Sarah*, Saïd* and Yasser* come from Gaza. They live in Paris and follow developments in Gaza from afar while their family is there. The repeated bombings in Palestinian areas for more than a week have left them in great fear. In France they regret not having the right to demonstrate to demand an immediate ceasefire and an end to hostilities between the two camps. They agreed to speak to France 24.
Her concern for her family in Gaza is not new. The successive large-scale Israeli military operations in the enclave and the blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007 have already complicated the daily lives of their relatives. But the lives of Gazans in France were thrown into jeopardy on October 7 after the unprecedented Hamas attack in Israel claimed more than 1,400 lives, most of them civilians.
In the Gaza Strip, Operation Iron Sword, launched in response to the Jewish state on October 11, left at least 3,478 dead, the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Islamist movement said on Wednesday, October 18. According to this source, 12,065 people were also injured in the raids.
According to the Israeli army, around 199 people – including Israelis, but also foreigners transiting through Israel and people with dual nationality – are still being taken hostage by Hamas.
In France, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced on Thursday, October 12, the ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations because they were “likely to cause disturbances to public order.” That same day, around 3,000 people gathered at the Place de la République in Paris to defend the right of Palestinians – and especially Gazans – to decent living conditions.
Among them, Saïd* and Sarah* had to quickly turn back because the police present at Place de la République quickly dispersed the demonstrators with jets of water and tear gas. According to the Paris police prefecture, ten people were arrested.
Sarah: “The confusion between Hamas and Palestinians in public opinion hurts me terribly”
“I haven’t been alive for ten days and I’m on constant alert. I’m fixated on the news because I can’t get news from my family in Gaza every day, the internet is down. I turn to the pages of the Arab media that compiles the lists of the “dead” to see if my last name doesn’t appear.
I saw him on Saturday… My father lost his uncle. He and his entire family died in a bomb attack while trying to escape to the south.
Part of my family fled to Rafah because 70 of them live in the family house in the Ghasqoula neighborhood of Gaza City. But not everyone can go. It is impossible for my disabled grandmother to walk through the ruins. I feel like they are not safe anywhere in Gaza, especially given the lack of water.
In Sarah’s house, the television is constantly on to follow the information about the Israel-Hamas war on October 17, 2023. © Sabra Mansar, France 24
Over there [à Ghasqoula]When there is a bomb attack in the neighborhood, my family tells me that they hear screaming. My cousins will help retrieve the bodies from the rubble. And a few days ago, neighbors I’d known since I was little died trying to help other people because a second strike followed the first.
I am French and was born in France. I am a lawyer and have worked for French institutions. My parents live in France and are also French. My father has lived here since he was 17. He came on a scholarship. My mother joined him. The last time I was in Gaza was in 2006. I was ten and a half years old. After two weeks we were urgently repatriated, by consular convoy from France via Jerusalem and Jordan. Hamas had just seized power in the Gaza Strip and Israel was bombing the enclave. I never went back there.
Sarah is in contact with her uncle, who tells her that he made it alive to Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. © France 24 / Sabra Mansar
There are houses of people I know – who are not Hamas members – that were bombed. I remember my uncles and my neighbors in 2006: Nobody wanted Hamas. We endured them more than anything. The confusion between Hamas and Palestinians in public opinion hurts my heart terribly.
Since October 7th, I have had the impression that everything around me is on hold. The pictures are terrible on one side or the other. I’m pregnant and given the fact that it also affects children, it’s even harder to deal with.
I am even sadder because we have difficulty expressing our support for the Palestinian cause due to the mergers with Hamas.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been banned in France. However, I object to any anti-Semitic statements. I wouldn’t let anyone use such a slogan, I can’t stand it when people attack Jews. I observed this closely during the two Paris demonstrations last week. Luckily I didn’t hear any anti-Semitic slogans. But the police still brought charges against the demonstrators. I found that very embarrassing.
