‘What happened to us is beyond imagination’ 

in Palestine

by Dr Marwan Asmar

17/03/2024

A woman narrates how she escaped alive while her house was being bulldozed

“What happened to us is beyond imagination,” said a displaced person in Gaza.

“It was like anybody who moved outside the home was shot and left outside for the cats,” the woman who moved from the north of the Gaza Strip continued.

It happened so fast

“A youth was sent by our neighbors to see if we were alright and it happened all so fast. He was talking to me just as I opened the door and he was shot dead right there, in front of me,” she added.

“He was left outside the house we were living for nine days,” she told Al Jazeera TV channel.

But this was only the beginning of a chain of events that eventually landed her in the Abu Yousef Al Najar Hospital in Rafah in the south of Gaza where 1.4 million internally displaced refugees are now located thanks to the Israeli army.

“The Israeli army started bulldozing right on top of our heads but miraculously, me and mother, were able to leave the house alive. At the time, the bodies of other martyrs were scattered outside,” she continued.

Burying inside homes

The situation was scary and chaotic.  “Our neighbors were forced to bury their martyrs inside their houses and this applied to many people, for there was no way anyone could bury their dead outside of their homes because of the intensity of the bombardment.”

In the case of her neighbor’s house, she narrated the story of the family that had been living there before it was bombed. “A doctor was living there, he had worked in the Indonesian Hospital in the north then Kamal Al Adwan Hospital then moved to a clinic in Jabalia before making it down here, she narrated.

The fateful day happened when “the Israeli army knocked on their door, shot the doctor point blank and then immediately fired a tank missile on the house killing him and his children instantly.”

This account was edited from Al Jazeera Mubasher with the handle of @ajmubasher by Dr Marwan Asmar, an Amman-based journalist who writes on Middle East affairs.

https://countercurrents.org/2024/03/what-happened-to-us-is-beyond-imagination/