People in Gaza scream and flee as Mohammed Abu Rahma loses Ayman, his young son. “I heard an explosion. Everything collapsed. Ayman always holds his mother’s hand, but he got scared and let her go. He ran inside our building, under the bombs.” Mohammed’s heart stops as he tells it on the phone: “I chased him, pushing through the maddened crowd, and I found him in the elevator, he was screaming. I managed to catch him in my arms and flee just before the building collapsed.”
Mohammed worked in Gaza as an Al-Haq human rights activist. ‘We have lost everything. We are sleeping at relatives’ houses. Ayman is in shock. What happened to us will happen to all of Gaza. May God help us,” he says.
If there is a hell, this is it. Nothing and no one comes out of the Gaza Strip, except the stories that are told. Like that of Hamdi Shaqura, that he left his wife, brother, daughter and brother-in-law under the rubble. Or that of Iman Radnan, who was left without a father, mother, husband and son in a moment. Or that of Ala Al-Kafarneh, who managed to escape two bombings, but in the third attempt they managed to kill eight people: “I don’t know why they always attacked us,” he cries, “we are normal people, we have nothing to do with with Hamas,” he adds.
The Palestinian media is already calling it ‘The Catastrophe’, referring to the mother of all misfortunes, the Nakba, the great exodus that in 1948 forced an entire people into exile, hanging a key (“we will return one day”) at the door of every abandoned house. But this time it is worse: no one can leave and many houses no longer exist. The New Catastrophe does not make distinctions between humble people or people with power. Husam Zomlot, ambassador in London of the Palestinian Authority, has lost six family members and must mourn them from afar, without being able to return; Humza Yousaf, First Minister of Scotland – whose wife is Palestinian – has his in-laws trapped and must worry from there, unable to repatriate them. Six journalists, 12 UN officials and also two doctors have died. “There are 22 large families in Gaza that no longer exist and we are talking about hundreds of people,” emphasizes Xavier Abu Aid, a Palestinian official in Ramallah.
The time for revenge arrived at two in the afternoon. When the light went out, so did hope. Gaza’s only power plant, which operated about four hours a day, no longer has power and goes offline. Everyone is left in the dark. Hospitals depend on electrical generators, until they run out. The rest manage as best they can: it is the true beginning of the Great Siege. Two million Palestinians who for 16 years depended 80% on foreign aid now do not even have that. No water, no food, no phones, no fuel and no electricity. And from the sky comes an air attack every half hour.
The drones hit hard in the north of Beit Hanoun and in the south of Khan Younis, the center of Gaza City and the Rafah crossing into Egypt, the Bureij refugee camp and greenhouses, banks and tunnels. There are 1,000 buildings that have been reduced to rubble, 12,000 are damaged, 48 schools and ten medical clinics have been affected and 2,250 targets have been hit, from the Islamic University to the television tower. Hospitals take out the dead because they don’t know where to put them. And, meanwhile, to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, in which they took hostages and slaughtered 1,200 innocent lambs, Israel responded with a deluge of fire that has killed more than 1,000 innocents in three days.
Hamas men seem to care little: in the last war, they were safe in the luxurious hotels of Qatar, and now who knows. But its subjects are not safe: Hamas incites them to die as ‘martyrs’ in their homes. Even when the call comes from the Israeli air force to warn of the bombing. Some 400,000 people are already short of water and food, 260,000 have moved to the schools that are still standing, to the countryside or crowd along the roads. Furthermore, Egypt would not take in all of these refugees.
“This is a real genocide, we will go to the Court in The Hague!” shouts in his Ramallah office the head of Al-Haq, Shawan Jabareen, close to Abu Mazen. “We will request an international investigation. There is a double standard: the world makes distinctions between blood and blood, Palestinian blood is worth nothing. The media always talks about Israeli dead. And as far as Gaza is concerned, Israel enjoys impunity,” Add. When asked what he thinks of the Hamas massacre: “In Ramallah we don’t appreciate Hamas. But if I have to think about terrorism, I think about Israel. Hamas is resistance,” he says.
If Gaza is stunned and exhausted, the West Bank is seething with rage. This Friday prayer will be a test, there are those who dream of the definitive intifada. On a fourth floor in Ramallah, an old man in blue pajamas watches Al Jazeera and pets his poodle: his name is Nabil Shaath, he is 85 years old and was Yasser Arafat’s top advisor. ‘My family is in Gaza and I don’t know anything…’, he shakes his head. At that moment she receives a message from his sister. “Only Egypt can mediate,” says Shaath. “But in the end it will be Israel that decides everything,” he adds. What would Arafat have said about this massacre organized by Hamas? The question remains unanswered.
