and international bodies, since the start of the ground military operation against Jabalia camp, the occupation forces have killed more than 500 Palestinians and wounded about 1,500, and are still preventing ambulances from recovering dozens of martyrs from the streets and areas of incursion.
