My family is trapped in the Jabalia refugee camp, crammed into a space no larger than 1.4 sq km with more than 119,000 other refugees, with Israeli tanks stationed just 500m away. They are surrounded – drones constantly hovering above, snipers perched in every corner, always watching. It’s worse than a nightmare, worse than dystopian fiction. My parents, my sister and her family, and my three brothers and their families haven’t left their house in days, except for a few desperate, terrifying attempts to find water. One time, by sheer luck, they managed to get some. Another time, they waited in line for more than eight agonising hours, only for the water to run out before they reached the front.
Every time I speak to them – every couple of days, if I’m lucky and can get through – I can hear the fear gripping their voices, their terror seeping through the phone. They are living in hell. The bombardments are relentless, the explosions shaking the ground beneath their feet. On Thursday, Israeli strikes killed 28 people, including children, at a school in Jabalia. Each time something like this happens, my family tells me, the blasts are so deafening it feels like the Earth itself is being ripped apart. It’s a constant, violent assault, and they have no idea where the next strike will hit. They don’t know which neighbour’s house will be flattened next or if their own will crumble around them. Trapped in their home, consumed by the fear that at any moment they could be killed, their meagre reserves of food and water are dwindling. They fear this nightmare, this siege, will never end, that they’ll be left to starve, bombed into oblivion, with no one coming to help.
A few days ago, I spoke to my sister in the Jabalia refugee camp. She broke down in tears, telling me she couldn’t take it any more, that she just wanted to die. She had been searching for days for basic medicine – paracetamol, ibuprofen – but there was nothing to be found. She is exhausted, worn down to her very core, and has reached her breaking point. And what could I say to her over the phone, thousands of miles away, safe in my home in London? I had to hold back my own tears, force myself to sound strong, to reassure her that it would be OK, that things would get better. But deep down I know I’m lying to her, and that things may not get better at all. Things haven’t got better in decades. They’ve only got worse. You’d think that when horror reaches this level, it can’t possibly get worse – but it always does.
With Israeli strikes now pounding Jabalia, I thought this was as bad as it could get – until I watched an interview last week with Gabor Maté, a Jewish trauma expert and Holocaust survivor. His words hit me like a punch to the gut. He spoke about how, when the rest of the world turns a blind eye to cruelty, it only gets worse. That thought terrifies me. It haunts me because I see history repeating itself. We’ve already seen Palestinians burned to death. What more has to happen for the world to care? What more does the west need to witness before it stops arming Israel? Nothing seems horrific enough to make the world stop this madness.
My family, like so many others in Gaza, has run out of ways to survive. They’ve run out of hope, out of ways to cope. They are simply trying to stay alive, to hold on for as long as they can, but how much longer can they endure this? What else can they possibly do? My nephew said, “It is like judgment day. People are running in different directions and hitting each other as they are running and no one seems to know where they are going.” And what can I do from the UK, watching helplessly as my family suffers, unable to reach them, unable to protect them? Every morning, I wake up dreading the worst, terrified that today may be the day I receive the call – the day I hear that something has happened to them, that they are gone. I feel completely powerless, haunted by the thought that my family could be next, that they may be killed and I won’t be able to do anything about it.
Even here, in London, I live in constant fear. I see the British government’s support for this unfolding genocide, and it fills me with a sickness I can’t describe. How can they be so indifferent to the lives of people like me? How can they watch this horror and do nothing? How can they continue to arm Israel, as though my family’s lives mean nothing? How can the world stand by and watch as Palestinians are slaughtered, as they are burned alive, as they are starved, bombed and crushed?
What has happened to the world? What has happened to our sense of justice, of decency, of basic human compassion? How much more suffering do the Palestinian people have to endure before the world says “enough” and finally steps in to stop this? How many more children have to die before the world cares?
I am terrified for my family. I am terrified for all Palestinians. I am terrified for humanity, because if we allow this to continue, if we stand by and watch as an entire people are destroyed, then what hope do we have? What does that say about us, about our world and about the future of our children? If we can’t stop this, if we can’t demand justice and an end to this suffering, then we have failed – not just the Palestinians, but all of humanity.
-
Ahmed Najar is a financial and political analyst, as well as a playwright
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
English (US)