Muhammad Abu ‘Aytah

A 50-year-old father of five from Jabalya RC, Muhammad described how his home was bombed, two of his children were injured, and his family endured months of hunger, displacement and fear:

Image

Before the war, I lived with my wife and our five children, Hassan, 20, Rima, 22, Dima, 18, Hazem, 16, and Husam, 12, in Jabalya Refugee Camp. We lived in a simple two-story house at the Abu ‘Aytah junction in the Tal a-Za’tar neighborhood, along with my mother. I worked as a shared taxi driver. I went to work every morning and came home every evening, and provided for my family. We lived modestly and were content with what we had.

Then the war began – and with it, the dark days that changed our lives from the very first moment. They started bombing homes, mosques and schools, but we stayed home because we were afraid to leave, there was bombing everywhere. On 3 December 2023, at around 10:00 A.M., Israeli fighter jets bombed our house. In an instant, everything collapsed on us. We had some relatives displaced from the north and east of Gaza staying with us. Sixteen of them – my uncles and cousins – were killed and buried under the rubble. No one has managed to get them out.

My wife, the children, my mother and I survived by a miracle. But I was in shock when I saw Hassan and Rima – they were lying on the ground screaming with their legs cut off. I fell to the ground and couldn’t get up. My children, who hadn’t even had time to enjoy their youth, were hanging between life and death.

Image

We rushed them to al-Awda Hospital in Tal a-Za’tar. The place was extremely crowded, full of wounded people and without electricity, medications and surgical tools. They threw my children down in the corridor. I begged the staff to treat them, but no one could listen. The operating rooms were flooded with blood. The doctors said there was nothing they could do except apply iodine and bandages.

We stayed in the hospital for a week. My children bled slowly and were in terrible pain. On the seventh day, the military ordered the hospital staff to evacuate. We had nowhere to go and didn’t know what to do. The children were supposed to undergo surgery, but we picked them up and went out to the street. Everywhere we looked, there was destruction.

We reached Abu Hussein School in the town of Jabalya, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering. We lived in a crowded room with no mattresses, food or medicine. We stayed there for seven whole months – hungry, in pain and afraid. The only treatment the children received was washing their wounds and changing their bandages, even though the water was contaminated and unfit for use. Their wounds worsened and filled with pus, and they were in constant pain.

The whole time, my mother suffered deeply. She sat in a corner and cried day and night.

Image

On 21 June 2024, the military invaded Jabalya Refugee Camp. There were bombings and shelling everywhere, and soldiers announced over loudspeakers that people must evacuate the area. Displaced families began fleeing the school. Hassan and Rima couldn’t leave – they couldn’t walk, and we had no way to carry them. We thought it was better for them to stay with their mother in the school, hoping that if the military saw them, they wouldn’t harm them. I took my mother and the other children and left.

I swear to God my heart broke. I didn’t know if I would ever see them again. We walked west with nowhere to go and stayed on the street for hours, until someone took us into a mosque near a-Shifaa Hospital, which was also in ruins. The next day, I received a call from kind people who told me my wife and children were at a-Sheikh Radwan junction. I rushed there and found them pale and terrified. They told me people had carried them out of the school on their shoulders.

I went back with them to the area near a-Shifaa Hospital, and we stayed there for about ten days with almost no food or water. When the military withdrew from Jabalya, we returned to Abu Hussein School.

On 7 October 2024, the military invaded Jabalya again. We fled to my father-in-law’s house in Beit Lahiya. After a few days, the military surrounded the area and there was no way out. We thought it was the end.

We remained trapped in Beit Lahiya until 21 October 2024, when soldiers again ordered residents to evacuate. We put Rima in a wheelchair we had managed to find, and my son Hazem carried Hassan. As we reached the doorway, a drone fired a missile at us. Rima was thrown five meters away. Her fingers were blown off. I cried in terror and indescribable pain. I picked her up and ran under fire.

We reached the Asmaa School run by UNRWA in a-Shati Refugee Camp. At the clinic there, they disinfected her hand with iodine and bandaged it. There was no medicine, no equipment and no medical staff. We stayed there, hungry and nearly without food or supplies. I can’t describe the frustration I felt because I couldn’t provide my family’s most basic needs or medical care for my children.

On 19 January 2025, a ceasefire was declared. We left the Asmaa School and set up a tent at al-Yarmouk Stadium on al-Wehda Street in Gaza City. Since then, I’ve been moving between clinics, begging for help. Rima has undergone more than ten surgeries – all failed. Both she and Hassan need urgent medical referrals abroad, but the blockade is preventing everything.

It’s impossible to treat their wounds in Gaza – all the hospitals have been destroyed. In early March 2025, the entry of food was blocked again, and on 18 March 2025, the bombings and killings resumed.

I’m begging for any help I can get. I have no work. For twenty days now, not even a kilo of flour has entered our tent. I just want to live with dignity and give my children the care they need. The military has destroyed everything in the Gaza Strip. We have run out of strength to endure the war, the bombardments, and the endless hunger.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Muhammad Sabah on 2 July 2025