Middle East Eye
Jerusalem Bureau Chief
Surviving a holocaust is not about making one decision, it’s about making decisions that could mean life or death.
Do you stay or go?
Right now, more than a million Palestinians are trapped in the fire storm of the Israeli advance on Gaza City and are having to make, and remake, their own agonising choice.
On Sunday, Middle East Eye reporter Mohammed al-Hajjar walked for four hours in the sun with his wife Inas and their two young children Majd, aged 9, and Majdal, 4.
For two years, Mohammed has been trying to save his family amid the widespread destruction.
In a short video he sent me from Al Rashid Street in Gaza City, I could see that Majd was holding a school bag whilst Majdal was wearing a black dress.
Both were walking into the unknown.
Al Rashid street, which was once the bustling heart of Gaza, is now a dirt road that cuts through a wasteland. It’s littered with Israeli leaflets in Arabic which describe it as the corridor through which residents of Gaza City have to flee.
A year ago, Mohammed and his wife Inas decided to leave Gaza for Egypt.
Mohammed was thinking principally about the future of his children and both he and his wife wanted to secure an education for Majd and Majdal, after Israel had bombed all the schools in Gaza and effectively terminated the education system.
Inas was arrested at the Netzarim Corridor, a military checkpoint that Israeli forces had established that bisected northern Gaza from south.
All of her savings: money, gold, passports, phones and credit cards were stolen by the soldiers.
After two days she was released and sent back to the north while Mohammed and the two children continued on their way to the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
The family was split-up. For 75-days Inas could not see her children. A few days after Mohammed arrived, the Rafah crossing was closed for good.
The ceasefire in January allowed Mohammed to return to the north and the family to reunite. He walked back with hundreds of thousands of others.
On Sunday, he was on the march back to the south again, leaving his home, his memories and all of his possessions behind.
“Last night was absolutely terrible,” he told me in a Whatsapp message.
“At dawn they dropped three exploding robots on us along with 20 or 30 bombs. There was a quadcopter over our home and our neighbour’s house. It was a night from hell. We could not sleep or do anything. We’ve decided to quit the house, that’s it.
“Tonight we slept in the street. They shelled the house next to the one I was staying in with my wife and children on Hamid Street,” he said.
“We have been walking since the morning, I am walking with all our belongings on Al Rashid street heading south. This trip is the second worst day of our lives. On the first trip, they detained my wife, robbed us, and separated us. We could not travel to Egypt. We were stuck in the south. Now we are doing this trip all over again. We bid farewell to our home and to Gaza and head into the unknown.
“This time was supposed to be the best of my life when I could watch my kids grow up in front of me and become something important. Instead, I am living through the worst days of my life and I don’t know if I will live to see them grow up or not,” he added.
Running from death to death
It is impossible to say with any accuracy how many Palestinians are on the road and how many have decided to stay.
Our other MEE correspondent’s in Gaza City report that Palestinians who resist expulsion are being forced out by the calculated destruction of their only means of survival.
Israeli forces have been concentrating their attacks on vital lifelines like high-rise buildings, schools – which are sheltering thousands of refugees, water tanks, rooftop solar panels, internet access points and mobile charging stations.
Emad Sarsawi, 43, said she decided to stay “whatever happened.”
“For months, I used to say that I was willing to die with my wife and children in our home rather than be displaced again to the south. But what is happening is more dangerous than just death,” he told Middle East Eye.
“Yesterday, the Israeli occupation bombed our neighbour’s building, which had solar panels on the roof. These panels were a lifeline for many residents in the neighbourhood. We relied on them to pump water and recharge our devices.”
Sarsawi said: “If we were bombed, we would all be killed at once. But like this, we can’t even find drinkable, or even undrinkable, water, and we’ll die slowly of thirst,” he added.
What Mohammed and his family are walking towards is a life in a camp where looking for food means running a daily gauntlet of sniper fire.
Benny, a sniper in the Nahal Brigade, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he killed so many children he had lost count.
“I fire 50 to 60 bullets every day. I have stopped counting. I have no idea how many I have killed. Children.” he said.
Every day Benny is given the same mission to “secure the humanitarian aid” in the north of Gaza.
His day starts at 3.30 in the morning. He sets up a sniper position, covered by drones and armoured vehicles. And then he waits.
The aid trucks arrive between 7.30 and 8.30 and begin unloading. As they do, a huge crowd of starving Palestinians push forward to gain a place in the queue. They don’t know it but there is an unseen line ahead of them.
“A line that if they cross, I can shoot them,” Benny said.
“It’s like a game of cat and mouse. They try to come from a different way every time, and I’m there with the sniper rifle, and the officers are shouting at me, ‘Take it down, take it down’.”
These are the conditions in the south that are persuading hundreds of thousands in Gaza to stay.
‘I have nothing to lose’
Like Mohammed, the residents of Gaza City who are now staying made the mistake of leaving their homes last year and know the fate that awaits them if they make the same journey again.
The debate on WhatsApp groups between them is excruciating to read, from where I am in Jerusalem.
One said: “I will not make the same mistake I did last year when I moved to the south. Not only is there no safe place but I prefer to die in my house in Gaza City than to evacuate.
“I have nothing to lose.”
Tens of thousands have been forcibly expelled as the Israeli army claims it has completed its preparations for the occupation of the city.
Gaza’s Civil Defence Rescue and Support Agency say the expulsion order and the night attacks on civilians have displaced 70,000 in recent days.
But the Israeli military puts the number of forced evacuees much higher. It claims 300,000 have fled, including 20,000 in one night.
The disparity in these figures exists for a political reason. The emptier Gaza City is alleged to have become, the freer Israeli soldiers feel they will be to kill whoever remains.
After spending several nights on the street, Mohammed and his family arrived in the Nuseirat refugee camp, north of Deir al-Balah.
After walking 12km in the full heat of the day, their shoulders were broken.
Their exhausted bodies holding what they could save from their house, while the bombing continued all around them.
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