Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

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In Gaza, where I live, the Israeli occupation has stripped fathers of the most basic promises of fatherhood.

A father cannot promise his children a safe place, because the place they flee to may be bombed only hours later. He cannot promise them a meal at the end of the day, because food has become uncertain. Even when they ask him whether they will stay alive, he must answer while not knowing whether he himself will survive until morning.

Under genocide, and also during what is misleadingly called a “ceasefire,” a father is expected to appear calm, carry his fear in silence, and make his children feel safe in circumstances beyond any father’s ability to control or endure.

Fearing the Death of a Child

In early May, during a family gathering, my relatives began teasing me about marriage. “So, Hassan, when are we going to celebrate your wedding?” they asked. Since I was close to finishing university, they saw marriage and starting a family as the next stage of my life.

The next day, I went to the cafeteria where I usually sit and stayed a little longer than usual. Suddenly, an Israeli airstrike hit the camp next to the cafeteria, sending debris flying and filling the air with dust and screams. It was not the first time I had come close to death. It took me a few minutes to take in what had just happened, and when I checked my phone, I saw more than 10 missed calls from my father.

Israel Killed My 13-Year-Old Son. There Is No Father’s Day in Gaza.

When I finally answered his next call, I could hear the relief in his voice, as if a part of him had returned. He quickly asked where I was, whether I had been injured, and why I hadn’t answered his calls. When I got back, he told me not to stay outside the tent for so long again. It wasn’t an attempt to control my movements, but the instinct of a father who knows that his son can step outside on a normal morning and, just hours later, hear that a place nearby has been bombed without knowing if his child will make it back.

Later that night in the tent, as I sat alone, I was thinking about my father’s fear during those minutes, and about the fathers around me trying to protect their children from dangers they cannot control.

I thought of Ahmed Asfour, a 28-year-old father living with his family in a displacement camp near what Israel calls the “Yellow Line.” He had been waiting to return to his home, but the Israeli occupation suddenly expanded the zone and ordered people to evacuate from their camps which were outside the danger........

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