Every night my family and I come together to die together. And if we die, we die together. If we save ourselves, we save ourselves together”, he explains through Google to La Vanguardia, a worker of a local oenagé (and collaborator of the Catalan Creart), from the punished city of Jabalia, in the north of Gaza.
Muhammad, who agrees to speak on condition of anonymity, says that in his 40s he had never seen this “craziness”. “In the past we knew that there were safer areas than others. Now we have nowhere to go, we stay at home and wait to see if the bomb falls or not.” The main difference between this war and the previous ones, he says, is that the bombings are constant and without warning. “Before there was a warning. Sometimes a call or a little bomb. Then people had some time to escape. Now they bomb the houses with the people inside”, he says. The same area can be attacked for hours. “My family and I have slept only two or three hours in a row since Monday,” he explains from his home.
A father of five, his family has already paid a direct price in this war. His ex-wife, the mother of his two older children, has disappeared under the rubble along with her entire family. “They bombed the building, it collapsed. There are a lot of people under the building, I think more than a hundred people”, he explains. “My son looks for her every day. He doesn’t tell me because I wouldn’t allow him, it’s not in my neighborhood and it’s dangerous. We were friends, we saw each other often. She wanted to see her children when the attack began, but transportation was not safe. Now it’s under the rubble. I think she has died with her husband and two children, her father-in-law, her brother, her sister-in-law and her son and other families”, she explains, not knowing how to help her children in this grief.
His family is traumatized and terrified. “My wife and my daughters don’t want to take off their clothes because they say that if they die, they want to die dressed. They are Muslim and they don’t want anyone to see their bodies. They think about these terrible things”, he laments. His house is the refuge of his sister and her family, who lived in a more unsafe area and now there are sixteen people in the apartment. “We all sleep in the center of the house, because it’s safer than the rooms facing the street,” he explains. And yet, he feels more privileged than many people. “We are middle class, my wife and I work and we have money”, he says.
But this privilege means less and less on the strip. The Israeli Government has decreed a “total blockade” and cut off the supply of electricity, fuel and water. With all border crossings closed, surviving the shutdown becomes more difficult. “In six days we only had four hours of electricity. Now there is no more water. I have food for four or five days. Supermarkets are empty. Today, the bakeries have stopped making bread because there is no electricity or gas for the generators…,” says Muhammad.
“I think that in a week or ten days there will be no food in Gaza. We are drinking dirty water because there is no electricity to purify it and there is no bottled water left. This is the last thing I have left”, he says, showing two fingers of water inside a small bottle.
“I have a battery, but it will run out. My brother has a generator, but we don’t have gas. And if everything stops, I don’t know what will happen. Hospitals have energy for two more days; after that there will be nothing”, he regrets.
Muhammad speaks of a “genocidal” war. “They need to increase the number of dead because they cannot accept that there are more people on their side than on the Palestinian side,” he complains. “It is a punishment against the population of Gaza, because the Hamas militants are underground and in the settlements. Let them fight with them there and not bomb the houses of innocent people!” he implores. Asked what he thinks will happen if Israel launches a ground offensive against the strip, Muhammad sees it as unlikely. “I think they will not enter because they are still fighting in their territory and they cannot leave their backs exposed”, he reasons.
Despite the temperance with which he explains himself, he admits that these last six days his spirit has failed him. “I am a strong man. Strong, strong, strong”, he insists. “All my friends, in my neighborhood, know that I’m a strong man in the community and strong mentally, but I can’t fight this, I feel helpless. How do I deal with my children’s feelings?”.
