Gaza City – On October 19, hundreds of displaced Palestinians from the Hamad School of Northern Gaza in Beit Lahiya heard what everyone in the Redoute Palestinian enclave.
“At dawn, we heard tanks (Israelis) surrounding the school, and the quadcopters above the head began to order everyone to go out,” said Amal Al-Masri, 30, who had given birth to her youngest daughter, so recently, she had not yet named it when the tanks came, recalls.
People were already stretched after bombing and explosions throughout the night – adults too frightened to sleep, children crying for fear and confusion.
“The buildings were bombed all around us,” said Amal, who lived in a class classroom with her husband Yousef, 36, their five young children – Tala, Honda, Assad and Omar, all aged four to 11, and the 62 -year -old father of Yousef, Jamil.
Amal had rocked the baby while Yousef owned two of their younger children. Together, adults had prayed.
Now it was Dawn, and a recording in a male voice speaking in Arabic played by speakers on a quadcoptère turning above the school, ordering everyone to go out with their identifiers and their hands.
The quadcopter shot the buildings and dropped sound bombs, sending people in panic as they rushed to collect everything they could. Some have fled without anything.
Yousef, Amal and the children were among the first to go to the school courtyard – Yousef and the four children held their identifiers and their hands, whilema held the baby in his arms.
In chaos, Yousef has lost track of her father.
“The quadcopters asked:” Men at the school door, to women and children in the school courtyard, “recalls Amal.
The pit
“There were soldiers at the school door with tanks behind them, and more soldiers surrounding the place,” said Yousef.
He and other men over the age of 14, some of whom he recognized in neighboring schools, received the order of Israeli soldiers to meet at the main group door, to queue and to approach an inspection passage with a camera, known as “Al-Halaba”.
“Each man has been ordered to approach a board with a camera on it, one by one,” explains Yousef, who thinks that the camera has used facial recognition technology.
After being recorded by the camera, the man or the boy was sent to a pit dug by Israeli bulldozers, he said.
In the coming hours, some men have been released, others were sent to another pit, while some were questioned.
As for Yousef, he knelt up with around 100 other men in a pit near the school, hands behind his back all day.
“The soldiers were shooting, throwing sound bombs, beating some men, torturing others,” he said. Throughout, he was worried about his family.
“I was deeply worried about my wife and children. I didn’t know anything about them, ”said Yousef. “My wife had given birth a week ago and she couldn’t walk with children. Without anyone to help, I was afraid of what could happen to them. »»
When evening came, only seven men left in the pit.
Yousef was hungry, tired and worried, then a soldier showed it. “He chose me randomly and two other men; We did not understand why, ”Yousef told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“The soldiers took us to an apartment in a nearby building,” he said, adding that he thought they were near the Sheikh Zayed roundabout.
The men were forbidden to talk to each other, but Yousef had recognized them – a 58 -year -old man and a 20 -year -old player sheltered in schools near Hamad. Throughout, he said, the sound of bombings and bombings resonated around them.
“A soldier told us that we would help them with missions and that we were going to release afterwards, but I was afraid of killing us at any time,” said Yousef.
‘Use me for the coverage’
Yousef and her exhausted comrades sabotaged at one point at night, before being awake by the soldiers and pushed out of the apartment and in the streets.
He quickly realized that the soldiers were walking behind him, to use it as a blanket.
“The awareness that I was used as a human shield was terrifying.”
When they reached a school that had been emptied by Israeli soldiers, he was ordered to open doors and go to each classroom to check the combatants who could be hidden there.
The heavily armed soldiers entered it only after his “clear”.
The day continued this way, Yousef being used to “freeing” from the room after the room, after which the soldiers would set fire to the buildings.
Throughout the time, Yousef feared that a quadcopter shoots him, or an Israeli sniper could confuse him with a threat and kill him.
When the research of the day was finished, it was brought back to the apartment with the other two men and received the second meal of the day, a piece of bread and water, just like in the morning.
On the fourth day, Yousef and the 58 -year -old man was ordered to go to a neighboring school and the Kamal Adwan hospital to deliver evacuation leaflets to people who are housed there.
They received an hour and said that a quadcopter would hover over the head. By putting the leaflets back to people, the quadcopters announced the evacuation on speakers.
Escape
Yousef decided that he would try to escape that day while hiding in the hospital courtyard.
“I was afraid of going back,” he said. “I wanted to escape and know if my family was safe because I had heard the soldiers ask women and children to go south to Khan Younis.”
He decided to get into a line of men forced to evacuate, waiting with anxiety while time was dragging. The soldiers said that they should only have left for an hour, and that had been several.
The men’s line advanced. “I was praying so that they did not recognize me,” said Yousef.
Then a soldier sitting at the top of a tank pulled him on the left leg.
“I fell on the ground. The men around helping me, but the soldiers shouted them to leave me, ”recalls Yousef.
“I hung on to one of the men, then a soldier said to me in reprimand:” Come on, get up and rely on this man and head to Street Salah al-Din. »»
Despite the pain as he hindered, Yousef was incredulous that the soldier had not killed him. “I expected to be killed at any time,” he said.
A little further, it was taken by a Palestinian ambulance to the Arabic Al-Ahli Hospital to be treated there.
Bringing together
Amal, who had taken the children to the new Gaza school in Al-Nasr west of Gaza City, one day heard that Yousef was at Al-Ahli hospital.
She rushed there, relieved after having suffered days of contradictory reports when some people said they had seen him detainees, while others said they had seen him elsewhere.
She had barely arrived in Al-Nasr, she told Tel Aviv Tribune by phone.
The day the family was separated, she said, women and children were kept in the courtyard for hours.
“My children were terrified. Many children were crying. Some asked for food, water. Mothers pleaded with soldiers for food and water, but they just shouted and refused. »»
In the afternoon, Israeli soldiers moved women and children to a checkpoint with a camera.
“They told us to get out of five at a time,” said Amal, describing how her 11 -year -old Tala daughter was held to join the group after her.
“She started to cry and call:” Mom, please don’t leave me, “says Amal, her trembling voice.
They were finally told to walk south on rue Salah al-Din.
“The tanks surrounding the school were overwhelming – I said to myself:” God! ” A whole brigade of tanks came for these defenseless civilians.
“My body was exhausted – I had given birth a week earlier, and I could barely carry my baby, even less the few things we had.”
While the tanks rumbled around them, they rose waves of dust and sand. “With all the dust, I fell and my little girl fell from my arms on the ground,” recalls Amal, telling how she shouted and the older children cried when the baby fell.
Finally, she left all their personal effects on the road; She was too tired to continue wearing them. She needed to make her children go safe.
“My four -year -old son has not stopped crying:” I am tired, I can’t do it. We had no food, no water, nothing.
At the beginning of the evening, she reached a new Gaza school with other people displaced from the North.
Amal, Yousef and their children are together now, in a school classroom.
Yousef spent two days in the hospital and, after 13 stitches, walks with caution with lameness.
Yousef’s father Jamil has disappeared since the day the soldiers came to Hamad school. He heard of some people that his father had been taken prisoner, but he doesn’t know.
Their little girl, without name when they were forced to leave north of Gaza, was named Sumoud, “firmness”, symbol of their refusal to leave.
