Embryo- Ghada Maree’s house was not empty of mourners after the martyrdom of her grandson, Eid Maree, 15 years old, in Jenin camp, until she received the news of the martyrdom of her daughter, Lina Maree, her two children, and her husband’s family in an Israeli bombing of a house to which they had fled in the Bureij camp in the Gaza Strip.
Ghada lost her daughter in Gaza. She was a refugee born in Syria and returned with lists of returnees to Gaza in 1994. There she gave birth to her children and lived with them for 8 years before settling in the Jenin camp in the northern West Bank.
She says that her daughter Lina’s husband was her childhood friend, and that his family remained in contact with them after she moved to the camp. Eight years ago, Lina got engaged on the phone, and the marriage took place in Gaza. “At that time, we could hardly visit Gaza, it is true, but we went there and stayed.” Lina’s wedding was there,” says Ghada.
She added, “Like the rest of the people of Gaza, Lina’s husband’s situation was difficult. I helped her with everything, even her children’s clothes. I was not stingy with anything, as she is my youngest daughter and the apple of my eye. Months before the war, her husband was able to get a job inside (Lands 48).” Their condition improved, but when the war began, their lives turned into a nightmare.”
Heavy days
The days of war were difficult for Lina and her family, and equally difficult for her mother Ghada, who lived in constant fear and anxiety for the fate of her daughter and grandchildren. Despite her constant communication with her through phone calls and WhatsApp messages, her worry for them prevented her from sleeping, and every time her family had to… Lina was forced to move from one area to another. Her mother’s fear increased.
“Lina is my spoilt, the youngest of my children, and everyone knows her value to me. She used to talk to me constantly, send me pictures of her children, and tell me, ‘Mother, we are tired.’ She asked God to grant them relief, either through relief and the end of the war, or by making them martyrs,” Ghada says.
Lina asked her mother to leave Jenin camp in their last call, which was one hour before her martyrdom, out of fear for her after news spread of the occupation’s intention to invade the camp. “She sent me a picture of her son and said, Leave the house, mother. They say that the occupation army is preparing to enter the camp. I told her I will not go anywhere, do not worry about me, the important thing is that you are okay, and after an hour they told me that she and her children had been martyred.”
Only her eldest child and his cousin survived the bombing of the house in which Lina and her family were, in addition to her husband, who has been in Jenin since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip, and to this day he cannot enter Gaza to see his son, and the child cannot reach his father and grandmother in Jenin. .
“Lina passed away, without me saying goodbye or burying her. My grandson’s mourning has not ended yet, and here I am grieving for my daughter, her children, and her husband’s entire family. I have not seen her for a year and a half, and today she is gone and I will not even be able to visit her grave.”
The situation of many in the West Bank
Since the beginning of the war on Gaza on the seventh of last October, a large number of Palestinians who live in the cities of the West Bank have been distressed, as hardly a day goes by without a new loss story of citizens who lost relatives, friends, and acquaintances in Gaza, while a number of others live moments of terror and anxiety. Continuing the fate of their families under bombardment.
Muhammad Al-Farra, residing in the city of Ramallah, was one of those who experienced the feeling of losing his family in Gaza, due to the Israeli bombing. Days after the beginning of the aggression, the occupation bombed his sister’s house, and she, her five children, and her husband were martyred.
He says, “I work in the field of media. That day I was covering a citizens’ demonstration near the Beit El military checkpoint in Ramallah, and there I received a call stating that the house in which my sister and her family lived had been bombed. I collapsed in the street, and friends took me to the house.”
Al-Farra confirms that the most difficult feeling a person may experience is to be in a nearby city and its people are under bombardment, and he is unable to go to them, take them out of there, or protect them in any way.
“I lost my sister and her family, and my parents, brothers and their families remained there. The days pass very hard, and with every bombing that takes place in the area where they live, I fear that I will receive bad news about them,” Al-Farra adds.
He continues, “I have been living in Ramallah for 24 years, and in these circumstances I believe that my role is to at least try to relieve my family, by constantly talking to them, and making them feel that I am always with them, even if I am not with them in Gaza. My parents live in the Al-Qarara area, which is a border area. I was trying to convince them of the necessity of leaving their homes and heading to Khan Yunis. At first they refused to do so, and after the tanks entered Salah al-Din Street north of Khan Yunis, their exit became necessary.”
Reassurance through the news
Al-Farra faced a lot of difficulty in communicating with his parents and siblings, so he resorted to ambulance crews to help them get out of Al-Qarara. He says that his siblings were distributed in more than one place and shelter center. “My family was distributed among shelter centers and homes. This is the way the people of Gaza try to protect family members from complete targeting.” “And to keep family members alive in cases of bombing.”
For 5 days, Al-Farra has not been able to communicate with anyone from his family. Due to the cutting off of communications and the Internet throughout the sector, he says that “communications since the beginning of the war have been very difficult,” and that he waits all day to receive a single message from his mother telling him that they are alive.
He describes what he is going through as difficult, as he fears every day that he will receive news about the Al-Farra family in Gaza. “I have not known the taste of sleep for days, nor at any time of the day. I try to communicate in any way, but to no avail. I tried to communicate with friends who work in the press in Gaza.” Also to no avail, they tell me, “Bad news arrives quickly. Now I live to hear any news about my family. I do not wish anyone to live what I live.”