In this context, we in France are afraid to express our support for Palestine. My husband, a foreigner, chose not to accompany me to the demonstration because he feared that an obligation to leave the country (OQTF) would be imposed on him following Gérald Darmanin’s comments. [Dans son télégramme aux préfets leur demandant d’interdire toute manifestation propalestinienne, Gérald Darmanin a écrit que les auteurs étrangers d’infractions à caractère antisémite “doivent systématiquement voir leurs titres de séjour retirés et leur expulsion mise en œuvre sans délai”, NDLR.]
I deplore the Israeli victims as well as the Palestinian victims and strongly condemn Hamas’ abuses. But why don’t we condemn the Israeli government’s crazy revenge policy? I suffer from what I consider to be a lack of consideration. We just want to live in peace. The goal is a ceasefire.”
Saïd: “We have to keep living, even though we know that my parents have no water”
“I came to France more than five years ago on a scholarship at a university in Paris. Most of my friends in Gaza here are graduate students and university professors… They have excellent paths. Be an excellent student to get a scholarship and be able to leave Gaza legally, like we did.
My whole family lives there, my parents and my brothers and sisters. We live in Al-Nasser district. It is a normally very quiet neighborhood in downtown Gaza. Usually, when there are wars (2008, 2014), we are the ones who welcome evacuated relatives and aunts who live near the borders. In 30 years we have never left our house.
Yesterday I was able to call my mother. They left home a few days ago and are now in a training center run by the United Nations for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Khan Younes, southern Gaza. This center, intended to accommodate 300 people, currently houses 30,000 people. There is no drinking water, no running water, 40 toilets for 30,000 people… A very complicated health situation. Children, elderly people and entire families have found refuge in training rooms. But that’s no longer enough: some people start sleeping outside, in the city center or in the car to avoid promiscuity.
With them in the UNRWA center are foreigners, European and American workers employed by NGOs based there. That’s also the reason why many people go to this center: when there are foreigners there, it usually protects against bombing.
The first question I ask on the phone when I call my parents is: “Are the strangers still with you or not?” I fear that this center will become a very easy target once the foreign workers leave and they exchanged for humanitarian aid from Egypt or Israel.
Both of my parents have chronic illnesses, diabetes and heart problems. You take medication. I can’t imagine what they’re going through. Since they lack drinking water, they limit their water intake so that they can swallow their medication. I’m scared for her, my father is old and weak and with all these bombings…
And they no longer have internet and there are network problems. It becomes very difficult to contact them. I don’t come there every day. You have to try 12 or 13 times. It stops in the middle of the conversation. Sometimes I receive messages late. And since there is no network, my parents are completely disconnected. They don’t know how many people have been killed, whether the Israelis are nearby or not, where the negotiations are taking place… They don’t even know whether their house is destroyed or not.
When I spoke to my mother on the phone on Saturday, it was the day of the big demonstration in London. She asked me what the world was doing to support her. I told her about this large demonstration and heard her immediately repeat it to the other evacuees around her.
My sister, whose house was bombed, also fled. It is located in Deir el-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip. Sometimes I get his text messages saying, “We’re alive.” However, since she doesn’t have a network, they may be text messages sent the day before…
Here in Paris I really feel like I’m living a double life. We have to keep living, we have to go to work, take the subway with a smile, shop, cook, eat – all in the knowledge that my parents have no water.
Last week we wanted to demonstrate with my small group of friends from Gaza in the Place de la République, but it was dangerous. I was one of the first to leave the demonstration – as soon as I saw a police officer. Because if I am checked, I risk not only a fine, but even more because I am a foreigner. Gérald Darmanin’s statements on this subject are not very clear, they are vague enough to scare me.
When we turned back with my friends, none of us had the strength to go home and found ourselves again in front of the TV, on the tablets, with the bad news and feeling helpless. We walked the streets of Paris for three hours without really knowing where we were going, just to avoid going home.
I came to France looking for freedom of expression. To see my family, my people living in such a situation before our eyes, and the fact that we cannot take to the streets and talk about it and demand that all of this stops, I find that deeply unfair!
