In her ten-part diary published by Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Palestinian cartoonist Umayyah Juha documented the harsh humanitarian conditions taking place during the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, especially the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, which the World Health Organization described last November in its periodic report as “Death zone.”
In your hands, dear reader, is the seventh episode of the diary, which will be published successively over the coming days, in which a Palestinian woman from the Al-Nasr neighborhood, Zaghbar Tower in Gaza City, narrates the events she witnessed. She was displaced to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza (until the last contact with her before the hospital was stormed for the second time. On March 18, 2024), I lay down on the cold hospital floor, waiting for survival.
Friday the third of November
Friday evening was one of the worst evenings that happened in the ward, as dozens of displaced people arrived from one of the schools in Al-Shati camp, which had been bombed, so its displaced people fled to other places, in search of safety. In addition to the occupation’s threat to the camp’s residents of the necessity of evacuating it.
Despite the overcrowding of the displaced people in the ward, we were asked to accommodate the new displaced people, which raised problems with the administration, and a verbal clash between the displaced themselves. Because there is simply no room for our toes to pass through the piles of displaced people to reach the bathrooms. In the end, the newcomers were forced to either look for other places, or hole up in narrow corridors.
The hospital administration, at approximately five in the evening, announced via loudspeakers that at eight in the evening, the electricity would completely stop in all wards. This sparked a state of pandemonium, as everyone was looking for cell phone chargers, others went to the bathrooms to relieve themselves and their children, and others fed their children whatever leftover bread was available.
As for Thaera, she decided to enter another battle, but not with other displaced people, but rather a battle against time. She quickly kneaded a small amount of flour for her family, who had been unable to buy bread all day, and succeeded in baking it in an electric bread cooker belonging to one of the other families, before the electricity went out. And so did many of the displaced.
How cruel it is to see other children looking lustfully at a loaf of hot bread, or a cup of Indomie in the hands of other children. The people of Gaza are generous by nature, but the nature of the situation has become very difficult and complicated, in light of the war of genocide and starvation that the occupation is waging against the residents of the Strip. One family is able, with great difficulty, to provide the little bread, which is not enough for it at all. The ward is crowded with dozens of children, and it does not at all allow you to be generous with one of them without the others.
The price of vegetables, basic goods, canned food, and Indomie is rising every day. The war and blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip prevents the import of any goods, in addition to the closure of markets and “malls” that were widespread. Street vendors were going up to the hospital floors and selling some necessary goods to the displaced, and most of the vendors were children. It is unfortunate that their place is in hospital courtyards and streets, not in schools and science arenas.
Today I only ate a piece of bread, which I bought two days ago, and it was easy to crumble. The weather is hot, which makes it susceptible to rotting. This is the kind of bread I used to feed my chickens. I spread the bread slices with a little strawberry jam, for no reason other than a desire to avoid the need to use the bathroom. The kids here rebelled against strawberry jam and feta cheese. This afternoon they ate rice, cooked with Maggi gravy. It was a very delicious meal in their opinion. They did not ask for a piece of meat, because they knew that it was impossible to find.
Markets and malls are completely closed. Dozens of bakeries were bombed or threatened, and some of them ran out of the diesel needed for automatic ovens, forcing them to close. The men come to their families in the ward, after eight in the morning. They bring them food, necessities, and some drinks. Sometimes they sleep on their children’s beds in the ward for hours, because they avoid sleeping in the hospital courtyards at night, for fear of a surprise bombardment from occupation planes, but they must leave the wards before eight in the evening, and then return to spend the night in the hospital’s outer courtyard in the open.
The sounds of bombing in the hospital yard are stronger and deeper than their sound inside the wards, so the men say. So they miss the taste of sleep.
When the father brings his family, the children gather happily around him, because they know that he came bringing with him food and drink, even if it is little.
The little boy, Ahmed, looked at these children with regret and misery. His father, a young man, was martyred a month and a half ago. Ahmed has a brother and a sister, and he quickly jumps up and embraces his mother if he finds her crying, remembering her husband.
A small cat entered the ward just before the sunset call to prayer. She made the children crowd around her. She looked very hungry and perhaps thirsty. She was rushing toward the garbage cans, smelling the scents of what was left of the food of the displaced. She was picking up even the leftover rice with her tongue.
I motioned for my sister to pour into a small dish from her child’s milk bottle. She complained at first, as milk had also become scarce, then I accepted the hope that God would relieve the distress and end this war.
The little cat did not leave a drop of milk in the plate, then Ahmed Ibn al-Martyr threw a piece of his small loaf of bread at her, and she began to eat it hungrily, while the children gathered around her and stared at her movements and movements.
The lights went out completely in the hospital, a quarter of an hour before eight. There was a sudden momentary silence, followed by clapping and whistling of the children. What are the cruelest moments of children’s joy in a situation that calls for crying…
I leaned my head toward the spacious window overlooking the sky, and on the horizon in front of me were dozens of illuminated lanterns, warning of a new hot night, and in the background were dozens of overlapping sounds of children crying, mutual conversations, and verbal quarrels. I closed my eyes against my will, hoping to get out of this long nightmare.