On the edge of the abyss: A story of displacement, survival from massacre
14 Min Read
Every tragedy I narrated here has happened to thousands in the three schools at the time, and it continues to happen to every living soul in Gaza, from the beginning of the war until this very day.
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I lived through Gaza’s massacre. Fleeing bombs, schools, and streets of death (Illustrated by Mahdi Rtail; Al Mayadeen English)
As the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip entered its second month, the ground assault on my neighborhood began.
Warplanes launched missiles and artillery shells, which rained down relentlessly on inhabited homes. Some also targeted the top floors, rooftops of high-rise buildings, and crowds of civilians on streets.
This led to the deaths of dozens of civilians - inside their homes, beneath the rubble, and in the streets - all with the aim of forcing people to flee south.
My wife, her brother, and I were the only members left in our building. The men of the family had fled south, days before the attack, fearing for the safety of the women and children. The three of us held together on the first day, spending a terrifying night as intense shelling and fire belts raged outside while stones scattered, glass and household belongings shattered around us.
We were forced to go down to a small storage room at the entrance of the building to seek shelter. Amid the roar of shells and rocket explosions, we pondered how to escape this hell. My wife's brother decided to leave the building and move to one of the UNRWA schools in the neighborhood.
As the long, lingering night finally gave way to dawn, we began inspecting the apartment building, closing its cracked doors as we prepared to leave for school. We exited the building and were suddenly struck by three consecutive attacks around the house. Shrapnel and stones flew toward us, leaving us no choice but to take cover behind the walls of adjacent buildings and slip through side roads to reach the school.
What we saw was horrific! Buildings completely destroyed, and the bodies of martyrs were lying in the streets. Amid the ongoing aerial and artillery bombardment, we reached the school gate.
We breathed a sigh of relief, believing we would be safe inside a UN-run school. I sent a letter to all members of our family, including the date and time of the letter, informing them of our displacement to the school. The letter reached them promptly.
As soon as we entered the school, we were met by many neighborhood residents. It was one of three adjacent UNRWA schools, housing approximately 5,000 displaced people. We remained there until the afternoon, when a friend came and offered us to join his family in their tent. We accepted his invitation and moved to sit among the tents in the inner courtyard of the classroom.
Our friend gave us three clementines, which my wife's brother had put in his coat pocket, and he gave me a pack of gum. Only a few minutes later, the wall between the two schools where we had been sitting earlier was targeted. Dozens were killed, hundreds were wounded, and shrapnel was scattered everywhere.
Chaos reigned, and terror spread among children, women, and the elderly. Where could we flee from this death? Who would treat the wounded? Who would transport the martyrs to the city’s only remaining hospital? At that moment, a wailing voice approached: "My children are martyred... My children are in pieces.” I told myself, "That's a voice I recognize."
I turned my head toward the voice and saw my lifelong friend, injured in the shoulder, collapsed, and in a state of hysteria. As he teetered, about to fall to the ground, I ran quickly to catch him before he could hurt himself further.
I couldn't find the strength to hold his collapsed body. He screamed from the pain in his injured arm and then fainted. I administered first aid until he regained consciousness, but he was so shaken by the shock that he didn't recognize me. He had come to the school looking for a tent to bring his wife and family, and, at their insistence, his children had accompanied him.
We looked for a doctor to treat him and the other wounded, but we couldn't find anyone. Eventually, we came across a nurse at the school who held his arm steady for a while. At that terrifying moment, three children, including a baby and a young woman, lay on the ground next to me. The children were crying in pain.
I discovered that they had shrapnel wounds to their heads, hands, and legs. There was no first aid at school and no possibility for ambulances to reach the area to rescue the injured, as the area was under complete siege.
The children's mother was martyred inside her tent in the schoolyard. Their mute father - the husband of the young woman's sister - survived. However, the young woman’s own husband and children were also martyred in their tent in the schoolyard.
Darkness fell, and there had been no electricity since the first day of the war. The city was also cut off from landlines and cellular networks. A tight siege was imposed on the neighborhood, isolating it completely from the outside world. As the cold winter winds began to blow harshly, thousands of displaced people took shelter in school corridors and classrooms, lying on bare floors without mattresses or blankets.
Families huddled together: men, women, children, the sick, and those injured in the massacre. We spent a painful night surrounded by the wailing of martyrs’ families, the groans of the wounded, and the terror gripping children and women. Overhead, helicopters roared endlessly through the skies, while quadcopters rained bullets in all directions.
That night, I wrote a message from my mobile phone to our family members, reassuring them of our safety from the massacre. But it never arrived, as networks were down. News stations covered the massacre and reported on the rising death toll, which had reached 70. When our family heard the news, the shock was overwhelming. Everyone assumed we were among the martyrs.
The bitter displacement
At dawn on the third day, we left school to return home. We walked past the bodies of the massacre's martyrs in and around the schoolyard until we reached a street leading to the house. What a horror! Destroyed buildings blocked the road, while quadcopters hovered overhead, firing deadly bullets at anyone who dared to move. We had to retreat quickly to school, and my wife's brother decided to move south.
I urged them to go without me, agreeing only to escort them as far as Salah al-Din Street before returning to the family home. At that moment, my wife collapsed. Faced with her desperate insistence, and fearing for her, she had undergone a difficult surgery only weeks before the war and was still suffering from its effects, relying on me constantly for care, I resolved to move south with them.
All this was still in the early hours of the morning, and it was not yet 6:30. As soon as we were about to flee, like thousands of civilians, including the families of martyrs who left behind the bodies of their victims, we froze in shock: Every time we took a road, we found that the Israeli tanks were besieging the area from the south and west of the neighborhood, while the north was controlled by snipers and aircraft.
