In July the evacuation order came. We had only one option – a bombed-out apartment in the Gaza Strip | Israel-Palestine conflict

When this war started, I assumed it would only last a week or two. Friends living abroad would call to check on us, and I assured them that our lives would soon return to normal. There was no need to leave our home where we had lived for 20 years. My mother has problems with her spine and can hardly walk. And besides, it would all be over soon.

Every morning, I cleaned our house in the al-Fukhari neighborhood, east of Khan Younis, and prepared breakfast for my parents. Then I read the Koran, filled the water tanks by hand, and washed our clothes. It wasn’t easy, but at least we were home. It was the house we had moved to when I was ten years old; the year before, Israel had destroyed our previous house.

Being able to stay in our house gave me some peace of mind, but perhaps more than that, I was afraid to leave. I had been displaced many times as a child. Every time there was a war, we would go to my grandfather’s building in the refugee camp in Khan Younis. This time, I was determined not to leave.

But that was many months ago, and in this war there is no choice but expulsion.

Smaller steps

At first, our expulsion took place in small steps. When the bombings became too loud and the walls of our house began to shake, we left our house for the night and fled to the European Hospital, just ten meters away. The next morning, we returned to our house and were relieved to see that it was still standing.

In December, my sister, her husband and their two children came to us. Their apartment – ​​in the same building we had fled to as children – had been bombed.

As the war progressed and the death and destruction increased, the threat of displacement became greater. Yet I consoled myself with the thought that this nightmare would end before we were forced to flee.

Then, on July 1, the Israeli army ordered us to evacuate our neighborhood.

I felt as if the weight of a mountain had been placed on my chest. I didn’t know what to say. I looked at my mother, but all she could do was pray.

We didn’t know where to go.

The refugee camp we had fled to so many times had been the scene of an Israeli ground offensive between January and March. Tents stood amidst the rubble. It was almost impossible for the young people to survive in such conditions. How would my frail, old parents manage?

The remains of my sister’s house

We were left with only one option: the remains of my sister’s house. We gathered everything we could from our house, even though we knew that almost everything in her house had been destroyed. We cried as we left – tears for what we were leaving behind and for what we feared we would find.

On July 2nd we set out for the camp. But when we got there we didn’t recognize anything. The streets were nothing like what had been there before. It was as if an earthquake had occurred, causing buildings to collapse and leaving the ground littered with rubble.

Finally we found the building and went up to the fourth floor – to my sister’s apartment.

It has no walls or ceiling. We’ve covered up the places where there should be walls with large nylon sheets, although we can still see – and be seen from – the destroyed street below.

Everything is burnt. The kitchen is covered in ash that doesn’t go away no matter how thoroughly you clean. The ash contaminates everything and turns your hands black.

The toilets are almost destroyed. Only one still works, but it has no door, so we use it as quickly as we can.

There is no water in the tanks. The infrastructure in the camp is completely destroyed, so our day begins at dawn, when residents get up early to fetch water from the Palestinian Red Crescent, which is about a kilometer away from the camp. Since the roads are destroyed, it is difficult to pull a cart through them, so you have to take only what you can carry, although that is not enough for the day.

It’s almost impossible to imagine living in the midst of such destruction. This building feels so unstable and I’m constantly afraid it will give way and fall on my five-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew.

In these moments, it feels like this camp is our destiny – just like all the times before.