Muamen ‘Awad

A 37-year-old father of two from al-Bureij Refugee Camp, Muamen spoke about his family’s displacement, his daughter being shot and injured and the bombing that killed his sister and three of her children

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I have cancer. When the war broke out, I was in Jordan getting chemotherapy. It was tough, because I was far from my wife and our two daughters, Siba, 10, and Liyah, 3, from my elderly parents and siblings who stayed behind in our building in al-Bureij Refugee Camp in central Gaza, and from my sister, who lives in the building next to us. For about nine months, I was very worried for their safety and constantly afraid that I’d lose one of them. I kept thinking about them and the possibility that our house would be bombed, and I was struggling mentally. In May, I decided to stop the treatment and return to Gaza.

I returned shortly before Israel took control of Rafah and closed the border. By then, my family had been displaced to Rafah, after the Israeli army ordered the residents of al-Bureij R.C. to evacuate south. When I arrived in Gaza, I was shocked by the total destruction I saw. It was a horrific sight, far beyond what I’d imagined. I also discovered, to my surprise, that I had lost many friends and relatives I didn’t even know had been killed. There are no more houses here, no infrastructure for survival, no water, no electricity, no medicine. I was also shocked by the enormous number of IDP tents. The situation was much worse than I’d expected, in every way.

Shortly after I arrived in the Gaza Strip, the army invaded Rafah, and then we returned to our homes in al-Bureij R.C. At the camp too, the destruction I saw was on an unimaginable scale. My parents’ house was completely destroyed and our house was partially destroyed, so my parents and I went back to live in our house, in very difficult conditions. We cook or bake bread on firewood. Water is hard to come by and what is available is undrinkable, and food is also very scarce and expensive. There are no vegetables or fruit at all. It’s also very dangerous here. There are airplane bombings and tank shelling all the time.

My mother also has cancer, but the hospitals are in bad shape and can’t treat either of us right now. There are no medications, either. We’ve been displaced three times since returning to al-Bureij. We’ve moved to tents in the town of a-Zawaydah, in the western part of Gaza’s central district. We spent ten nights to two weeks in those tents each time, and then we went back home.

On one of the days we spent in al-Bureij R.C., I sent my daughter Siba to charge her phone at the neighbors’ and she was shot in the chest by a drone. She was taken to Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah and stayed there for about seven days. They couldn’t get the bullet out, and it stayed in her body. She was discharged only because they had to make room for new casualties. She suffers from it, and has trouble breathing and limited mobility. She’s been having anxiety since then; she’s very confused and is struggling mentally. She won’t even go to the bathroom alone. Every time she hears airplanes she gets a panic attack. Her body starts shaking, she has trouble breathing and turns blue.

On 17 September 2024, at 5:00 A.M., we heard heavy bombing very close to the house; it sounded like two missiles. After the bombing, I went out to see what happened. Everything was covered in dust and debris. I was shocked when I realized that my sister Fatmeh’s house had been bombed and completely flattened.

I quickly ran to the wreckage to look for Fatmeh and her children. She was 33 years old and a widow. Her husband, Hussein Shuqah, 37, was killed about eight months ago on the street, when a building in the area was bombed. Fatmeh was left alone with their four kids: Hassan, 15, Ahmad, 14, Mu’in, 10, and Mu’tasem, 5. They lived in a five-story building about 30 meters from our house. There were 19 people in the building when it was bombed.

I found Hassan, Fatmeh’s son, trapped between rubble and iron bars. I tried to rescue him but I couldn’t. I cried and called out their names, but no one answered me. Everyone in the building was buried under the rubble and dead. The only survivor from my sister’s family was her 10-year-old son Mu’in, who was visiting his uncle and wasn’t in the building.

The scene of destruction, devastation, and bodies horrified me. I was overwhelmed and couldn’t focus. In the end, I found Fatmeh’s body under the rubble, too, but I couldn’t get her out. I called the Civil Defense Force, the Red Cross and an ambulance, but when they tried to come, airplanes fired at them and they couldn’t get closer. In a combined effort, using our bare hands and simple tools, my brothers, cousins and I recovered the bodies of my sister, her children, her mother-in-law and the rest of the dead, except for four bodies that we were unable to recover. We buried those we could and said goodbye to them with immense pain and sorrow.

My nephew Mu’in, the sole survivor from his family, cried hysterically when he said goodbye to his mother and siblings. He was shocked and couldn’t believe they were all gone and he was left alone. Mu’in is broken. He keeps asking about his mother and his siblings. He tells me, “My father left us. Then my mother and brothers left me. What did I stay alive for?” I have no words to comfort him. I can only hug and kiss him, hold him close and grieve with him. My heart is shattered.

Mu’in is with us at our house now. I can’t believe that Fatmeh and her family were bombed. I don’t understand why. I think about them all the time and cry. I’ve lost the will to live. Like Mu’in, I also feel life has no meaning anymore. What crime did this child commit, that he deserved to experience such loss and lose his entire family?

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 28 September 2024