At that moment, we heard a sound coming from inside the school, a sign that a breach had been made in its wall, overlooking land adjacent to the neighborhood homes. We headed along it, aiming to reach Salah a-Din Street toward the Netzarim barrier. The breach in the wall was narrow, barely wide enough for one person to pass through, and set high off the ground. Watching the elderly, the disabled, and the wounded struggle to climb over it was heartbreaking.
We climbed the wall, helping each other, until we entered the neighboring lands and the three of us, like thousands, reached Salah al-Din Street, with only a bottle of water, a painkiller, and a bag of official papers in our bags, leaving everything we owned behind us; our memories, our past, our beautiful life we ​​once enjoyed, our happiness that filled our hearts, and the stability that pervaded our city. We fled in search of lost safety, our hearts bleeding with grief.
The journey of survival from death to the unknown began on foot at seven o'clock in the morning. We advanced at an excruciatingly slow pace due to the intense crowding, with the number of displaced people that day estimated at 300,000 citizens, in the largest displacement of this war. There were occupation military bases on both sides of the road, snipers on high buildings, and complete military and security control around the Netzarim barrier.
The sun was blazing despite the winter. Children and women were crying from the intense heat, thirst, and exhaustion… our steps didn’t exceed one centimeter per minute, all closely packed together, moving as one mass. The road was very rough, as the Israeli forces deliberately placed rubble, mounds, and holes for the displaced to cross with great difficulty.
Our steps were hampered by cement blocks, stones, and iron barricades. Furthermore, no one dared bend down to retrieve anything that had fallen, and no one could return along the displacement route without losing their life.
As for a sip of water in this hell, it was equivalent to a soul! Everyone was searching for a single drop of water to quench the thirst of a child, a woman, or an elderly man. We would distribute water to each other using bottle caps to soothe our throats.
Meanwhile, the soldiers enjoyed forcing the displaced to raise their identity cards in their right hand and a white flag in their left every few minutes, while they directed obscene insults and profanities at the women and men through loudspeakers in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. Some of the displaced responded to the soldiers' calls, hoping for safety, while the majority refused to surrender and refused to raise the white flag.
Here, my memory recalls a young man we saw climbing a pole on the roof of his house, which was close to the school where we had taken refuge. He hung a white flag on it, hoping for protection and safety. However, a rocket targeted him, shattering his body and vanishing his white flag. His greatest wish was to protect his family from being targeted, but the flag didn’t save him, nor did it extinguish the flames of the massacre.
Returning to the hell of displacement, we realized that the closer we drew to the electronic gate, the greater the danger. Occupation soldiers often carried out their favored cruelty, the "field execution" of many who were arrested at the barrier, men and women alike, after forcing them to strip.
The entry of displaced people into the barrier began very slowly, as only ten people were allowed to enter at a time for security screening. A fierce push occurred among the people toward the barrier, which caused the Israeli forces to lose control of the situation. The tanks intervened and cut off the road to the barrier and separated the masses of displaced people, amid bombs and heavy gunfire from every direction.
The three of us crossed the barrier in the first wave, thinking it was the end of the fighting. However, we were surprised by soldiers stationed in the residential buildings on the other side. They held us for hours until we were allowed to pass. Meanwhile, I went to look for a sip of water, and my wife fainted.
The women around her helped her and gave her a handful of raisins. When I returned to her, she had regained consciousness. I took three painkillers on an empty stomach, as the three of us hadn't eaten for the third day in a row. The soldiers allowed us to continue south. We walked no less than ten kilometers after the barrier. On the road, we saw the bodies of dozens of martyrs inside civilian cars that had been bombed during a previous displacement.
As we covered that distance, we began to feel “safety” mingled with oppression. We sat on the sidewalks repeatedly, to catch our exhausted breaths and rest from the fatigue of walking, the agony of displacement, and the hours of terror we lived under the eyes of the occupation's snipers and bullets and the muzzles of tank cannons and shells.
Meanwhile, my wife's brother remembered the clementines our friend had given us at school. He took them out of his coat pocket and we shared them. They felt like heavenly fruits to us. I also remembered him giving me a pack of gum. We prayed a lot for him. We called out to God in praise and thanks for our rescue from the jaws of death.
We continued on the road until we reached a transportation hub in a specific area, which transported us south. The three of us arrived at Mawasi Rafah, where we deposited one of our families at the home of our friends. It was seven o'clock in the evening, the start of an arduous 12-hour displacement journey punctuated by death, thirst, and exhaustion.
The car stopped in front of the house where they were sitting at the door. They were shocked when they saw us getting out of the car. The scene was filled with screaming, crying, and tight embraces that nearly crushed our bones with the joy of reunion.
How could they not rejoice, having heard nothing about us for three days except for the news of the massacre at the school where we had sought refuge? Neighbors and residents of the neighborhood welcomed us, relieved by our safety.
Down south, networks were still intermittently working. We sent messages to our family, reassuring them of our safety and our arrival. As for others in the same southern city, we headed to their places of displacement.
Despite the joy of surviving the massacre, we cannot describe the painful encounter. Later, we learned of another massacre that targeted a breach in the school wall shortly after we left.
The schoolyard, transformed into a silent witness, embraced the bodies of the martyrs. Two days later, martyrs were buried by the newly displaced people, and the land that witnessed the massacre became the same land that embraced them in their final resting place.
Everything I have narrated here happened to thousands in the three schools at the time, and it continues to happen to every living soul in Gaza, from the beginning of the war until this very day.
