GazaHe was jumping over the death scattered on the ground, the sound of bombing chasing his steps, running with his children, trying to lead them away from the circle of fear. He did not realize that the fear he was running away from was only a prelude to a more bitter truth when the last missile fell that blew out his eyes, then the light disappeared, and everything changed. Something into complete darkness.
The last scene that was frozen in Fouad Abu Odeh’s memory was a nightmare containing harsh details of a tragedy in which dismembered bodies and pools of blood. After he regained consciousness, he began to wonder if this darkness was the darkness of the grave, but the noise around him and feeling his bleeding head made him realize that it was the darkness of life that had extinguished Israel. Its colors in an instant and forever.
Fouad told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “I was about to crawl, and every time I bumped into rubble and stones, then I started feeling my face. I found blood coming out of my eyes, and I started screaming to draw the attention of those around me that I am here.”
Fouad, who was only 29 years old, lost his eyes. He also lost his ability to do his work as a builder and to practice his talent as a brilliant painter. His future also became surrounded by a dense fog whose beginning or end he could not see. His greatest daily challenge was searching for a drink of water, an inability that was enough to tear his soul apart. As he says. Fouad concludes his interview by consoling himself, “To God is what He takes and to God is what He gives. Praise be to God.”
The specter of displacement
In one of the corners of the displacement, Fidaa Al-Rifi (35 years old), who is partially paralyzed, is squirming in her wheelchair, which she contracted at the age of twelve as a result of a rare skin disease. Fidaa sees in displacement a ghost that haunts her every time the occupation issues evacuation orders for the area in which she is displaced. .
“I was displaced 6 times,” Fidaa told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “and in every displacement I found myself in the middle of the road, unable to do anything.” She was unable to carry her belongings or even her simple bags, and all her concern was limited to how to push her wheelchair over the rugged, bombed roads. She added, “After being displaced six times, I decided to stay at home even if that meant death.”
Fidaa’s suffering is not limited to disability and displacement, as she is afflicted by a chronic skin disease that worsens with the cold of winter, as ulcers and ulcers appear on her fragile skin, turning every simple movement into unbearable pain. Fidaa says, “For a year, I have not been able to obtain treatment and simple ointments, which have become rare. Even the only alternative, which is olive oil, has become expensive, reaching $40, and this is an amount that I cannot afford.”
Fidaa complains bitterly about the neglect faced by people with disabilities. “We are from marginalized groups and need diapers, wheelchairs, crutches, medicines, and even awareness of our rights, but no one listens.”
As for Fatima, with one foot and two crutches, she was displaced five times on rough roads. She opened her swollen palms and told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “For more than a year, I have been fleeing from death, holding crutches.” Reaching the shelters was not the end of the tragedy, but rather the beginning of new tragedies represented by the lack of minimum displacement places. It is one of the essentials of life, and she adds, “We sleep on the floor, the bathrooms are not prepared for us, the environment is not suitable for us, and is not suitable for life.”
Breathless
These tragedies left marks of disfigurement on the face of the child, Majd Al-Shaghnoubi (14 years old), who received a missile fragment that penetrated his face, shattered his mouth and nose, and left behind eternal scars and a featureless face.
Majd was injured in the “Flour Massacre” on the Kuwait Roundabout in Gaza City. Doctors were able to partially save him, as they made a breathing hole in his neck, in an attempt to extract him from the clutches of death. Majd’s condition began to improve until he was trapped in Al-Shifa Hospital, where the suction device needed to clean the breathing hole stopped, congealing blood clogged the flow, and his breathing stopped again, so he faced death again face to face.
A long journey of pain that reveals the ugliness of the war that robbed children of their childhood and their features. Umm Majd says to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “For 10 months, we have been moving between hospitals and creating temporary solutions. We tried to stabilize the bones of his face with a metal bracket to regain some of their cohesion, but it left chronic infections and non-stop pain.” “.
Majd faces severe difficulty speaking, and is unable to swallow food except through a tube. The little boy needs to be urgently referred for treatment abroad, especially with the exhaustion of solutions that doctors can offer him in the Gaza Strip, which is suffering from a collapse in the health system.
“My eyes preceded me to heaven.”
As for Soha, she lived unforgettable moments during the siege of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood north of Gaza City, when shrapnel pierced her right eye, in direct targeting of them, as her eye continued to bleed for hours because ambulances were unable to reach the scene due to the siege of Israeli vehicles, Soha tells Tel Aviv Tribune. Net: “While I was bleeding, and despite the horrific pain that came over me, my thoughts were focused on my mother’s fate, and I did not calm down until I knew that she was fine.”
From the first moment, Soha realized that her eye had left her forever. “I felt as if it had left me, that it had preceded me to heaven.” The girl’s tragedy did not end only with the injury, but was doubled in light of the complete inability to receive treatment in Gaza’s hospitals, as there was an acute shortage of specialized surgeons and equipment. Needed to treat complex injuries make any surgery impossible.
Soha tells Al-Jazeera Net, “Pain devours me every day, and there are no painkillers to alleviate it, and no one at all feels for me.” Soha appeals to the world, “Stop this war, open the crossings. I have endured everything, but I cannot bear this fear and pain any longer. I need treatment.” “I just need an eye.”
While the world celebrates the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3 of each year, according to the history of the United Nations, to highlight the rights of this group, this day turns into a painful reminder of the annihilation to which people with disabilities are subjected in the Gaza Strip.
In this war, Israel killed more than 300 people with disabilities, while the fate of many of them remains unknown. Some of them went missing and others were arrested in mysterious circumstances. While the number of people with disabilities in the Gaza Strip was estimated at 130,000 people, according to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, it was added Including 23,000 others who were disabled by war conditions, whether due to direct injuries or health deterioration resulting from lack of services.
The occupation also destroyed health and educational facilities that serve people with disabilities, forcing them to flee into camps that lack the minimum necessities of life and are not prepared for their special needs. Rather, it increases their psychological and physical suffering, in countless violations of international conventions that Israel ignores.