#CeasefireNOW: Israel committed multiple massacre at my birthplace Jabalia Refugee Camp killing more than 40 of my relatives

“What other disasters need to happen before a ceasefire is enforced with steps towards accountability for all the genocide cheerleaders?” My article on Declassified UK on 6 November 2023.

What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It is a genocide, accompanied by an ethnic cleansing campaign against the mostly refugee population in that besieged enclave. 

The process is targeting other Palestinian communities surviving under Israeli settler-colonial and military domination between the river and the sea. 

No one is spared from Israel’s killing machines: children, women, elderly people, journalists, doctors, paramedics, fire fighters. Nowhere in Gaza is safe: residential buildings have been levelled, UNRWA schools sheltering the displaced have been hit. 

Hospitals, churches, mosques, bakeries, universities, ambulances, too. My parents and extended family are amongst over a million people who have been forcibly displaced – nearly half of Gaza’s entire population. 

They have fled to Al-Nusairat refugee camp, which is “south of Gaza river” according to Israel’s criminal military order, but they are at close encounters with death every day amid relentless Israeli bombardment.

There is no time to process all the horrors of the past four weeks, but my family survivors keep stressing that “time passing means more bloodshed”. 

On 23 October, my cousins and their little angels were amongst 23 relatives killed while asleep at their own homes in Jabalia refugee camp. 

My family’s survivors couldn’t give a goodbye or a proper funeral as Israel’s killing machines have haunted them. My auntie’s son Khalil is the only survivor of his family. 

The lifeless bodies of his wife Heba (35) and children Leen (12), Jihad (10) and Sham (5) were pulled from under the rubble after six hours. 

Heba, a skilled nurse at the Indonesian hospital, and her children had left their home and sought refuge at the home of another cousin Rana, who is married to Heba’s brother Jawad. 

Jawad survived but Rana (40) was killed, alongside two of her five children, the little ones, Mohammed (5) and Naama (7), while the twin girls Jana and Jinan (12) and Husni (10), survived with wounds.  

On 1 November, my dear cousin Yousef Marwan Abusalama succumbed to his wounds at the Indonesian hospital. Four days before, on 27 October, Israel bombed nearby, destroying homes and killing over 22 of our neighbours and injuring many including him. 

Yousef’s only fault is his Palestinian refugee identity. He was sitting outside his home in Jabalia refugee camp, originally my grandparents’ where my older siblings Majed and Majd and I were born. 

Israel bombed nearby, destroying homes and killing over 22 of our neighbours. Yousef joined them in heaven after the shrapnel in his spine had caused infection and unbearable pain. The doctors took him for an operation at 1am. He left the surgery room at 6am and cried to death. 

This caring, handsome, young and strong man clung to life for four days fearing he’d break our hearts. He truly did. 

Jabalia refugee camp is where my grandparents who are Nakba survivors from Beit Jirja and Ashdod waited to return. Israel banned their internationally-recognised right of return, sentenced them to a life of oppression in Gaza, then bombed their grandchildren to death.

I spent many hours of calls with Yousef during this genocidal war, bringing us closer than ever. He kept me informed about my uncle Marwan’s family whom I love so much, and our home at Al-Saftawi which hosted Yousef during his final years. 

I was sitting with my cousin Yousef on the messenger app the night before his injury, collecting pictures and making a list of the names and ages of 23 relatives who were killed on 23 October. He didn’t want our martyrs to be forgotten and reduced to numbers. 

I called my family a thousand times desperate to cry with them but failed miserably amid the blackout. I am grateful, however, I managed to speak to my dear uncle Marwan and auntie Haniyya, Yousef’s parents, whom I love dearly as well as all his siblings. 

It was heartbreaking hearing them comfort themselves, in tears, that Yousef is better than us, a martyr. They are convinced that he could have lived if Israel didn’t push hospitals in Gaza to a breaking, catastrophic point. 

While Yousef had a bed, his parents saw doctors treating the wounded on the floor, and were shy about calling for medical attention as they saw them overwhelmed, racing against time to save lives.

In grave violation of international law, Israel has placed Gaza under a total siege, cutting off electricity, fuel, water, internet and food. My family survivors reported that they’re hungry, and they’re alive but dead inside. 

They’re mostly hungry for the world to finally recognise their humanity and their rights to freedom, justice and equality, denied for 106 years of successive British and Israeli colonial domination. 

Britain is aware of our grievances as they hold the historic responsibility for facilitating the culmination of the Zionist enterprise into the Jewish state of Israel on the ethnic cleansing of our grandparents. 

We cannot forget the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917 that initiated three decades of British colonial rule in Palestine during which apartheid between native Arabs and Jewish settlers was established. 

This only ended the day before the new-born settler nation of Israel set off to dominate the Palestinians to this day, indefinitely.