Every day when I wake up, it takes me several minutes of looking at myself, of touching my body, and of my feet feeling the floor underneath, to make sure that I’m still breathing.
Only the luckiest get to wake up with their bodies still intact.
These days, simply surviving requires a miracle. And even if you survive today, it doesn’t mean you’ll be so lucky tomorrow. Every day past is another miracle summoned, and even if you come out of it with your body physically in one piece, your soul isn’t. Everyone in Gaza is now walking the streets with their souls crushed.
The war strips us of everything that makes us human; we aren’t able to mourn our dead, and we can’t say goodbye to them. People are killed and buried in mass graves far from their loved ones. Authorities have been forced to dig huge ditches for the slain — killed together, buried together. Hundreds of them are entombed together without identification, the brutal nature of their deaths leaving them disfigured beyond recognition. For many, little remains of them but pieces of flesh that are collected in a white shroud and buried with the rest.
Every day feels like the next, unending and weighing heavily on the heart. Sometimes, I feel that the end times might look better. To start your day every day by hearing that 500 to 600 people were killed is not normal. What’s even worse is to hear their stories.
To report on the death of a person or the demolition of a home has now become old-fashioned. Today, we’re dealing in bulk: mass killings, leveled neighborhoods, a few hundred people massacred in a mosque or a school or a church. Nowhere is sacred enough to be off-limits.
As of the time of this writing, Israel has completely destroyed or damaged over 206 schools, 20 mosques, one church, and half of all homes in the Gaza Strip. And it isn’t even over. Israel is conducting itself like a rabid animal, all brawn and no brain.
My day usually starts with trying to call the rest of my family. No family got the chance to evacuate and shelter together. Everyone took their spouse and kids and went to a different place.
As the cell phone network has collapsed in the Gaza Strip, it’s hard to connect with people on the first attempt. To reach someone, I usually need to try over ten times. Every time I call, and it fails, I suspect the worst, that they were killed. When I finally reach them, it does not matter how they are or how they’re doing; there is no answer to such questions. We only make sure that everyone is still alive.
Then, the daily struggle for basic needs starts. Because there is no power, there is no fridge, and it’s hard to keep food, but it’s also hard to get it from the outside. But we have no other choice. The first thing we need to get is bread. Right now, it takes over six hours to get bread as the line for the bakeries could take an entire day to wait in. Cooking is not any easier. My family still has some gas for cooking, but very soon it will be gone. When that happens we will start burning wood and plastic to cook, like many other families.
Somedays, I can’t leave our home due to the massive bombing around us. Other days, when the bombing is intensive in Gaza City, I can move about Khan Younis.
Today, I was able to visit Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the main hospital in the city, and I was shocked by what I saw. It’s not a hospital anymore; it’s a place for all people, sick and well. People have taken to the hospital as a shelter. In the yard, people are making tents and settling in, and hundreds of people gather next to a power point to charge their phones. The corridors are full of people who are living there, while the injured are lying on the ground without another place to go.
The hospital is not clean, it smells bad, the ground is filthy, and it looks as if it is just a matter of time before disease starts to spread. The scenes in the hospital were painful to witness as people are stuck in these conditions with no other option to keep themselves safe.
When I entered a patient’s room, I was shocked more. What I saw were not normal wounds; they looked like they had survived a real hell. Their faces are black due to the burns to their faces, and it was hard for them to move their eyes or lips to speak. The people I met seemed as if they were still living in the moment they were bombed inside their houses. As I walked through the hospitals, it was rare to find young men among the injured; most of the injuries were kids, young girls, and women.
It was just another sign to me that this is Israel’s war against poor people and civilians in Gaza, and these are the causalities that are expected. I really wished that those powerful countries who are coming to Israel to show their solidarity would also come to Gaza. Not to offer empty words of condolence but only to witness the deeds of the country that they support so wholeheartedly.
If you’ve been reading the MSM you know there are things that are allowed and things that aren’t allowed. It’s allowed to say that there’s no excuse for Hamas, it’s not allowed to say that the occupation drives people mad. And yet a number of MSM journalists have been hinting at exactly that – they can’t say it openly but you only have to read between the lines. Consider Tom Friedman’s recent essay –
“This is not about whether Israel has the right to retaliate against Hamas for the savage barbarism it inflicted on Israeli men, women, babies and grandparents. It surely does…..But if Israel feels it must reoccupy Gaza to destroy Hamas and restore its deterrence and security — I repeat — it must pair that military operation with a new commitment to pursue a two-state solution with those Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza ready to make peace with Israel.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/opinion/biden-speech-israel-gaza.html
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Dear Tareq I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to learn you and your immediate family and some of your extended family are alive. I am following the genocidal catastrophe being carried out in Gaza on multiple alternative media outlets and I can’t comprehend how the USA, UK, EU, Canada and NATO Allies think they are blameless. They are complicit in this genocidal war there is blood on their hands.
You are in my prayers and in my protest actions.
Reply to Jon s. It is astounding that you would think a journalist like Tareq would be unaware of the lies upon lies that your Israeli regime feeds the world through unscrupulous main stream media. Can’t you understand that October 7th was just as much as of a highlight as the imprisoned Palestinians who with just spoons dug out of their jail. It was a sign that freedom was a possibility. Hamas are not demons anymore than Shin Fein were demons they have a real grievance. Having fairly won political and democratic elections they were deprived of governing those Palestinians who overwhelming elected them. They were deprived of economic independence and self determination for their people. Why would he have time or inclination to tell Israel where the prisoners of war are? Those prisoners are to be released by negotiations which will involve the release of Palestinians held indefinitely in Israeli jails without charges, or trial. Those prisoners who have been released on humanitarian grounds have confirmed that they were treated humanely. The fact that they only ate what Hamas ate cucumber and yoghurt speaks to the unspeakable starvation orders imposed on the civilians in Gaza, food is running out. If you really care about your civilian prisoners you’d pressure your government for a Ceasefire. But no you will go along with the IDF “Hannibal Directive” prisoners and militants to be killed.
It requires a breathtaking degree of moral blindness and downright inhumanity to write an entire article on this subject and make now mention of the human children, including some with special needs, who were deliberately kidnapped and are still being deliberately held incommunicado by the ghouls and demons of Hamas.
Note to Tareq Hajjaj and his family, neighbors and friends: the IDF is offering a sizable reward and a guarantee of safety to anyone who provides information that will lead to locating the Israel hostages. Leaflets have been dropped with the number to call.
It’s also the right thing to do, morally.