He was 19, a software engineering student and displaced from his home, trying to survive in central Gaza. He was a few days shy of his 20th birthday.
Shaban al-Dalou would not succeed. He had struggled for months to get help for his family, recording videos describing his family’s plight and his life under Israeli bombs. But he was unable to get enough money to get his family out of Gaza.
The world finally paid attention to Shaban when his final moments were filmed this week. Connected to an intravenous drip, he was burned alive along with his mother after Israeli forces bombed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital complex in Deir el-Balah in the early hours of Monday.
In videos recorded by Shaban in the weeks and months before his death, he speaks of the reality of life in Gaza, a premonition of the horror he faced at the end of his short life.
“There is no safe place here in Gaza,” Shaban says in a video, speaking into a phone camera from the makeshift tent where he has been living since fleeing his home.
In another video, Shaban talks about the difficulties in finding food “because the Israeli occupation has succeeded in separating the central area from the rest of Gaza and people here are struggling to (meet) their basic needs.”
He also filmed himself donating blood at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, which Israel had bombed several times last year before the attack that killed him. “We have seen so many injuries that many children are in dire need of blood,” Shaban said. “All we demand is a ceasefire and an end to this tragedy. »
In some videos, Shaban asked for donations to help his family evacuate to Egypt.
“165 days of continuous genocide against us,” he said in one of them. “We lived in a tent for five months. »
“I take care of my family because I am the eldest,” he said in another, adding that his parents, two sisters and two brothers were displaced five times before finding refuge in the hospital grounds. “The only thing separating us from the freezing temperatures is this tent we built ourselves. »
“The fire engulfed everything”
Tents used as shelter in the hospital effectively became coffins on Monday, when it was set ablaze by Israeli bombs, trapping Shaban and his relatives in the flames.
His father, Ahmad al Dalou, who was badly burned, told Tel Aviv Tribune that the impact of the strike pushed him out of the tent, where he soon realized the fire had engulfed his children. He was able to save two.
“After that, the fire devastated everything. I couldn’t save anyone,” he said. “I did what I could.”
Ahmad said Shaban had hoped to study abroad to become a doctor, but wanted to keep his son closer to home. “Now I wish I had sent it,” he said.
Shaban was a studious boy who had memorized the entire Quran. Even during the war, he often took out his laptop to study, his father adds.
“He loved his mother the most,” Ahmad said. “Now he has been martyred in his arms. We buried them in each other’s arms.
The attack that killed Shaban and his relatives destroyed a makeshift camp set up by displaced people in the hospital courtyard, injuring at least 40 people.
“I looked outside and saw flames devouring the tents next to ours,” Madi, a 37-year-old mother of six, told Tel Aviv Tribune from the charred remains of her tent. “My husband and I carried the children and ran to the emergency building. »
“People – women, men and children – were fleeing the spreading fire, screaming,” she added. “Some of them were still burning, their bodies on fire as they ran.”
“Where are we supposed to go?”
Like the al-Dalou family, many of those who sought shelter near the hospital were repeatedly displaced.
“Where are we supposed to go?” » said Madi. “It’s almost winter. Is there no one to stop this holocaust against us?
The bombing of a hospital came as Israel continues to intensify its attacks on Gaza. A few days earlier, another strike against a school transformed into a shelter in Jabalia killed at least 28 people. Horrific images of the Al-Aqsa hospital fire that killed Shaban have earned a rare rebuke from U.S. officials.
“The images and videos of what appear to be displaced civilians being burned alive following an Israeli airstrike are deeply disturbing and we have made our concerns clear to the Israeli government,” a spokesperson for the Biden administration in a statement. “Israel has a responsibility to do more to prevent civilian casualties – and what happened here is horrific, even though Hamas was operating near the hospital with the aim of using civilians as human shields. »
Israel has regularly made this accusation with little evidence.
The end result of the Israeli bombing was the fire that devastated the al-Dalou family.
“We are people who only ask for peace and freedom,” Ahmad told Tel Aviv Tribune, mourning his son and wife. “We want fundamental rights, nothing else. May God take care of our oppressors.