Sarah Aljamal dreamed of doing voice-overs for the animated films Tangled or Ratatouille.
She had started taking dubbing lessons with Fouad Shams, one of the best-known voice actors in the Middle East.
Her dream, like that of many young women, was to be independent.
Despite being born with a hole in her heart and undergoing more than 20 surgeries in her short life for congenital bone and joint defects, the 23-year-old from Gaza City was determined.
In addition to learning voice acting, Aljamal was doing translations and helping an international charity with disability issues.
But all that disappeared when his family’s home was bombed on the first day of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Displaced from Gaza City to a single room on the ground floor of a building in Rafah for months, she and her family of eight – like many others in the eastern part of the city – received a disturbing phone call from the Israeli army Monday morning. : Go to al-Mawasi, the army said.
Aljamal, who can barely walk a few meters, is desperate.
She had tried to raise money to pay for her family’s departure, fearing an imminent offensive in Rafah, but Israel has since seized and closed the Rafah crossing into Egypt, cutting off the strip’s only exit and blocking the main lifeline of aid to Gaza. .
Today, Aljamal fears what awaits her and her family as they plan their journey to al-Mawasi. They will have to walk, while she will be moved in a wheelchair.
“How will I live in a tent with my parents in these sanitary conditions? Will I be able to survive or will I die… because I can’t move? she wondered.
From the house by the sea to an uncertain future
For Khader al-Belbesy, 32, the evacuation order and the Israeli army’s gradual incursions into Rafah seem like the final nail in the coffin.
For the father of three, leaving the southern city with his young family is like taking them to an active battlefield.
On Monday, he received a leaflet dropped by the Israeli army ordering him and his family to leave eastern Rafah. He said the falling leaflets made it look like the military had thrown saws directly at them.
“My mind is confused and I’m looking for a place. There is no transportation,” al-Belbesy told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Life in Gaza was not easy before the war, due to the ongoing Israeli blockade, but al-Belbesy had tried to build a comfortable life for his family – he worked hard as an electrician and his wife Tasneem, 31, was a talented pharmacist.
They lived in a large house near the sea in Tal al-Hawa and their eldest son Walid, 9, played for a football club in the hope of one day becoming a professional footballer.
This club no longer exists and many of its young players were killed during the war. And the family lost their job, their house, their car and all their possessions.
“I didn’t expect this to happen to me and my family,” al-Belbesy said. “The war destroyed everything.”
Just over a month ago, Tasneem gave birth to her third child in the studio she had been staying in for months – without medical care.
There was no transportation available to get to the nearest hospital, which al-Belbesy said might have been useless anyway, as the war had rendered all of Gaza’s hospitals dysfunctional.
He had also raised funds to evacuate his family to Egypt and now, even if there was a permanent ceasefire tomorrow, he would leave Gaza, he said.
“I will look for a country to go with my children to give them a future… Because the Gaza Strip (requires) 20 years for its rehabilitation,” al-Belbesy said.
‘Necessity is the mother of invention’
Mohammed Almadhoun has been trying to leave Gaza for months – but the exorbitant prices border agents allegedly charge him have prevented him from making the journey.
The 44-year-old visual artist from Jabalia, Gaza, was due to fly to Ireland for an art residency, with his flight scheduled for October 7, the same day Hamas launched its surprise incursion into Israel.
Today, he runs mural painting workshops for the children at the school where he is staying, using all the scraps of materials and paint he finds.
He now lives in the corner of a classroom, packed like sardines with other Palestinians.
Living conditions there have led to health problems, including a chest infection he contracted a few months ago from the cold, he said.
“The windows are open and cannot be closed because of the bombing. They break and it will be dangerous for us,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune.
The sound of Israeli airstrikes has been near constant over the past seven months, and when Israel launched a nighttime attack on eastern Rafah earlier this week, “the sound of bombings did not stop” from all night, he said.
“Our life is a pitiless hell for humanity. I am writing to you crying,” he said via messages on his cell phone.
But even in his anguish, the artist found avenues of creativity.
In addition to teaching art classes to the children, he set up a temporary stove, using a large box of wood pulp soaked in canned fish oil.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he said.
One vehicle, several families, stacked mattresses
For weeks, Louise Wateridge has witnessed the uncertainty felt by Aljamal, al-Belbesy and Almadhoun, as well as the thousands of Palestinians there.
“People here really can’t plan for even a week, let alone a few days,” the spokesperson for the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNWRA) told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“This is how life has been for the last few months,” Wateridge said from west Rafah.
Today, this uncertainty has intensified.
“This horrible picture of what we saw throughout the war, these displaced families with all their belongings in one vehicle, the mattresses piled up, everything… We see a lot of that.”
But this exodus to western Rafah is slow, she explained, because many cannot leave for financial or physical reasons.
Those who remain choose to use what little money they have left to buy food, water and other necessities, she added.
Aljamal’s family is one of many who have run out of money but are still trying to make the journey west.
Before the war, her father had saved so she could receive treatment in Egypt. But since then, they have used all of that money, and then some, to rent the small room they were staying in, east of Rafah.
The family is still looking for a tent to stay in in al-Mawasi.
“I dreamed of living a good life… but the war destroyed our dreams, our homes and our lives,” Aljamal said.
“Will I one day prove myself and achieve all my ambitions?
