Hadi ‘Abd Rabu

A 40-year-old, father of two from Jabalya town, spoke about the mortal danger at aid distribution points and GHF centers, and the struggle to get food:

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Before the war, I lived with my wife and our two daughters, Alma, 12, and Batul, 8, in an apartment in our family’s building in eastern Jabalya town. My parents, and my siblings with their families, lived in the other apartments. Altogether we are 27 people. Because our building was close to the border with Israel, already on 8 October 2023 we were forced to leave under heavy bombardment and military threats. We moved for a few days to relatives in western Jabalya, and from there began an exhausting journey of constant displacement from one place to another without finding any safe place to stay.

In mid-November 2023, the military bombed the upper floors of the building we had moved into. Some family members were injured, including my nieces, the daughters of my brother Fadi. Dana, 17, lost part of her left foot, including several toes. Her leg has not healed properly because the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has collapsed. She is still suffering from it. Her sister Bana, 12, was relatively lightly injured in the head, back and arm, and is doing ok now. Shortly afterwards, we moved to a rented apartment in the a-Nafaq area of Jabalya.

During the first ceasefire, on 24 November 2023, which lasted six days, we went to check on our home in eastern Jabalya. We discovered that our house was severely damaged, but most of the other houses in the neighborhood were still intact and habitable. When the ceasefire ended, the war resumed in full force. Tanks entered the neighborhood where our family’s house stood. Later we learned that the military had destroyed the houses, burned them, and leveled the land. The situation throughout Jabalya was extremely dangerous, and we were forced to leave again.

We moved to the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northwestern Gaza City. The shops and markets were empty of all products such as flour, grains, meat, vegetables, etc., and we suffered from severe hunger. The almost only way to get food was at humanitarian aid distribution points: the Nabulsi roundabout in western Gaza City, or the Kuwait roundabout in the east. But those places meant risking your life. The military killed dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of people who came to receive food, with live fire and airstrikes near the distribution points. Every time I went there to try to get some food, I didn’t know if I would come back alive.

In January 2025, after the ceasefire was declared, many residents returned from the south to the north of the Strip. The ceasefire lasted until March, when the war resumed with great force. The military closed all the crossings to the Strip, food supplies quickly ran out, and what remained became very expensive. Gradually the hunger worsened until it became even more severe than what we suffered before the ceasefire. We saw people collapsing from hunger in the middle of the street, some looking like walking skeletons. Our children also suffered from acute malnutrition.

When we heard there was an American organization called GHF distributing aid in the southern Strip, we thought we would received organized notification or that distribution would be based on ID cards. To our surprise, they set up the centers in areas classified as red zones, which are under Israeli military control.

No aid was reaching the northern Strip then, so I decided to go to the distribution center in western Rafah and bring food home. In early June, I got on a vehicle that took me to a-Nuseirat Refugee Camp, and from there another vehicle, and part of the way I walked, until I reached a place called al-‘Alam on the coast, about three kilometers from the aid distribution point, where everyone gathered. I waited there from 6:00 P.M. until 5:00 A.M. the next day. In the morning there was complete chaos. Tens of thousands of people ran three to four kilometers, hoping to get a package of food or even half a package.

I saw Israeli tanks and soldiers, and also Americans in uniform, armed with the same weapons as the Israelis, firing heavy gunfire at people like me who only wanted to obtain food. Many people were killed, most hit in the head or chest. I saw a woman standing just a few meters from me shot in the head. Her head simply exploded. Ambulances were only near the Fish Fresh restaurant, four to five kilometers away, because they were forbidden from entering the humanitarian aid distribution area.

It was a bloody, exhausting, and grueling day, but I managed to get some food. I took the package and returned north. When I arrived home, my family calmed down. They had heard that dozens were killed at the center near al-‘Alam Square and were very worried about me. There was great joy when I brought back flour, canned food and grains. It was the first time in more than two months that flour entered our home. Out of joy, my children and my nieces and nephews opened the flour sack and smeared flour on their faces.

Recently, flour and food packages began coming in through the Zikim crossing, in the north of the Strip. Again, I decided to risk my life to get a food package. I’m the only one in my family who has the strength and courage to face the fear of being killed or injured, and who is willing to risk themselves to get food for the family.

Two weeks ago, I went to the distribution point at Zikim, and what happened there was horrific. I saw tanks firing directly at people. Dozens were killed on the spot, and no one dared to help because everyone was running to save themselves. Only when things calmed a little did a few people go in, carrying away the dead on the same wooden pallets that had held the flour sacks. Then they carried them on their shoulders and loaded them onto donkey carts. We placed the body of a young man, torn into three parts, on one of the pallets.

That day I managed, with great difficulty, to get a 25-kilogram sack of flour. It was a journey to death. Afterwards I collapsed, exhausted and dazed. When I slept, I was haunted by nightmares and dreams of shooting, killing and shelling from that day.

Four days later, I went again to the Zikim distribution point, but there was constant shooting and I failed to get anything. I returned home empty-handed, terrified. After that I went once more, and again witnessed the same scenes. Crowds of women, men, and children waited with me to enter the aid distribution center, and again the soldiers fired heavy gunfire at us. There were many dead and wounded.

A week ago, I managed to get a food package with oil, grains and canned food. The number of packages was small compared to the huge crowds. That day too, dozens of people were killed and wounded. No ambulances could reach the place because it is considered a dangerous area under Israeli military control. The ones who evacuate the dead and wounded in these places are friends and relatives, who carry them to ambulances waiting three to four kilometers away.

We are living in hell. The entire Strip is turning into a land of the dead, whether we die from military bombardment or starve to death and succumb to disease. We have no value, no shelter, no dignity. No one cares about us or asks about us. There are no human rights left in the Gaza Strip, and no value to life. There is nothing here but killing and death.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 27 June 2025

Read another testimony Hadi ‘Abd Rabu gave B’Tselem on 20 July 2025, about a massacre of people waiting for UN flour trucks in the a-Sudaniyah area, near the Zikim crossing.