GazaThe eyes of Youssef Al-Masry, who died from its jaws when he fled from the Israeli occupation soldiers after 5 days of detention during which they used him as a human shield, look like two burning embers.
Tel Aviv Tribune Net toured among the survivors of the siege in the northern Gaza Strip at the New Gaza School in the Al-Nasr neighborhood, west of Gaza City, where Al-Masry arrived as if he had escaped a ghost chasing him after hours he spent running continuously, despite being hit in the foot by bullets fired at him by a drone.
Al-Masry narrates to Al-Jazeera Net the details of his arrest, the severity of which exposed his face and the exhaustion of his body. He was displaced in the “Hamad School” next to the Indonesian Hospital, and the occupation forces detained him after interrogating him, blindfolded and handcuffed.
These forces were pushing Al-Masry towards the schools for the displaced and forcing him to enter them room by room to inspect the presence of resistance fighters or equipment. “After ensuring that the school was free of resistance fighters and weapons, they would burn it all, so that people would not return to it,” Al-Masry says.
Between one mission and another, they blindfolded him and handcuffed him again, but his ears were uncovered to hear the screams of hundreds of tortured and suspicious Palestinians under the weight of the Israeli investigation.
Before escaping, the Israeli officer called him and handed him leaflets (paper threats) to carry to Kamal Adwan Hospital demanding that those in it evacuate, so that he could join the dozens who evacuated the hospital after a while and succeed in escaping with them, but a drone opened fire on him and hit him in the foot.
Al-Masry had room to leave the school he was sheltering in before it was besieged, but he justified not leaving by saying, “We are civilians and we have no refuge if we leave, and my wife was on the verge of giving birth and could not walk alone with our five children.”
Birth under siege
Tel Aviv Tribune Net went to his wife, Umm Omar, who gave birth to her daughter during the siege in a school where she was displaced. Umm Omar says, “In a classroom and on the ground after a week of siege, a woman helped me give birth to my daughter. I had the most difficult birth that a woman in the world could go through.”
Umm Omar contented herself with providing this information, refusing to bring up the details of her birth and delve into them because she is trying hard to forget them, as she says.
Umm Omar spent the beginning of her postpartum life while under siege. She did not receive food, drink, or proper care. She said, “A week after I gave birth, I went out with my five children alone, and I left my husband in the hole that the occupation designated for men. The soldier was screaming whenever his children tried to approach to search among the men.” About their father, and he says, “Wara wara” (i.e. move back)!
An army without morals
“I see your hair, sweetie,” the soldier said to Umm Ubaida, as he tried to reach out to the front of her hair that was flowing from under her hijab, so that she would turn her face and scream, and her handcuffed husband would scream from the deepest part of his heart, and the soldier would hit his foot, which was injured by a fragment of a shell fired by the occupation soldiers before they attacked the school, with his hammer.
The soldiers walked around among the detained women in the school yard, hurling obscene words at them and gloating at them, “Don’t you want Hamas? Let Hamas save you!” One of them shouted, louder than their voices, “There is no god but God.” Then one of them approached her and said, “Shut up, I won’t kill you!”
Umm Ubaida narrates these testimonies to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, her eyes wandering into the void as if she were describing a scene from a horror movie that she will never recover from, as she says, “My child started crying, wanting water. I asked the soldier for water, and they had large quantities of it, and he answered me sarcastically: After two days, I will give you!” .
To and from death
Leaving school was like a new birth for the mentally ill woman and for her injured husband, who walked leaning on her shoulder and with the other hand carrying her daughter and their bags. They walked on foot because they did not have money to pay for transportation to take them to the city center.
Umm Ubaida sat in a corridor under the school stairs, a place she found empty and empty of displaced persons, and on her lap she carried her daughter, who suffers from malnutrition and whose weight has reached 7 kilograms, even though she is more than a year old.
She says, “We fled from death and were only thinking about escaping from it. When we arrived, we realized that we would die of hunger.” She continues, “We arrived empty-handed and had nothing. I asked the people around me for a mattress for the three of us, and from my sister, milk and diapers.”
Compound oppression!
In the next room there was a funeral, men sat at the door silently, and inside there were women sobbing. The Tel Aviv Tribune Net correspondent asked permission to enter, as it appeared that the woman concerned with condolences was the one around whom the ladies were gathered, wearing black. The swelling of her eyes and the paleness of her face confirmed that she was the victim.
There was more injury than one loss. It was a shell that claimed the lives of 3 of her children, a girl and two young men.
With a trembling voice, Umm Mahmoud narrates to Tel Aviv Tribune Net what happened to her as she tried to swallow her sadness and tears. She says, “The quadcopter drone called out to those in Abu Rashid School, giving them one hour to evacuate.” She continues, “We prepared our bags and were about to leave, until I reached the square.” With my husband and six children, until shells rained down on the schoolyard, killing three of my children!”
A story of just a few sentences, in which this was not the last line. Umm Mahmoud continues, “My husband turned to me and told me to take the rest of the children and get out. The matter came upon me like a thunderbolt… How can you ask me to walk and leave the pieces of my heart torn on the ground!”
Another shell, and her husband cried out, “I’m telling you to get out now.” They forced her to submit. The man wrapped his daughter’s body in a rug and carried her with the bodies of his two sons on a cart pulled by animals until he was able to reach Kamal Adwan Hospital. While he was laying them to rest, the wife took her flight path on weak feet, with a body being dragged from the ground. Her sons survived, and a heavy heart was just buried with them.
