Alaa al-Kurd

A 29-year-old mother of three from Jabalya Refugee Camp, Alaa recounted her family’s ordeal since being displaced:

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I’m married to Hassan al-Kurd, 36, and we have three children: ‘Ali, 8, Batul, 6, and ‘Abd al-Karim, 5. Until the war, we lived in Jabalya Refugee Camp. We left home on the first day of the fighting, because we were afraid of Israel’s response to the attack by the Hamas militants and because of our experience from previous wars. At first, I took the children to my parents in a-Shati Refugee Camp while Hassan went to his sister Ghadah in Gaza City.

But the situation was bad and scary at my parents’, too. There was gunfire and bombing all the time, from every direction, and we felt surrounded by a ring of fire. The force of the bombings was unbelievable, way heavier than in previous wars, plus there was a shortage of water and electricity. We couldn't charge our phones, so we couldn’t communicate with anyone else. We used firewood to bake bread and cook.

My children were terrified of the bombings. ‘Abd al-Karim and Batul started wetting themselves and it got so bad, I had to put them in diapers. ‘Ali was anxious all the time.

The Israeli army scattered leaflets in our area saying we had to go south, beyond Wadi Gaza. On 28 October 2023, Hassan came to visit us for the first time since we left home, and we started thinking with my parents about leaving and heading south.

That evening, around 11:00 P.M., the army called my mother Amal, 47, on her phone and said we had to get out of the house. They told her to tell the neighbors, too. We were afraid we’d be killed and left immediately without taking anything. We didn’t even take clothes, not to mention other essentials. We had to go on foot, so we preferred not to carry a lot. At first we went to the UNRWA school in a-Shati RC. We thought we could shelter there instead of going all the way south with all the kids. The school was considered relatively safe. The first night there, we sat on the stairs because there was nowhere else available.

The next day, we made a tent out of nylon sheets in the schoolyard. All of us, including my parents, my siblings and their families, 16 people in total, stayed in the tent for three weeks. The school was bombed all the time and the conditions were very harsh. There was no water or electricity, and the lines to use the toilet were very long. I stood with the children in line for an hour each time. There was no food, either, and we mainly ate lentils we cooked on firewood and canned food.

The bombings continued around the clock. Shrapnel penetrated the school and we couldn’t sleep. At some point, a lot of people moved from the school to the UNRWA clinic nearby, thinking it would be safer there. But the night we spent there was one of the worst experiences of my life. That night, the Israelis bombed the fourth floor of the clinic. Some people were killed and injured, and I saw that a fire broke out on the fourth floor.

In the morning, we saw a tank at the gate of the school we were in before. The soldiers ordered us to leave the clinic and move south to Wadi Gaza. They led a dog with a camera into the clinic. It walked around for a few minutes and left. After that, they separated us into two lines, women and children in one and men in the other, and ordered us to go out with our hands in the air. The army detained some of the men.

At first, all 16 of us went to a school called a-Nasser on the eastern side of a-Shati RC. But there were very heavy bombings there, too, so the same day we moved to Gaza College on al-Jalaa Street in Gaza City. We stayed there for two days. We got food baskets from UNRWA and there was water and electricity, but then the bombings got worse there, too, so we decided to leave. We went to my sister ‘Abir, 25, who lives in the neighborhood of a-Zeitun. We stayed there for a week, until a house nearby was bombed and our windows shattered. That day, we decided to move to Wadi Gaza.

On 17 November, we set out on foot at 7:30 A.M. and started walking. At 8:30, we reached the Netzarim checkpoint. The soldiers ordered us to raise our IDs in the air and walk slowly, without turning our heads left or right. There were crowds of people, so I tied my children’s hands to mine with a kaffiyeh so they wouldn’t get lost. The conduct at the checkpoint was degrading. The soldiers forced us to stand for hours, without moving or sitting down. Only at 1:30 P.M. did they allow us to move on and cross the electronic gate at the entrance to the checkpoint.

At that point, the soldiers called out to my brother Salim, 24. He was carrying my sister Israa’s son Hamdi, 10, who is paralyzed due to brain damage and is usually in a wheelchair. Salim handed Hamdi to someone else and went over to the soldiers.

The soldiers ordered us to keep moving. When we were past the checkpoint, we got on two donkey carts that took most of us to relatives in a-Nuseirat Refugee Camp. Three of us went to another family. At a-Nuseirat, we slept in a room in an orchard in the al-Mughraqa area. There were bombings there, too, and it was scary and isolated. Salim joined us there. He told us the soldiers interrogated him for two hours and asked, among other things, what he was doing on 7 October. He told them he was preparing for his wedding, which was supposed to take place on 11 October.

We stayed there nine days. There were 13 of us packed into one room, like sardines in a can. When it rained, the water came in and dripped from the ceiling. The bombings around us were so heavy that every day, we didn’t know if we’d live to see another. We didn’t have enough blankets and warm clothes, and there wasn’t enough food. We almost died of hunger and thirst. I don’t know how we survived.

On 27 November, we took advantage of the ceasefire and left. We realized we couldn’t put it off any longer. We came here, to the IDP camp in the UNRWA training center in Khan Yunis, and met my husband’s sisters, Ghadah and Olfat al-Kurd, who were staying together in one tent. Hassan and I and the children joined them in the tent. I was so happy to meet them, because we were cut off since the war began and I didn’t even know where they were alive or dead, or perhaps injured or trapped under rubble. I met my brother Shadi and his family in the camp, too. Thank God, they’re okay.

Today, after three days in the camp, we’re supposed to get our own tent. It’s been 50 days since we were forced to leave home. Fifty days of running from death. We’re all traumatized and can hardly sleep because of the terrifying bombings. It’s a bit calmer here, so I try to dare and close my eyes to sleep.

I hope we won’t have to move again, that this war will end already and that the Israeli army of occupation will stop attacking Gaza.

* Testimony given by to Alaa’s sister-in-law, B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd, on 30 Nov. 2023.