A 48-year-old resident of Beit Hanoun, lives with her mother and her sister, who suffer from chronic illnesses. Their home was damaged when a neighbor’s home was bombed and rendered uninhabitable
During the latest escalation, on 13 May 2023, at around 10:00 A.M., we heard the neighbors shouting at us that we had to evacuate the house quickly. It was very scary. I was living with my sister Tamam (62) and my mother Fatimah (85) on the ground floor of a two-story building belonging to our family that was built about 70 years ago. We rented the apartment on the second floor to a different family. My mother uses a wheelchair and suffers from osteoporosis, and my sister Tamam has diabetes and cartilage erosion in her knees, and she lost vision in her left eye when she had a stroke.
When they said we had to evacuate, Tamam went into shock. I quickly packed a bag for the three of us, and we started to push our mother in the wheelchair to the end of the street, about 900 meters from our home. All the neighbors were running away from their homes, and some of them helped us. My brother, Nimer (55), who lives in Beit Hanoun, came and took my mother to his house. Tamam and I stayed there, and then a drone came and launched a missile at the home of Zuheir a-Z’anin, which was a few meters away from our home. After about 25 minutes, an F-16 plane launched a missile, and then there was a really strong explosion.
The ground shook under our feet, and dust and rocks flew in the street and on all of the houses in the area. There was a lot of panic, and the people who were around us started running and fleeing. About five minutes after the explosion, I returned home with a few other neighbors, and when I got there, I saw that almost all of the doors and windows were shattered. All the furniture in the house was destroyed, and everything was covered in sand and rocks. The electrical wires and water system were also damaged, and the house looked like it had been through an earthquake. The pigeons and chickens that Tamam raised and sold to support us all died in the bombing.
Before the bombing, I left the house in my prayer clothes and slippers because I didn’t have time to change. I just wanted to get my mother out as quickly as possible. We didn’t take any clothes or documents with us either, not even our phones. When I went back home, I was able to find my phone and charger, and then I left quickly because I was afraid the house would collapse on me. It was in terrible shape.
My sister and I spent that night with my mother at my brother’s house, and the next day we returned home. I cleaned just a small part of the house so we could live there for a few days. I connected an electrical cable to my cousin’s store on our street so that we could have light at night, and I charged a battery the whole day. The water tanks on the roof of the building were destroyed and fell to the ground, so I connected to the municipal water line, and we used water at home with the pipe.
A week after the explosion, government officials came to our house and told us it wasn’t fit for habitation and could collapse at any moment. We left the house and rented an apartment nearby. The rent is 200 USD a month, but we haven’t paid yet, and I’m scared the landlord will kick us out. UNRWA’s relief agency promised to help us with rent, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Other than selling the chickens my sister raised, we used to receive coupons for food packages from UNRWA, but that stopped a while ago. We are all older women, and we have no other source of income. Our mother needs medical supplies that we no longer have money to buy. We were left without a home and without income or aid, and we have no way to pay our rent.
We live on the second floor now, so we need to go up a flight of stairs, which means our mother can’t leave the house anymore because my sister and I can’t carry her and the wheelchair. The building is on the main street, and there’s a lot of noise, both during the day and at night, so it’s hard for us to sleep. We are considering going back to our home and living there, even though it could collapse on us. We spent the better part of our lives there, and we have good memories there. They destroyed our home for no reason and robbed us of everything safe in our lives. Our mental state is getting worse every day.
* Testimony given to B'Tselem Field Researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 23 July 2023.
Read more testimonies of residents of the Gaza Strip whose homes were damaged in Israeli strikes in August 2022 or May 2023:
