Voices from Gaza

 Those were the hardest moments of my life: The moment I found out Yamen was injured, the moment I found him lying in the morgue, and the moment that – only God knows how – I found the strength to call his mother and sisters to tell them he’d been killed. Yamen’s friends told me they’d gone together to the aid center, even though I forbade him from going. There was firing there from tanks, shells and machine guns, and people were killed and injured. Yamen tried to help one of the wounded, and was injured in the process. The bullet hit him in the waist and he was killed instantly. My son Yamen was shot dead only because he went to get aid, only because he wanted to bring his family flour, only because he tried to help someone who was wounded.

I saw Israeli tanks and soldiers, and also Americans in uniform, armed with the same weapons as the Israelis, firing heavy gunfire at people like me who only wanted to obtain food. Many people were killed, most hit in the head or chest. I saw a woman standing just a few meters from me shot in the head. Her head simply exploded.

The army declared the opening of “American aid centers,” which were basically death traps. [...] [My son] Ousamah begged me to let him go there to get food, but I refused. I was afraid of losing him. In the end, I gave in to my daughters’ hunger. On the morning of 19 June 2025, Ousamah went [there] with my brother Ahmad and some other friends.  [...] At 11:00 P.M., my brother came back with Ousamah’s body. He was covered in blood and dirt. Ahmad told us an Israeli tank had fired a shell at them and hit Ousamah in the back, killing him and five others while they were opening boxes of aid. They all died on the spot. [...] He left behind a wife who was three months pregnant and five sisters. He died trying to bring us and his sisters bread.

When we get there, we have to wait at a distance determined by the army until the soldiers signal we can go ahead to the center itself. [...] We stopped walking about three kilometers from the site and waited for the army to signal we could get closer. Suddenly, bullets were fired at us. [...] They fired at us from a tank as well as from a drone. Some of the people waiting with us managed to escape, but others got stuck in a kind of ditch. [...] Ambulances are not allowed into the area, so people carried away the wounded people and the bodies on donkey carts.

I go to the aide distribution sites almost everyday–sometimes to Netzarim, other times to Zikim, and others to a-Nabulsi. When I leave the apartment, I part from my wife and children as if for the last time. Going there is going to die. I might come back, I might not. There, I look death in the eyes. The army turned the aid distribution centers into death traps.

[…] my mother, my brother Ahmad, 12, and I went together. […] When we approached [the aid distribution site], the army suddenly opened massive fire. It was unbelievable. […] When the shooting stopped, we moved again towards the distribution site. I was in front, and behind me, my mother was holding Ahmad’s hand. Then the shooting resumed, and a bullet hit my mother in the head. I turned around and saw her lying on the ground. I thought she had fainted; I couldn’t imagine she’d been killed.

I heard from people that the aid trucks were going to pass through the a-Tahliyah area. I got dressed and ran out of the house to get there early. When I arrived, there were already huge crowds, but no trucks with flour. Just masses of people waiting for them. Suddenly, Israeli tanks started to fire at the people [...]. There were injuries and casualties. People went over to the wounded to try and help them, and then the army fired again. And again. The sight of the mutilated bodies was horrifying. Some were without hands and legs, others decapitated, some were shredded to bits. 

We waited for them to allow us into the center to get food. Suddenly, they started firing at us from the cranes the Israeli army stationed there. People started running in every direction to try and escape. My brother and I also ran, under the army’s fire. Then I was hit by five bullets [...]. When I woke up, I was on a bed in the Red Cross field hospital [...]. The doctors took the bullet out of my back because it was endangering me and damaging my intestine. They also operated on my leg and put in a platinum implant [...]. All I did was go to the aid center to get food for my children, and now I can’t even take care of myself – let alone get the treatment and medicine I need. I don’t know when I’ll be able to stand on my feet again. 

[...] a military drone fired at me and hit me in the right foot. I fell down and was evacuated in a mule cart. [...] I dragged from hospital to hospital with my entire family, in terrible conditions. Everywhere we went, the bombings and displacement continued. We lived in fear and hunger, without a steady supply of food or water and with no safe shelter. There were no doctors available anywhere, no medicine [...] the doctors at Al-Awda Hospital were forced to amputate [my leg] under difficult conditions to save my life.

We walked about 3 kilometers with thousands of other displaced, hungry people [...] Suddenly, drones surrounded us and started shooting live fire. I was injured from a bullet that penetrated and exited my left hand. I turned around to look for my brother Firas and escape the shooting, and then a sniper shot me from about 300 meters away and hit me in the back, next to my spinal cord. [...] The situation was so bad that people stepped on dead bodies while running away. There were about 20 corpses next to me and dozens of wounded people. I was certain I’d die, too. 

I ran inside to look for my wife and children among the ruins. I found my son Ziad sitting in one of the rooms on the ground floor, with rubble on top of him and around him. He was calling for his mother and siblings, and when he saw me, he started shouting, “Dad, I’m here.” He had burns all over his body. I picked him up and asked him if he knew where his mother was, and then I heard her calling me.

I lay on the ground, bleeding. I looked at my legs and couldn’t believe what I saw. I told myself, “This is a dream.” My mother screamed and called for help. Five minutes later, a man arrived, and when he saw we were still alive, he put Muhammad [my twin brother] and me in a tuk-tuk and took us to the Indonesian Hospital, along with my uncle, my mother, and the others. On the way, Muhammad recited verses from the Quran and the Shahadatain prayers, but I didn’t realize he was taking his last breaths.

I picked up my husband and carried him on my back. His body was limp from the injury and very heavy. There was no one to help me, and I had to carry him on my own. I walked for a bit, rested, and then continued. He was still bleeding. We got to my uncle’s house, about 50 meters from ours. [...] Suddenly, I noticed his left hand was shaking badly. I asked if he wanted a massage, but then I saw he was dead. I checked again—I wasn’t mistaken. He died right there, in my arms.

While we were all sleeping, the house was bombed [...] Three family members were killed in the bombing [...] My son Muhammad was injured again and taken to al-Ma’amadani (al-Ahli) Hospital in Gaza City. [...] In the morning, my husband and I left early for al-Ma’amadani Hospital, and when I saw Muhammad’s left leg, it was black. The doctor told me they were going to amputate it because it was in very bad shape. There were dead bodies in front of our eyes, and I told myself, thank God Muhammad wasn’t killed.

On 18 March 2025, the war resumed, and the bombings began again. The crossings were closed, and food ran out. Prices rose even more and a sack of flour reached 1,500 shekels. […] Today, we’re surviving what the camp administration provides – half a kilo of flour every two days. […] After the fighting resumed, many soup kitchens stopped operating even though they had been people’s main source of food. Most of the people are starving. It’s been over a month since we last received cooked meals. We now go begging to get one meal a day for the children, especially for Najah.

[...] the military sent a quadcopter into the house and used a loudspeaker to order us to raise our hands. The quadcopter filmed us. Then soldiers came in and forced us to strip. [...] The soldiers even used [my son] ‘Abdallah as a human shield—they forced him to accompany them as they searched the house and then to tie up the other men. Then they tied him up and arrested him too. [...] they ordered us—just the women, at gunpoint—to walk to southern Gaza along the coastline. [...] Along the way, we saw dozens of bodies—women, children, men—lying on the beach, with dogs feeding on them.

The children were playing with my husband. My parents, my brother Hamzah and my cousin Muhammad were sitting in the living room, and I was in the kitchen, making coffee and pasta for the kids. Suddenly, there was a huge explosion. The blast cut off my hearing and threw me onto the floor. I thought the gas cylinder had exploded. Everything around me was burning. When I got up, I couldn’t find my children or anyone else in the family. Everything was in ruins. The house had been hit by three missiles from the air. [...] I was taken to a-Shifaa Hospital in an ambulance. I didn’t know the small body in the ambulance was my daughter Juri. I was only told at the hospital that everyone in the house was killed except ‘Ali and me.

On 2 March 2025, the crossings were closed and food imports were banned. Goods gradually disappeared from the market, and now we can’t buy any food and there’s also no aid. [...] The war resumed on 18 March 2025 and we went back to a nightmare of killing, bombing, destruction and displacement. [...] For over six weeks, no food has entered the Gaza Strip. [...] Sometimes I find one or two pitas and that’s all we eat. We go to sleep hungry. We wake up hungry and terrified by bombings and the noise of aircraft.

In this brutal war, we’ve endured so much: killing, displacement, destruction, and hunger. But the hunger we’ve experienced in the past two months is on a different scale. The crossings are closed, and no goods are allowed into Gaza. This is another method of warfare the Israeli military uses against civilians in Gaza – starvation. My children beg me to get them meat or eggs, and I have to tell them there is none and I can’t. What crime have my children committed? Why must they starve?

My youngest, ‘Az a-Din, cried a lot and kept saying, “I’m hungry.” It broke my heart to hear it, and I cried over his situation — but that was the situation for everyone. I explained to him that everyone was hungry and there was nothing I could do. [...] We didn’t get food package coupons because we weren’t living in a tent, so we had to pay insane prices for food. Two of my children, Layan and Mahmoud, came down with viral hepatitis and there was no treatment available. I couldn’t provide them with the healthy nutrition they needed to fight the illness.

I was nine months pregnant and weighed only 55 kg because I was eating just one meal a day — lentils, fava beans or falafel. When I went to the hospital to give birth, the doctors couldn’t believe I was pregnant. My baby girl was born weighing only 2 kg due to the lack of food.

We sat down to eat when we heard an explosion in the street. [...] my daughter, Elyaa (5), stood next to me. Suddenly, the house was bombed. Everything collapsed and there was smoke, dust and rubble everywhere. My mother and my sisters, Marah and Bisan, were killed. Elyaa and I were injured. [...] Elyaa had first and second-degree burns on her face and arms and wounds on her head that required stitches on her head. I had first-degree burns on my face and second-degree burns on my back and arms. The bodies of my mother and my sister Bisan couldn’t be recovered, and they’re still under the rubble. Marah’s body was retrieved with great difficulty, under fire.

‘Omar has been suffering badly since he was injured and lost his family. He’s always hiding, doesn’t like to be seen, and tries to hide his amputated arm and his face. […] His family was bombed before his eyes, even though they did nothing wrong. Everything that could have brought him happiness was taken from him. I try to help him remember his mother, his father and his sister. […] He says: “I don’t want to go back to Gaza. I want to stay here.” He’s terrified and doesn’t like to be reminded of what happened.

On 7 November 2024, in the morning, my son Hamudah and I were standing near the school gate, about to go out to look for food, when a drone fired a missile directly at us. We were both seriously wounded. We lay on the ground for two hours, and no ambulance could reach us because of the ongoing bombardment and the difficulty moving around the area. After two hours, by some miracle, we were evacuated on a tuk-tuk motorcycle to al-Ahli al-‘Arabi Hospital.