In the days leading up to Ramadan, we heard the hopeful word “ceasefire”. The US president uttered it, and the media repeated it. For a short moment, the lives of Palestinians in Gaza hung in the balance, caught between the possibility of a truce for the holy month and Israel’s relentless drive to eliminate my people from the face of the Earth.
International Women’s Day came and went; women in Canada, where I physically live, celebrated; women in Gaza, where my heart is, faced another day struggling to help their families survive. Still, no sign of a ceasefire.
In the evening, on the TV – which we have not turned off in our house since October 7 – we heard breaking news: the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) had targeted the area around al-Masri Tower in Rafah.
Al-Masri is one of the oldest residential blocks in Rafah. It used to house dozens of families, but many more were sheltering there since the war began. My Uncle Fathi and his extended family were among them. I screamed in disbelief.
Seeing my anguish, my youngest son Aziz whispered, trying to console me. “Mom, at least the tower is not struck directly like the homes of Uncle Nayif or Uncle Harb. Uncle Fathi is lucky. Thank Allah.” This is the new marker of luck in Gaza: not dying, managing to escape an Israeli attack that renders you homeless. The weight of loss and uncertainty loomed heavy while I waited to hear about my relatives’ fate.
Uncle Fathi, his wife, his adult children and their families, his brothers and their families, nephews and nieces and other members of the extended family, had fled to Rafah after the Israeli army invaded Khan Younis. Uncle Fathi worked for many years in Saudi Arabia before returning to Gaza to work as a teacher with the United Nations in Khan Younis refugee camp. The whole family are highly educated professionals who lived in a beautiful home in Khan Younis, which was destroyed in December by an Israeli air strike.
Shortly after, Uncle Fathi posted to Facebook showing a before and after image of their house. He wrote, “This is our beloved home, that has vanished. The fruit of hard work and toil for 40 years was destroyed and annihilated by the occupation army who claim to be moral. I wonder what my home did to them … Did it fight........