I am not for Hamas, I have never been for them. My family is not from Hamas. When I say “Free Palestine” it doesn’t mean I want to kill Israelis! I refuse to be associated with Hamas, Islamism, extremism, anti-Semitism and Nazism.
I think the first time I heard about anti-Semitism was in France. With my university we visited the Museum of Jewish Art and the professor came to me and told me that she would completely understand if I didn’t want to come. I didn’t understand why she was telling me this. I’m not worried about that. In my grandmother’s time, Jewish villages coexisted easily with those of my family.
I am in a relationship with a French woman. I really like his parents, they support me. I love my life here, my in-laws, everything I have built here to integrate myself.
I have many French friends who want to support me, but I sense discomfort from them. It’s complicated for them to go further than telling me they’re thinking about my family. The Palestinians are accused of very serious things, namely anti-Semitism. I want them to talk about what is happening around them in Gaza, about the human rights violations reported by NGOs, and to take action to demand a stop to the bombings.
At the moment my family is still alive and hopefully for a long time. But if something happens to them, I don’t know how to deal with the fact that the people here knew, the international community knew and no one did anything.”
Yasser*: “The dream of returning home has disappeared”
“I try not to show my loved ones how I feel, but the situation scares me. My mother has kidney stones and they cut off her water supply. She will die. Under normal circumstances, we pay to buy her some special, customized water for her health. Every time I take a sip of water, I think of her.
Two days ago there were bomb attacks near our house [dans le quartier de Tell al-Hawa, dans la ville de Gaza, NDLR]. I was on the phone with my parents at the time. My father screamed, ‘They’re bombing us, they’re bombing us!’ And my mother prayed, ‘Oh God.’ Until communication suddenly stopped. At that moment it felt like the world stopped spinning. I felt like a lost child, like a child who loses his mother and doesn’t know where to go.
The house was badly damaged from the inside and my parents are now at my sister’s house. Around 120 people live in a single apartment and sleep standing up.
Yasser sees images on television of his neighborhood of Tell al-Hawa (Gaza City) in ruins, October 17, 2023. © Sabra Mansar, France 24
When I can get them on the phone, when I hear their voices, I feel reassured. They are the ones who calm me down. I can’t calm her down.
I watch the news all day, I don’t sleep. When I finally manage to sleep for an hour, I have nightmares.
Every time I lose contact with them, I get up, walk around the house, rearrange it, and mentally repeat to myself: “They’re fine, they’re fine…nothing bad will happen to them.” Me I keep records of all my conversations with them because I know one of them could be my last.
I wanted to return to Gaza before October 7th [Yasser n’y est pas allé depuis douze ans, NDLR]. I wanted to surprise my family. I had bought my plane ticket, I had made a list of restaurants I wanted to try, I wanted to find my old teachers. They’re all dead. And all the restaurants I wanted to visit were burned to the ground. The house that I grew up in, that I wanted to see again and where I could relax, is no longer the same. The dream of returning home is gone.
Twelve members of my family died. My aunt’s entire family: her husband, her children and her four grandchildren. The oldest of them was six years old. My aunt is the only survivor and is currently in intensive care. They were ordered to evacuate the house and go to the southern Gaza Strip, but they chose to stay. There are no cars or gasoline to get around anyway. Most people can’t travel south; the trip costs at least 190 euros (1,200 shekels), which is equivalent to the salary of a teacher in Gaza. It’s like we’re condemning them to stay at home.
The residents of Gaza are stuck in a dead end. The choice is death or waiting to die.
I consider myself a Frenchman of Palestinian origin. I came to France because this country represented everything I loved: a vibrant and free people. And in general, in its history it is close to the conflict in the Middle East. In my eyes, the French community is conscious and politicized.
One of my most important motivations was to have the opportunity to express my opinion here. Freedom of expression is sacred in France. But today I am disheartened by recent events and feel sadness and great disappointment in the French government. But not by the French people.
I just want to raise my Palestinian flag. We do not fly the flag of Hamas or any other organization. The Palestinians are not Hamas.”
*First names have been changed.