B'Tselem field researcher, 42-year-old and a resident of a-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City
On Saturday, 7 October 2023, I was sleeping over with my wife and children at my parents’ house in Rafah when I was woken by bombings. At first, I thought I hadn't heard correctly, but I quickly found out there were Israeli airstrikes after militants had entered Israeli cities. We grabbed the kids and drove to our apartment in the neighborhood of a-Rimal in Gaza City. It was a quiet, safe neighborhood.
My wife and I packed a bag with our documents and with clothes for us, our three daughters and our son. I bought some groceries and sat down to follow the news. The next day, the airstrikes started and we were very worried. We were afraid our area would be bombed any second. Every time we heard a bombing, we were terrified. The bombings didn’t stop and the situation was difficult. We were very tense and so were the children. We were all anxious.
Day turned into night – but we slept very little. Every time we put our heads down, we were immediately woken up by the sounds of planes and bombings. Every time, we got up to make sure it wasn't nearby, that our building hadn’t been hit and no one injured. We put some mattresses in the middle of the living room, far away from the windows, because we were afraid we would be hit by shrapnel.
Meanwhile, we started getting partial information about the horrifying things the militants had done in Israel, the harm to women and children.
On the third day, the Israeli military warned us that they were going to bomb Falastin Tower, which is a 14-story building with apartments, offices and medical clinics 100 meters away from our building. We all left the apartment and stood in the stairwell with the neighbors. They bombed the tower and our apartment was damaged. Our car was also damaged.
After the bombing we went back to the apartment, but kept on hearing airstrikes and spent the day in fear. When it was almost nighttime we were even more afraid. We felt vulnerable and very stressed. It was a long night, and we kept hearing bombings and reports about houses bombed and people killed inside their homes. Every time we heard about a family killed, it made our anxiety worse. I tried to calm my wife and children, who were very scared.
We stayed home until the military called the neighbors and ordered us all to leave. Everyone in the neighborhood was ordered to evacuate. We didn’t know what to do. We thought about it and discussed it between us, and in the end, we all decided together that we should leave. It was incredibly hard to leave our apartment, which we worked so hard to put together and invested our whole lives in. We were afraid we would never see it again. But we were even more afraid for our children’s lives and for our own.
Every family in the building went somewhere else. My family and I went to my brother Fathi’s house in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, about a kilometer from our house.
About 15 minutes after we left home, the military bombed our neighborhood. They flattened it completely. A-Rimal was considered the safest, most modern and most peaceful neighborhood in the center of Gaza. Muslims and Christians lived there together. There were luxurious apartments and villas. Everyone always ran to it during wars because it was considered the safest, and now they’ve bombed it to smithereens.
I went back to the neighborhood the next day to check on our house. It was hard to reach because of the wreckage. The roads were cut off and the entrance to the building was blocked by rubble. I went into the apartment and found a lot of damage. I stood there for a moment and mourned the home we had, but I couldn't linger because I was afraid there would be another strike. I ran in to my neighbors, who were also there checking on their homes. They were all shocked and mourning their ruined apartments. We stood on the street, among the debris, and could smell the smoke from the bombs.
I went back to Fathi's apartment. The situation remained dangerous, and we kept hearing planes and bombs. We were scared to death. Every time they dropped a bomb, we were sure it was our turn. We stayed like that for several days, with no power and very little water. It was dangerous to leave the house and the roads were destroyed.
On Thursday, 12 October 2023, at around 7:00 P.M., we heard people talking in the street down below. We went over to the window and saw elderly people, women and children carrying bags and belongings and fleeing the neighborhood. We asked them what happened and where they were going. They said they’d run away from another neighborhood and now there had been an announcement this neighborhood was going to be bombed. We took all our bags and headed outside. We stood in the doorway of the building. The women and children were shaking with fear. We didn't know where to go and were afraid we would be bombed at any moment. It was dark, and we heard planes in the sky and bombings. We stood at the entrance to the building and didn’t know where to go. Every one of us had a different idea. We simply stood there, like that, for a few hours and didn't know where to go or what to do. Then we went back inside and sat down on the stairs. We stayed there until morning and were sure it was our last night. It was a very rough night.
In the morning, we went back to Fathi's apartment and stayed there until, on Saturday, 13 October 2023, the military announced that all residents of the northern Gaza Strip had to move to the Wadi Gaza area. We debated again. We didn't know whether to leave or what to do. After several hours of deliberation, we took our things and went back to my parents' house in Rafah. My brother Fathi and his family went to his wife’s family’s house in Khan Yunis.
We drove along Salah a-Din Street, which is the main road where travel is permitted. It was a difficult journey because part of the way was blocked by debris and there was a lot of movement on the road – people driving in all kinds of vehicles, cars, trucks, and a lot of people on foot. It was very hard to see. Seeing all those people fleeing south, terrified, on Israel’s orders was a tough sight.
I tried to film it but couldn’t really.
When we got to my parents’ house, my sisters were there with their husbands and kids. The power was out, and there’s no water or wifi. Things are very bad.