Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – When Youssef Abdullah’s home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza was hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing 17 of his family members on Saturday morning, no one was able to call emergency services . Israeli forces cut phone and internet services for the fifth time.
The attack was “sudden”, he told Tel Aviv Tribune. Two of his children – Mohammed, six, and Omar, eight – were among the dead. He himself was seriously injured.
Taking a break from his hospital bed, Youssef Abdullah, 35, was visibly still in shock as he spoke to Tel Aviv Tribune outside the busy gates of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the rare establishments still operational in the Gaza Strip.
He struggled to hide his broken spirit as he limped across the yard on one leg, wearing clothes still covered in debris.
In addition to head injuries, Abdullah suffered broken ribs, a broken knee and burns to his arm.
“I remember the first thing I saw when I managed to raise my head was my wife’s face. Half were badly scratched and covered in blood, but they survived,” Abdullah told Tel Aviv Tribune. “I hugged her and started calling my children frantically.”
Most of his family members killed were women and children, he said. Among them were his mother, sister and nieces, as well as his father and brother. Only seven members of his family survived.
His cousin, Bassam al-Hafy, lives a few houses away from him, in the Nuseirat camp.
Al-Hafy said a neighbor rushed to inform him of the attack that hit Abdullah’s house so he could “get help.”
“We had no way to contact doctors or a hospital, so I immediately jumped on my bike and headed to the nearest hospital, al-Awda Hospital, to call for help” , al-Hafy told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Earlier this week, Paltel, the main Palestinian telecommunications company, announced that it would begin a “gradual restoration” of telecommunications services in the central and southern areas of Gaza.
On at least five occasions, communications blackouts have effectively cut off Gazans from the outside world – and from each other.
With each power outage, the Gaza government’s media office warned that Palestinians under attack could not contact civil defense teams amid intense bombardment.
No one could reach the many “martyrs and wounded,” he said last week.
According to Abdullah, the telephone and Internet outage has definitely “doubled the number of martyrs” in his family.
“My brother-in-law was alive, but he died because the doctors arrived 45 minutes later,” he said.
This is not uncommon, civil protection agents say.
The power outages, which rights groups have warned are being used to cover up possible Israeli war crimes, have repeatedly prevented medics, first responders and firefighters from reaching targeted areas.
“Two weeks ago there was an attack in Bureij. By the time we arrived, it was an hour later and the people waiting at the scene reacted negatively towards us,” Hatem Abu Taqeyeh, a volunteer doctor with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, told Tel Aviv Tribune (PRCS).
“They scolded us, asked us why we were so late. But in reality, we just had no idea what had happened,” the 30-year-old said.
The sounds of explosions in more distant areas are “not even heard,” adding to their “stress and anxiety” every time the enclave plunges into digital darkness, Abou Taqeyeh said.
Many don’t make it
During the first power outage, shortly after Israel launched its latest war in the Gaza Strip, Abu Taqeyeh said civil defense teams would carry out what are called “on-the-ground checks.” ”, which means circulating in neighborhoods in case they are needed. But this is becoming increasingly difficult for several reasons.
After more than two months of aerial bombardments and ground invasions, Gaza’s roads have become difficult to access on foot, let alone by car. It has also become increasingly dangerous to travel amid intensified bombardment. The lack of fuel to operate the vehicles means that field inspections have become less and less frequent, Abu Taqeyeh added.
Israel has blocked the entry of much-needed fuel since imposing a total siege on the already blockaded enclave at the start of the war, and has allowed only a very small amount of aid to pass through the post. Rafah border.
“For lack of fuel… we would only go to a place knowing 100% that it had just been attacked,” Abou Taqeyeh explained. “Otherwise, we stay put. »
Abdulrahman Basheer, another PRCS volunteer doctor, said teams cannot coordinate with an international body without internet and phone lines.
The PRCS has repeatedly stated that it has lost contact with its teams operating on the ground in Gaza amid these power outages. Other groups, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Amnesty International and several UN agencies have also reported being abruptly cut off from their teams in Gaza during network outages.
To get around this, Basheer said his team members station themselves at the hospital in case injured people start arriving in vehicles other than ambulances.
“They usually come in private cars, tuk-tuks… or on donkey carts,” Basheer told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Volunteers then question those who present at the emergency unit about the location and nature of the attack they have just escaped, and quickly drive ambulances to the scene using “wireless devices » or radio transmitters, he explained.
In most cases, ambulances end up following “plumes of smoke or the noise of where the explosion is coming from,” Basheer said.
“This is the only way for doctors to identify and arrive at a targeted location. There is no other solution in the event of a communication failure.
Without internet access and phone lines, even the national emergency line is inaccessible.
“This significantly extends the time it usually takes for first responders to arrive at the scene of a targeting,” Basheer said, adding that people “usually don’t make it.”
Not being able to reach the injured in time creates new medical problems, PRCS volunteers explain.
Many of them arrive at the hospital with more fractures than they initially had because they weren’t “moved properly,” Basheer said, while others arrive losing “so much of blood because no one was there to control the bleeding.
“Our humanitarian duty”
With each power outage, repairs to destroyed telephone lines become more difficult due to repeated Israeli bombings.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last month that Israeli airstrikes had targeted several telecommunications facilities, destroying two of the three main mobile communications lines.
Human Rights Watch also noted that the “actions” of Israeli forces notably damaged “main communications infrastructure”.
In addition to the lack of fuel and ambulances, there is also a serious lack of adequate equipment for members of the civil protection teams who had to rescue victims from under the rubble with their bare hands.
“We don’t have the right equipment. At the scene (of an attack), we follow the sounds, the voices of people under the rubble and the smell of blood,” Abu Taqeyeh said.
“The scale of the destruction is very difficult to express, there are no words to describe it,” he said.
Nearly 20,000 Palestinians were killed, most of them women and children. Around 60 percent of all residential units in the Gaza Strip were damaged, or 254,000 homes.
Civil protection officers say they are also often targeted by Israeli soldiers. At least 35 of them have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, the Gaza media office announced Tuesday.
In a statement, it added that 102 ambulance vehicles had also been “directly targeted” so far.
Among those killed were three of Basheer’s colleagues in northern Gaza.
“Our main goal is to save lives. This is our humanitarian duty and this is all we want to do,” he said.
Back at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Abdullah and his cousin al-Hafy agreed that the blackout was “psychological warfare.”
“You hear the explosions and you wonder if your family members are all alive, even if they are in the same area and in the same neighborhood,” al-Hafy said.
“It’s a real challenge and, I would say, even more so than the war itself.”
