Deir el-Balah – Most of the time, Khader al-Saeedi wants to crawl out of his skin, tormented by images of the last time he saw his brother Mohammed.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” said Khader, a 21-year-old fisherman.
The two brothers were walking with their families along the so-called “safe passage” that Israeli forces have asked Palestinians from northern Gaza to use to flee to the south.
But a short distance from Wadi Gaza, they found dozens of Israeli tanks flanking the Salah al-Din road – Gaza’s main highway – with snipers atop them.
“You there! The one with the blue bag! Come here,” one of the soldiers shouted to Mohammed.
The soldier then ordered Khader to do the same. Khader walked toward the soldiers, following his brother, raising his ID card in one hand.
“They told me to take off my clothes, so I took off my clothes,” Khader said. “They forced me to empty the bag of clothes I was carrying, as well as the blue bag Mohammed had. Then they ordered me to raise my arms, turn from side to side.
The soldiers told Mohammed, 18, to do the same. There was a third man who was also isolated from the crowd and also had to strip and undress.
“My brother wasn’t afraid of the soldiers, which bothered them a lot,” Khader said. “They criticized the way he walked, almost like he was sauntering, and said, ‘You think you’re in your schoolyard?’ Come here.'”
Mohammed was taken to the other side of the trench, out of sight. The soldiers then told Khader to get dressed.
“They told me I had 10 seconds to pack, but I got nervous and said I didn’t want any more clothes,” Khader said. “One of the soldiers pointed his gun at me and pulled the trigger with his finger. I hurriedly gathered what I could into my arms and turned to join the rest of the moving crowd.
It was the last time he saw Mohammed.
For half an hour, Khader walked in his underwear, until he caught up with his mother Ola, who had fainted from worry.
“I didn’t want to leave”
Three days earlier, on Friday, October 13, Ola’s brother, Izzat, visited their home in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. Hours after his departure, Ola learned that he had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
“I spent four hours looking for his body at the morgue with my Mohammed,” said Ola, 41. “We managed to bury him the next day.”
That day, as relatives gathered at Ola’s house to pay their respects, the shelling around them became more intense and closer together. They decided to move to Ola’s brother-in-law’s apartment on the ground floor,
But a few minutes later, the bombardment reached them.
“I just remember something heavy falling on us,” Ola said. “It was chaos. I crawled on my hands and knees to get out, barefoot. I saw one of my sons Khader and told him to find his brothers and sisters and come out.
Ali, Ola’s nephew, Mohammed’s cousin and best friend, was killed. Her sister’s husband was brain dead and died in hospital a few hours later. Most of the block had been destroyed.
The extended family – numbering more than 100 people – spent the night at al-Shifa hospital, initially sleeping near the morgue. But when Israeli military planes targeted the solar panels on the hospital’s roofs, terrorizing tens of thousands of displaced families, Ola’s husband decided to move south.
“I didn’t want to leave, and neither did Mohammed, who wanted to stay at the hospital and volunteer as a doctor,” Ola said. “But we buried four members of my family in two days and our house was destroyed. »
The family, along with Ola’s elderly mother-in-law, Aida, piled into their car and drove to get as close to “safe passage” as possible.
“Mohammed sat on my lap and I whispered to him not to be rash because he didn’t want to leave,” Ola said. “He smiled and replied, ‘As long as you’re well, you’ll be fine.’ »
They parked the car and joined the crowd on the road to Salah al-Din, but immediately separated, with Ola’s husband walking at the slow pace of his mother, some distance behind them.
The crowd continued to move, while Israeli soldiers randomly ordered people to approach them and threatened everyone else to keep walking, eyes straight ahead, or else.
When the soldiers ordered her two sons to come towards them, Ola froze. Other people shoved her, warning her to keep moving or risk being shot. A woman told Ola that she was hurting them.
“I told them I couldn’t continue when my two boys had been kidnapped! » said Ola. “We saw a man in his underwear picking up his clothes and I thought that was what the Israelis were going to do to my sons, just to humiliate them. I didn’t know what to do, how is a mother supposed to behave in this situation?
Bullets in response to a grandmother’s call
Ola and her daughters walked slowly, risking a furtive glance here and there. When Khader finally caught up, Ola wrapped him in one of her sister’s long coats.
The third man who was detained with the brothers was released and found Khader, telling him not to worry and that after handcuffing, blindfolding and interrogating him, the soldiers said Mohammed would be released soon.
“We waited on the road for an hour but there was no sign of him,” Khader said. That’s when his father and grandmother Aida caught up with them. When she discovered what had happened, the 70-year-old woman turned back to where the Israeli tanks were stationed and, holding her white scarf in one hand, sat between two tanks and refused to move until Mohammed was released. She screamed at the soldiers, cried and begged the soldiers to return her grandson.
“She said she wasn’t afraid of being killed, even though people were trying to get her to leave, saying she would be shot,” Khader said. “After an hour, the snipers started shooting, forcing people to throw themselves to the ground. »
Reluctantly, Aida began walking again, going very slowly until the sun set.
After walking 12 km, the family arrived at Maghazi camp in a daze, not really believing what had happened. They called the Red Cross several times, giving their testimonies and Mohammed’s contact details.
According to various accounts from displaced Palestinians who used “safe passage,” hundreds of Palestinian men – and to a lesser extent women and children – were arrested at Israeli checkpoints, kidnapped and taken to unknown locations.
Last month, Palestinian poet Mosab Toha was among those fleeing northern Gaza and was kidnapped by Israeli forces. According to human rights lawyer Diana Buttu, Toha was taken to a prison in the Naqab (Negev) desert where he was detained. interrogated and beaten as well as 200 men kidnapped in Gaza. Toha was released a day later.
Hisham Mhanna, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Tel Aviv Tribune that the organization receives many phone calls from families informing them of the disappearance or detention of their loved ones.
“We take the information about the detained person and we communicate with the Israeli side to see where they are detained,” he said, without disclosing the number of calls received from people referring to “safe passage.”
“If we have information from the Israeli side, we usually share it directly with the family, not with the media,” he added.
“We think the soldiers took him to torture him and use him as a human shield,” Ola said as she began to cry softly. “I wish we never left the hospital. I feel like I handed my son over to the Israelis.
She took a deep breath.
“Mohammed is brave,” she said. “Before we were displaced, he was always on the front lines helping the residents of Shati, rescuing families from under the rubble and providing first aid to the injured. »
The family is currently staying with a relative in Deir el-Balah and, almost two months later, they do not know whether Mohammed is alive or dead.
“I thought the soldiers wanted to search my boy, not kidnap him,” Ola said. “I’m afraid they killed him and left his body on the road, like those of the other people we saw. Dead horses, burned cars, suitcases, bags and money on the ground. No one could pick up anything or anyone from the ground, otherwise they would be shot by the soldiers.
Not knowing what happened to Mohammed is killing the family from top to bottom. They no longer believe themselves when they try to comfort themselves by telling themselves that everything will be okay.
“It’s not like when the Israelis kidnap the fishermen on a normal day and they are returned by the Red Cross after a few days,” Ola said. ” I can not sleep. I barely eat. How can I do this if I don’t know if my son is sleeping, eating, or even alive?