Today was the first day that medics and journalists were able to reach areas occupied by the invading Israeli troops. Palestinians by this Graffitipoint, by weeks ago, were desperate for any semblance of a normal life, though normality here is far from normality anywhere else. They were desperate to return to their homes, survey the damage and if possible repair it, find displaced family members, or their corpses, as well as neighbours, friends.
Not everyone returned home to stay; many could be seen returning to where their homes were, or had stood, to retrieve anything worthwhile. Donkey carts and taxis were piled with blankets, clothes, cooking pots, cupboards, pieces of furniture, people…
I went straight to Ezbat Abed Rabbo, the area east of Jabaliya which had been cut off since day 1 of the ground invasion, over 2 weeks ago. The Red Crescent had been receiving calls to evacuate the injured and dead since day 1, and were prevented, at gunpoint, by gunfire, from reaching those needing evacuation. We heard the cries of those who managed to escape, their stories of being locked in homes at gunpoint, losing family members to point-blank assassinations or house-bombings.
And although the area was crammed with troubled, panicked, residents, many of them injured, without water, without food, with homes occupied by Israeli soldiers, I worried particularly about one man: the father of my friends.
We had no idea if he was alive, though we knew he’d stayed in the area. My panic was great, daily, I felt like I had said goodbye to a grandfather.
I bee-lined for his house, though had a hard time doing it since the streets and the land were turned upside-down, torn apart, filled with carcasses of houses and animals.
He was there, miraculously, noble in his traditional gown, long beard, hat. But he looked shattered.
“He cried for us,” his son told me. “He didn’t know if we were alive or dead.” So the confusion and desperation was both ways. Utterly cut off from one another, we were but mirror examples of families and loved ones all over the Gaza Strip. And we were luckier, because we are all alive. Except his wife, my friend’s mother, who was killed on the very first day of attacks. But now everything is relative and we cling desperately to the positive, for its all there is to cling to.
I have so much to tell, so many photos that don’t do justice to the suffering, heart-break, trauma, psychological damage, and despondency of people here. So many smells ingrained in my memory, that when sniffed will bring images of dead children, burned houses, chemical fires.
Slamming doors will forever remind of the missiles slamming the earth, the life below.
And just visiting the few areas I saw today, so many people, so desperate to tell their stories, tell of their anguish. For some the anguish is immense: pulverized homes, killed family members, corpses unretrieved, sanctimony and all that is sacred defiled. For others, the suffering is in the tragedy of shattered dreams, of every personal item destroyed or lost. It all matters, and they were all desperate to tell me. And I to listen. But quickly their words became a blur, a swirl of agony. My basic Arabic began to fail me as I wrote their ailments, their losses.
I will go back, to take careful inventory of the destruction, physical and emotional. Many of those who returned to where their homes were have to return to overcrowded schools with memories of slaughters even within school premises.
While the bombs may have stopped, for now, the terror remains. F-16s still flew low, terrifyingly low, today, so loud, so unpredictable. No one here has any reason to believe any words Israeli leaders proclaim. Only reason to believe in the worst. But out of necessity, we must hope for the best.
Palestinian exploring a bomb crater in GazaEva Bartlett | In Gaza
15th January 2009
When I’d met the extended Abed Rabbo family, before the ground invasion began, they had just had their house bombed by an F-16. Their area has been occupied by Israeli tanks and soldiers since the ground invasion began. Medical workers cannot reach the injured there, and those who have managed to escape testify to imprisonment in their houses, abuse, point-blank shooting (to death), and a number of dead not yet known. It’s an area Israel views as strategic, lying just hundreds of metres from the eastern border to Israel, a key entry point for invading troops. Past invasions have meant entire families and neighbours being locked into a room of a house for a day, days. Supposition among journalists and those with 2 cents here is that Israel’s intense bombardment of, and destruction of houses in, the area is to both decimate any resistance and to create an alternate ‘road’ for tanks and troops to roll in on, meaning houses in their path are leveled to the ground.
