Rage and clarity as Palestinians detail devastation in northern Gaza


Rage and clarity as Palestinians detail devastation in northern Gaza

Mai Annan, a Palestinian woman from northern Gaza, is talking about what is happening to her home.

"The screams of the women after the young men were executed, and they are pleading, 'No, please no,' this sound will never leave me," she says, describing the actions of Israel's military.

"Those cries haunt me every night. I can't sleep. I can't forget the massacre we lived through."

Behind her, all we can see are piles of rubble. We are in a room in London, capital of a country that helps support and arm Israel, which has been waging war on Gaza since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October.

Annan, who leads the Reviving Gaza mutual aid project in the north, is on a video screen, the ruins of northern Gaza behind her.

She tells us her family were trapped under heavy bombardment and gunfire for five days. She says that under Israeli siege, 30 of them hid in one bathroom.

Annan recalls another day, earlier in the war: 19 December 2023.

"The Red Cross came and called for us. They told us the army had executed everyone in the building next to us... The sole survivor was my cousin, who had been shot twice in the shoulder," says Annan.

"What I've shared may sound ordinary to you, but I lived it."

At a meeting hosted by the British Palestinian Committee (BPC) and the UK Gaza Community (UKGC) in London, the room was quiet, and heavy.

None of this sounded ordinary. But there was a sense among those present that the politicians and media in the countries supporting Israel's war, Britain included, were intent on having it seem that way.

"This is also a domestic issue," said Sara Husseini, director of the British Palestinian Committee.

'The UK is directly aiding and abetting these atrocities, providing Israel with material support at a time when the ICC has arrest warrants out for two of its leaders'

- Sara Husseini, British Palestinian Committee

"The UK is directly aiding and abetting these atrocities, providing Israel with material support at a time when the ICC has arrest warrants out for two of its leaders."

Khem Rogaly, who is researching British military involvement in the war on Gaza, highlighted US military cargo and British spy plane flights from UK airbases in Cyprus, as well as the British-made components in Israel's F-35 jets and British participation in the defence of Israel.

"This is not only about arms export licenses - but active collaboration, logistical support, supplies and supporting missions that have been ongoing for 14 months," Rogaly said.

"This means Britain is not only failing in its third-party obligations under international law but are longstanding active participants in the crimes outlined today."

And so the Palestinians from northern Gaza speaking in London - either in person or on video - were doing so in the knowledge that Israel was attacking them and their families with the help of Britain, even while the British government continues to call for a ceasefire.

"For so long I thought journalists and politicians in the West compromised their values, principles, and professionalism to protect Israel," said Ahmed Najjar, a Palestinian writer from Jabalia in northern Gaza.

"But now I know that this is who they are and what they stand for. They stand for colonisation, oppression, racism and genocide. So today I won't ask western leaders or media to see us as human beings. That seems too much to ask from those who fund and enable genocide."

It has been over two months since Israel's ground invasion of northern Gaza, Jabalia included, restarted. The Israeli military is believed to be following the "Generals' Plan" to ethnically cleanse the north of its Palestinian population, leaving them unable to return.

"Within days, it became clear that this wasn't just another military operation. This was something far more sinister. Israel's actions in Gaza are not just a genocide - they are an ethnic cleansing, a deliberate attempt to erase an entire people," Najjar told us.

'I won't ask western leaders or media to see us as human beings. That seems too much to ask from those who fund and enable genocide'

- Ahmed Najjar, Palestinian writer from northern Gaza

"The north of Gaza is now nearly empty, stripped of its humanity, its life and its soul."

In the wake of the invasion, Najjar's family left the north, except for his 80-year-old father.

According to his nephew Hossain, men and women were separated at an Israeli checkpoint on the way south, with the men "stripped naked, humiliated, beaten and shouted at".

An Israeli soldier pointed a gun at Sammah, Najjar's sister, after she tried to stop the soldier taking her son Youssif away from her. "If you don't let him go, I will kill him in front of you - then I will kill you," the soldier said, according to Najjar.

Youssif was eventually returned to his family, but Najjar's brother-in-law was detained by the Israelis for three weeks before being deposited in southern Gaza, far from his wife and children.

Najjar's father told his family he had been displaced too many times. Israeli bombs closed in on him. People were killed at a school just a block from his home.

