Gaza- “This is how my morning is every day. I stand confused between the blood of the martyrs and the injured, between the screams of pain and the pulses of hope. I move between the pieces to carry a wounded person here and bid farewell to a martyr there, in a land that has only known war. I contemplate the torn bodies and the faces that life has left, searching for a glimmer of hope among… “Rubble of war and ruins of houses.”
“Here there is no difference between night and day. Every moment is a struggle with death and an attempt to save a new life. Despite oppression and fatigue, we continue, because our duty is greater than any fear, and because the life of every human being here is worth fighting for. This is my reality in Gaza, between “Life and death, between destruction and steadfastness.”
These are the words of volunteer paramedic Abdul Rahim Khader, which he published on the evening of a busy day, during which the distress calls issued by victims of the Israeli massacres in the Jabalia camp and the northern Gaza Strip did not stop.
Khader sat on a wooden chair, taking a moment of rest. He looked at his legs, blood staining the green dress worn by the humanitarian teams of the medical services. He grabbed his mobile phone and wrote those words, which he told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “They are not just dumb words, but rather a diagnosis of our daily life since the outbreak of war.”
Bloody diary
It took 3 days until Tel Aviv Tribune Net in the south of the Gaza Strip was able to complete the interview with Khader in the north. He was forced more than once to hurriedly hang up the call, ask permission, and set off towards a targeted location, in response to distress calls, which he says have not stopped around the clock, day or night, since the Israeli attack. Continuing wildfire in Jabalia camp for the third week in a row.
Paramedic Khader’s memory stores many of the scenes that he experienced during the year of the brutal war, and he says that they will remain firmly engraved inside him until the end of his life, but he speaks with great emotion about what he has been experiencing for 3 weeks, during which the occupation forces committed horrific massacres in the northern Gaza Strip, especially in the besieged Jabalia camp. By bombing residential homes over the heads of their residents, targeting shelter centers, killing displaced people, and sniping women, children, and men in the streets while they were trying to escape death.
The occupation forces have besieged Jabalia camp for 19 days, in the context of a ground military operation, the third since the outbreak of war in October of last year, against this camp, the largest in terms of population density among the eight camps in the Strip.
During this operation, the occupation forces killed more than 500 Palestinians who arrived at almost collapsed hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, while civil defense and ambulance crews spoke of the spread of dozens of martyrs’ bodies in the streets. Abdul Rahim Khader says, “The occupation forces are preventing our arrival to recover the martyrs and evacuate the wounded and treat them.”
Unforgettable crimes
Abdul Rahim Khader is a young man in his twenties, born in Jabalia Camp in 2002. He loves photography and is attracted by aesthetic scenes. He used to follow it with his lens from one place to another before the outbreak of war, in which he found himself faced with scenes of killing and destruction, which required him to take advantage of a “first aid training course” and enroll. As a volunteer ambulance officer in medical services.
The war destroyed everything beautiful in Gaza: its landmarks, monuments, markets, mosques, churches, streets, schools, and hospitals, and turned them into masses of rubble and rubble, Khader says as he talks about his decision to volunteer as a “paramedic and photographer” in medical services. He documents crimes with his lens, then leaves them aside and participates in rescuing the wounded when “The event is serious and the crime is great,” he described, citing the Al-Tabaeen Mosque massacre.
The volunteer paramedic does not hesitate to describe the Al-Tabaeen Mosque massacre as the most horrific, and he was shocked and astonished when he arrived at the mosque attached to a school that had been turned into a center for sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.
“I stood still in my place, blood and body parts covering the courtyard of the mosque. I looked around the place searching for the remains of life. The occupation missiles destroyed the bodies of the worshipers while they were performing the dawn prayer, turning them into scattered body parts, and the courtyard of the mosque looked like a pool of blood,” this young man explains. It is as if he is describing a scene that is still present before his eyes.
He added, “The scene was horrific, and the ground was strewn with body parts, so that the families were unable to recognize their children. The hospital administration resorted to putting the body parts in bags, considering that every 70 kilograms represented an adult martyr, and every 30 kilograms represented a child martyr, and they were buried in this manner.” Has the world witnessed such a tragedy in its history?
Continuous pain
Khader himself escaped death more than once, and in one of them an unforgettable event occurred on one of the days of the first Israeli ground attack on the Jabalia camp at the beginning of this year. He said, “We 5 went out to perform a humanitarian mission in two ambulances, and we stopped in the Jabalia al-Balad area, and lo and behold, shells were fired.” “Artillery is falling around us.”
He continues the description by saying, “We got out of the second car towards the first car to check on our colleagues, and the driver, Abu Suleiman, was bleeding and two of his fingers had been amputated. We did not find our colleague, the paramedic Muhammad Al-Mutawq, and we searched for him for half an hour in the vicinity of the place to no avail. We were forced to withdraw as a result of the danger and to provide first aid.” Abu Suleiman, after an hour and a half, we returned again to search for Al-Mutawaq. He was unconscious and the force of the explosions had thrown him a few meters behind a nearby wall, then the people of the area found him and treated him.”
But the story did not end here. Three months after this incident, Khader went out to answer a distress call towards a house that had been destroyed by an Israeli air strike in Jabalia al-Balad, and it was a surprise that he says will remain firmly in his memory. “The target was my friend and colleague Muhammad al-Mutawq, and the occupation’s missiles destroyed the house on him. He became a martyr.”
“Better life”
When Khader joined the medical services as a volunteer ambulance officer for about 3 months, during which he was unable to see his parents and family, and today he lives in a similar reality, where his family is besieged with the remaining residents of the Jabalia camp, and he says, “I miss my family, and I pray to God that none of my family and loved ones will hurt me.” .
Since leaving the camp a few days ago, he has been facing difficulty communicating with his family due to the deterioration of communications and internet services. He says that the conditions inside the camp are tragic, and that most residents face extreme difficulty in providing their food and drinking water needs.
This single young man hopes that this nightmare will end and he can return to his normal life. He continues his studies in decoration and interior design at the Faculty of Engineering at Al-Aqsa University. He says, “The mornings of people around the world begin with smiles and heading to work, schools, and universities, while we in Gaza sleep and wake up to screams of pain, calls for help, and scenes of blood and body parts.” We are human beings too and deserve a better life. When will this bloody series end?