That day, Abu Mahmoud Abed Rabbo had related the events of his house demolition. “A person called me saying he was a spokesperson for the Israeli army and that we had 7 minutes to leave the house before it was bombed. I begged for 10, told him 7 wasn’t enough to collect possessions and get our children out safely. He said 7,” Abed Rabbo explained. His family made it out in time, avoiding the death sentence that has been given so many here, without warning. He said he’d just stood away from the house and watched as it was bombed, watched 20 years of his life be erased, with everything inside it. “I’m just a working man, not Fatah, not Hamas. Just a man. Why did they bomb my house?” he’d asked. “There were 4 families in here, at least 25 children,” he’d added.
Gazan women forced to cook over a fireWe stepped over and around rubble and the bits of house interiors that get melded together in blasts like these, going across the street to a relatives who was then sheltering the family. An elderly woman sat by a wood fire, simmering something in a pot for their meal, no gas to cook over.
We’d continued visiting sites of missile strikes around the Ezbet Abed Rabbo area. A yard with 2 massive craters in it, one from that morning and one from the night before. Looking from a room at the back of a 2 story house, I noticed the damage the F-16 bombs had done not only to the land but also to the houses around. Glass shatered, window frames blown in, safety to the wind…
And on to the next house demolished, in our paths at least, that of Ziad Abud Foul, whose new home was demolished at 2 am January 2nd. The blast, of course, damaged the surrounding buildings, cutting chunks out of walls and sending rubble and shrapnel flying dangerously.
On 7 January, as Spanish human rights advocate and documentary filmmaker, Alberto Arce, and I accompanied Palestinian medics to retrieve the body of a man shot earlier by invading Israeli forces, we were also shot at as the medics carried the body towards the ambulance. It was in Dawwar Zimmo, eastern Jabaliya, near the area which has been occupied by Israeli soldiers since the land invasion began. It’s an area where tens are thought to have been seriously injured by bombing and shooting by the Israeli army, and where many, many more will lie dead, uncollected for days, or weeks, out of reach of the medics whose duty is to retrieve them.
Hassan al-Attal and Jamal had gotten out of the ambulance, a clearly-marked 101 ambulance, and approached the corpse lying in the middle of the street. They wore their Palestine Red Crescent Society uniforms — Hassan’s was bright red with reflective tape, Jamal’s bright orange and white, also with reflective tape — and approached slowly, hands empty except a stretcher to take away the body. Arce filmed as the medics picked up the dead man, put him on the stretcher and began the retreat towards the ambulance. Arce was still filming when the shots cracked out, rapidly but evidently a targeted sniper’s shot, not a machine gun. Incredibly, Hassan and Jamal continued to try to evacuate the body, running with the dead man, before finally dropping the stretcher and fleeing for their lives.
Jamal, in his volunteer medic vest, next to the clearly-marked ambulance. (Eva Bartlett)It was about 1:30 pm, the first day of Israel’s self-declared “ceasefire” and the sniper was aiming at the medical personnel. The ambulance’s siren was still screaming, the driver had been moving quickly away from the sniper, to avoid further hits on us or himself, and we were frantically scouring to find Hassan and Jamal. In the days prior to this attack, seven medics had been killed since the start of Israel’s air and ground assault on Gaza’s population. Tens more had been injured, and Hassan was to join their ranks. A sniper’s bullet caught his thigh, and as he scrambled into the ambulance, the blood seeping through his pants alerted us to his injury.
These medics are all too aware of, many all too familiar with, the mortal risks of their job in the face of invading Israeli soldiers with, apparently, no regard for the Geneva Conventions which should allow and oblige medics to reach the injured and the dead, without being fired upon by the invading army.
It was frightening. I thought we’d lost them both, and they are both young, wonderful men doing a job worthy of medals. The 10 to 15 seconds it took before Hassan and Jamal could jump into the ambulance and pull down its back door were a painfully long stretch, during which I’d feared the worst. As we pulled away, a final bullet caught the back door of the ambulance.
