It was around six o’clock in the evening on October 27th when all residents of the Gaza Strip lost contact with the outside world and with each other in the besieged area. My family, along with my uncle’s, were gathered in his home in the Maghazi refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip. We had left our home in a western area and moved further south on Israeli orders. We were all in a room for one simple reason: if we had died in a bombing, we would have been together. Neither of us wants the other to have to endure the pain of grief alone.
As always, I pulled out my laptop that evening to make sure the battery was charged. I spoke to a Canadian journalist about the terrible situation in Gaza. My father called my brother Adham, who lives in the United States, and tried to calm him down. In the same room, my cousin Reem was reading the news on Telegram, updating us on the places attacked so we could contact our loved ones who lived there. In another corner, my 13-year-old brother was playing with my nephew Hammoud, who turns two next month.
Suddenly my internet connection crashed. At the same time, my father said, “I have lost contact with Adham,” and my uncle added, “I have no signal on my phone.” All we had left was the radio. When we turned it on, we heard the Al Jazeera spokesman report that Israel had cut off communications and internet access throughout the Gaza Strip. We were shocked and silent. We wondered if this would be our last night alive.
My thoughts went to friends off the Strip and I imagined their distress at not receiving messages from us. I also thought of the relatives who had chosen to remain in the most dangerous regions of Gaza. I knew I couldn’t tell the rest of the world the truth because of the power outage and lack of connection. There is no feeling more distressing than the combination of helplessness and fear that gripped me.
We relied on the Quran and prayed and pleaded with God to protect us, our home and our loved ones. Sleeping was impossible that night as the artillery shelling continued incessantly. Fragments of the explosions reached the home garden. Imagine: complete darkness, constant bombing, isolation and isolation from the world. That night was the longest of my life.
Desperate fight
On October 26, the day before this tragedy, Israeli planes bombed the home of some relatives in the Maghazi refugee camp. Nine people died, including seven children. My family members fled to the streets out of fear. Among them was an elderly woman who lost her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. She is a friendly person, I have often seen her laughing and listening to her stories from my childhood. My brother Karam, who had just enrolled in Gaza for his doctorate in economics, carried the wounded in his car. Today universities are in ruins.
On the night of October 26th, the Israeli army targeted the only baker in the Maghazi camp, adding to the sad toll of over eleven bakeries bombed across the Gaza Strip after October 7th. It is clear that Israel’s strategy is to exterminate and starve. During this attack, I grabbed the bag with my passport and ID and prepared to flee again. But this time I didn’t know where to seek refuge. Ten civilians were killed in the bombing of the oven. The fragments reached a school run by the UN agency dealing with Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), where about six thousand displaced people from northern Gaza were staying, killing one person.
This is just a small taste of the illusion of “security” that Israel claims to provide in southern Gaza.
When the internet connection was finally restored, instead of feeling joy, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of dread. I pulled out my phone to see how friends and family were doing. I went to my account excited about the political developments and the extent of the devastation in Gaza, hoping to hear news of a ceasefire. It was disheartening to learn that the bombing would continue and that there were no signs of easing in sight.
The world may not understand how heartbreaking it is to stand in line for four hours just to buy bread for the equivalent of two dollars, and then see the bakery reduced to rubble by a bomb. In such situations, one is forced to resort to primitive methods, such as using wood to light a fire, to feed fifty people crowded into a two-story building. The desperate struggle to secure a minimum amount of drinking water, just enough to survive, is a pain few can understand. And the agony of being isolated from the rest of the world amid Israeli naval and air bombardment is an unimaginable experience. ◆ fdl
Aseel Mousa is a freelance journalist living in the Gaza Strip.