"When I finally reached him by phone, I heard fear in his voice for the first time in my life," Najjar said.

A couple of weeks ago, on 3 December, the Jouda family, who lived next door, were killed in an Israeli air strike. A mother, father and four children. The next day, while she searched for their bodies beneath the rubble, Majd Jouda was killed.

On 5 December, Najjar spoke to his father. The deaths of so many people he loved had broken him. "He was sobbing uncontrollably. I hadn't heard him cry like that since 1991, when he carried my sister Amani's lifeless body after she suffocated from Israeli tear gas."

Three days later, after Najjar's father's home was partially destroyed, a neighbour rescued him, walking him through the devastation of northern Gaza to Kamal Adwan hospital.

"By 10 December, the last of our neighbours were forced out, leaving Jabalia lifeless and empty," Najjar said. "My father finally joined my mother in Gaza City, but the scars of what he endured will never leave him - or us."

Mohamed Ashraf is a young doctor from Gaza who has worked in the north of the enclave during the war.

He was speaking to us in London on the same day that Sayeed Joudeh, believed to be the last remaining orthopaedic surgeon in northern Gaza, was killed by Israeli tank fire while on his way to work at the Kamal Adwan and al-Awda hospitals.

Ashraf told us about an orthopaedic surgeon in central Gaza, Fadel Naim. Naim is in surgery from 5am until 11pm, and sleeps from midnight until 4am. Then he gets up and does it all again.

"He has been doing this for over a year now," Ashraf said. "He has no knowledge about the whereabouts of his family, his wife, his children. His mother has been killed in this genocide. He continues doing his job."

Ashraf talked about performing lower limb amputations without any anaesthetic, with the patient completely conscious, feeling everything that was happening.

'He was starved, he was tortured, he was humiliated, he was undressed and the only thing that they called him was "the doctor we have abducted"'

- Mohamed Ashraf, doctor from Gaza

He spoke about a nine-year-old Palestinian girl who had been brought into hospital with shrapnel wounds all over her face. She told Ashraf to come closer so she could speak to him.

"Doctor, am I in heaven?" she asked. "My mum told me that if we are attacked, I will go to heaven directly and it is very calm and there is no noise there. But there is a lot of noise and chaos here. Was my mum lying?"

Ashraf told the little girl that her mother was not lying about heaven, that she was in hospital. A few hours later, the girl died.

Stories like this poured out of Ashraf. He showed pictures of him and his colleagues in rare moments of respite - eating lunch in the middle of an 18-hour shift, smiling together in times before the war.

He spoke about doctors in Gaza who had been killed and doctors who had been abducted by Israeli forces. In March, fellow doctor Mosab Samman was abducted from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which had been subjected to an Israeli siege and is now no longer functioning.

"We know nothing about Mosab, his family know nothing about him, and we are not sure if he is still in prison or has been killed in the harsh conditions they torture him in," Ashraf said, adding that he had texted Samman pleading with him to leave the hospital shortly after colleagues at al-Shifa Hospital had also been abducted or executed in the street.

Samman told his friend that he was the only doctor left in the emergency department and that his grandfather, who was paralysed, was also there.

Another friend of Ashraf's, an emergency doctor, was held in an Israeli prison for three months. "He was starved, he was tortured, he was humiliated, he was undressed and the only thing that they called him was 'the doctor we have abducted'," Ashraf said.

The horrors witnessed by doctors in Gaza were described by others, including Mahim Qureshi, a British Pakistani vascular surgeon.

She described performing brain surgery without the proper tools on children as young as eight, who had been shot and paralysed.

Qureshi said she had to operate on body bags and spoke with tremendous feeling about the many patients she saw who presented with illnesses that, "if seen earlier, would have been entirely treatable".

When she was in Gaza in April, with temperatures in the twenties centigrade, she noticed that everyone was wearing as many clothes as possible - they felt cold because they were so hungry.

The British doctor said she had not been prepared for the number of young children who had been shot. When she returned to Gaza in October, she saw a much larger number of quadcopter and gunshot victims.

Children's hair had grown lighter because of protein deficiency. "This is southern Gaza," Qureshi said. "I cannot begin to imagine the horrors of the north."

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