Medics worked quickly on Hassan’s thigh injury: the bullet had penetrated the inside of his upper left thigh, digging into muscle, and exiting a couple of inches from the entry wound. He was impressively brave about it, though obviously in a great deal of pain.
Arce’s video footage caught the incident, and is testimony to what we’ve seen, what medics have told us they’ve long endured, and what Israeli authorities beligerently continue to deny: Israel is targeting medical personnel, as Israeli forces target journalists, civilians, and these days in Gaza anything that moves. No sanctuary, no safety, no guarentee of medical service.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in the Gaza Strip after having arrived with the 3rd Free Gaza Movement boat in November. She has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza, accompanying ambulances while witnessing and documenting the ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Friday night, Red Crescent ambulances in Jabaliya collected numerous victims of smoke inhalation: a strange chemical smoke which seizes the lungs and air passage, and suffocates the victims. Many elderly were collected in turns, and a 3 month old baby was brought in held by a sobbing mother.
At least, at least we were able to reach them. A Palestinian Red Crescent dispatcher has received what he says is hundreds of calls from the northern Gaza area alone, which have been left unanswered as the areas are under Israeli military occupation.
A glimpse of some of the cases one ambulance took during a brief 6 hours:
Abu Sheradha was kept trapped within his home in eastern Jabaliya.
Souad was shot in both right and left arms and the left side of her abdomen.
Souad’s injuries
Ahmed and least 4 others were kept locked in their home at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers.
Delivering a pregnant woman to hospital.
Gas inhalation case, Jabaliya
Ahmed with relative Safhia, 60, shot in wrist and shin and punched in the face. Her husband was shot dead by the Israeli army soldiers and his body is still in the house they fled, she said.
Teenager critically wounded in Israeli missile strike, Jabaliya area
Teenager critically wounded in Israeli missile strike, Jabaliya area
This baby, killed in an explosion, was then run over by an Israeli tank, according to aid workers who eventually retrieved the body. Photo: Mohammed from Khan Younis.
To view original article, published by Electronic Intifada on the 8th January 2009, click here
After finishing a shift with the Palestine Red Crescent Society yesterday morning, we went to the United Nations-administered al-Fakhoura school in Jabaliya, which was bombed by Israeli forces, killing at least 40 displaced people who were taking shelter there. When we arrived, prayers were happening in the street in front of the school. I’d seen prayers in open, outdoor places in Palestine and Egypt. But these days, when I see a mass of people praying, in front of al-Shifa hospital, in the streets of Jabaliya, I think of the mosques that have been bombed, and of the loss of lives and sanctuaries. And yesterday I thought of the loss of another safe haven.
The Deeb family was preparing bread when they were killed in their home by Israeli shelling.
The grief was very evident, as was the indignation: “Where are we supposed to stay,” one man demanded. “How many deaths is enough? How many?” It’s the question that has resounded in my mind since the attacks on 27 December.
Across Fakhoura street from the school, about 15 meters down a drive, a gaping hole in the Deeb family house revealed what had been happening when it was hit by a shell. Rounds of bread dough lay where they’d been rolled out to bake. Amal Deeb was in her 30s, a surviving family member told us. When the missile struck, it killed her and nine others in the extended family’s house, including two boys and three girls. Another four were injured, one having both legs amputated.
Approaching the house, the stench of blood was still strong, and was visible in patches and pools amid the rubble of the room. Later, in Jabaliya’s Kamal Adwan hospital, 19-year-old Ahlam lay conscious but unsmiling, unresponsive. The woman at her side explained her injuries: shrapnel lacerations all over her body, and deeper shrapnel injuries in her stomach. Ahlam didn’t know nine of her family members were killed.
Returning to the street in front of the Fakoura school, mourners had gathered, ready to march, to carry the dead and their pieces to their overcrowded resting place. Flags of all colors mixed in this funeral march: no one party dominated, it was collective grief under collective punishment.
So many people had joined the procession through the narrow streets that the funeral split, taking different streets, to reach the cemetery. At the entrance to the cemetery, decorated cement slabs mark the older graves, laid at a time when cement and space were available. The most recently buried bodies, instead, show in sandy humps, buried just low enough to be covered but not properly so. Cement blocks mark some graves, leaves and vines on others. And some were just barely visible, by the raise in earth. But it was too packed, too hard to estimate where a grave might be, no possibility of a respectfully-spaced arrangement.
“Watch where you step,” Mahmoud, a friend, told me, pointing to a barely-noticeable grave of a child.
Gazans are united in mourning
The enormity of the deaths hit me. After 12 days of killing and psychological warfare, I’d become less shocked at the sight of pieces of bodies, a little numb, like a doctor might, or a person subjected to this time and again. I was and I remain horrified at the ongoing slaughter, at the images of children’s bodies being pulled from the rubble astonished it could continue — but adapted to the fact that there would be bodies, maimed, lives ruined. I stood among sandy makeshift graves, watching men digging with their hands, others carrying corpses on any plank long enough — corrugated tin, scraps of wood, stretchers — to be hastily buried. As the drones still flew overhead and tank shelling could be heard 100s of meters beyond, it all become too much again. I wept for all the dead and the wounded psyches of a people who know their blood flows freely and will continue to do so.
Hatem, the other day, told me to be strong as Palestinians, for Palestinians. And I try, though each day brings assassinations no one could have imagined. Out of touch with all the other fragmented areas of Gaza, I read of the Samuni family and see photos of a baby girl pulled from the rubble of a house shelled by an Israeli warplane. Mohamed, a photojournalist, has photographed many of those killed in Israel’s bombings of houses. And today Hatem crumbled, though he is strong. It’s all too much.
Nidal, a Palestine Red Crescent Society medic, told how he was at the Fakhoura school when it was shelled. His aunt and uncle live nearby and he’d been visiting friends at the school. “I was there, talking with friends, only a little away from where two of the missiles hit. The people standing between me and the missiles were like a shield. They were shredded. About 20 of them,” he said.
The dead are hastily buried.
Like many Palestinians I’ve met, Nidal has a prior history of loss, even before this latest phenomenal assault on civilians. Only 20 years old, Nidal has already had his father and brother killed, martyred it is said here, by sniper’s bullets. His right hand testifies his part in the story: “Three years ago, the Israeli army had invaded our region [Jabaliya]. One soldier threw a sound bomb at us and I picked it up to throw away. It went off in my hand before I could throw it away.” Sound bombs are used against nonviolent demonstrations against Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank villages of Bilin and Nilin, and many youths learn at a young age how to chuck them away. But Nidal’s stubs of fingers show that he wasn’t so lucky. However, he is luckier than his father and brother. And luckier than two of his cousins, his aunt’s sons, who were in the area where missiles were dropped at the UN school. They, 12 and 27 years old, were killed.
Osama gave his testimony as a medic at the scene after the multiple missile shelling. “When we arrived, I saw dead bodies everywhere. More than 30. Dead children, grandparents … Pieces of flesh all over. And blood. It was very crowded, and difficult to carry out the injured and martyred. There were also dead animals among the humans. I helped carry 15 dead. I had to change my clothes three times. These people thought they were safe in the UN school, but the Israeli army killed them, in cold blood,” he said.
Mohammed K., a volunteer with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, was elsewhere when the UN safe haven was shelled. “We were in Jabaliya, at the UN ‘G’ school, to interview the displaced people taking shelter there. We wanted to find out how many people were staying there, where they’d left from and why exactly, and how safe they felt in the school. While we were there, we heard the explosions, saw the smoke, and wondered what had been hit. It was Fakhoura.”
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who spent eight months in 2007 living in West Bank communities and four months in Cairo and at the Rafah crossing. She is currently based in the Gaza Strip after having arrived with the 3rd Free Gaza Movement boat in November. She has been working with the International Solidarity Movement in Gaza, accompanying ambulances while witnessing and documenting the ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
