It is difficult to imagine the suffering of Gazan civilians from the outside.
On Monday, 21 October, Jabalia released a video that provided an unusually detailed view of the horror and pressure imposed by Israel’s offensive in northern Gaza on civilians. You feel like you are there.
Every day, I watch videos online of people who are wounded, dying, or bereaved in hospitals. I see men in the rubble digging up bodies and rescuing survivors. I see civilians being forced to move because of the Israelis. They walk through thick sand, where roads once were, and past the ruins that are unrecognisable.
All of them are horrifying, but the one that was shown after the attack in Jabalia Monday morning was particularly so. It was a very unusual video for me because it showed the chaos, fear, and grief that immediately followed an attack.
Most people would never think to use their phone to record such an extreme moment. As a war reporter, I’ve seen and felt the same disbelief. It takes time for your brain to catch up to the new reality you are seeing.
The Jabalia Boys’ Elementary School was attacked on 21 October just after 9:00 in the morning. It was no longer an educational institution, but had been converted into a shelter for civilians displaced by war, just like many other schools run by UNRWA (the UN agency for Palestinian refugee). All of them, that is.
In the video a paramedic named Nevine al Dawawi is increasingly panicked as she runs between dead and dying civilians, using her cellphone to document what’s happening. (When I first reported this, on the day the strike took place, it was incorrectly identified as Nabila.
We were able to locate Nevine in Gaza City. She was able give us her account of what occurred on Monday morning. She answered questions and, much more composed, she played the video.
In it, she appears agitated and terrified, running between civilians who are lying in their blood, next to bodies that have been killed.
This story contains some disturbing details.
I don’t know how to stop the bleeding
“Calm down,” screams the woman to a woman who is badly injured and sitting in a bloody pool.
“I swear, I don’t know how to stop the bleeding.”
She runs down the passage that is strewn with shrapnel. She sees more casualties on a stairwell, turns away in horror and picks up a suitcase, saying “let’s get out so no one else gets killed”.
The voice of a man says “stay with us Nevine”. She grabs the bag full of wound dressings and returns to the blood-stained stairwell. A child’s voice asks for help. My sister is dying. Please help me.
A woman tells me that my children are gone. Nevine asked her how she knew.
“Look at them,” says the woman. One is very still and the other has a severe wound on its head. It is either dead or dying.
Nevine gives dressings even though it’s too late. She has no other paramedics and is the only one there.
Nevine told us the woman who was on the stairs, whose children had been killed, was Lina Ibrahim Ab Namos. Journalists from the BBC found her at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia, where she was being treated for shrapnel wounds. Lina’s eldest child and her son were both killed.
Her husband was not with them at the time of the attack, as he had already been treated for injuries sustained in a previous attack.
“I saw my own daughter die.” She was dying right in front of me. I couldn’t stop her, and she was the eldest of my life, my whole, honest, my entire, life. When your eldest child dies in front you …”
“I couldn’t help her and I was also injured.” I fell to the ground because I couldn’t control myself. “I crawled towards her.”
Nevine, the paramedic explained that they were “besieged” in the school for 16 to 17 days. Quadcopters, the small drones that the IDF uses extensively, buzzed above them. They are used for a variety of purposes, including surveillance and espionage. They can also be used to give orders over loudspeakers or to drop bombs on Palestinians.
“We lived in such fear. We had both people killed and wounded when the school was struck. There was nothing to eat or drink. The Israelis bombed the water tanker which was normally sent to us. It went on for days. Three days ago, at nine o’clock in the morning, a quadcopter dropped on the school, giving us a deadline to leave by 10 o’clock. The quadcopter’s loudspeaker told us to evacuate the school as we were in a dangerous combat zone.”
We didn’t have the time to pack up our stuff. We had only one hour. After only 10 minutes, Israeli planes bombed this school. It was a huge massacre with more than 30 wounded and over 10 killed.”
In the video, there are more casualties than just the dead and wounded on the bloody steps. Nevine leaves the stairwell and runs to an older man, probably in his 60s, who is leaning on a pile bags with his head resting in his hands. She checks to see if he’s survived a severe injury to his neck and screams if he doesn’t.
“Help him! He’s dead, it’s Uncle Abu Mohammed.”
Three days later, I sent her questions to be asked by a Palestinian freelancer journalist at the al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. One was about Abu Mohammed.
“He was our neighbor.” “His two sons also died… one had half of his head gone.”
She walked our reporter through the video while she played it on her phone.
The video showed girls being ripped apart. It also shows men with their stomach wounds exposing their intestines… A 10-year old boy had his bowels bulging out of his stomach. His mum was killed and injured in the heart.”
“Some women who took cover were also injured, and others were killed. A school cleaner was shredded to pieces. A 12-year-old had her leg blown off. A woman who was displaced from Beit Hanoun in Gaza’s northern region also suffered a leg blow. She was between 35 and forty years old.”
Tor Wennesland, the senior UN diplomat based in Jerusalem, issued a strong message the day before the attack. Israel’s offensive was intensifying.
“The nightmare in Gaza intensifies.” The northern Strip is witnessing horrific scenes amid conflict, Israeli strikes and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
“There is no place safe in Gaza.” I condemn the continued attacks on civilians. This war must end. The hostages held by Hamas, the displacement Palestinians, and the protection of civilians wherever they are must cease. Humanitarian aid should be delivered without hindrance.”
Israel claims that its forces are following the laws of war and act in self-defense. In Gaza and, more recently, in Lebanon, Israel has claimed that civilians are killed every day because armed groups are using them as human shields.
Nevine al Daawawi, paramedic.
Is it true that the IDF claimed Hamas used civilians as human safseys?
“No, Hamas did not use civilians as human salves.” They stood with us and protected us.”
Many in Israel will take her statement that Hamas was in the area as a justification of the horrors the IDF committed on civilians on Monday morning, just after 9 am.
War crimes lawyers will question whether the attack was justified. According to the laws of war, civilians must be protected and casualties should be proportional to the military threat that an attacking force faces.
The lawyers of the Israel Defense Forces could justify the attack if there were senior Hamas commanders or a large concentration of fighters who were preparing to fight.
If Hamas had only a handful of local men with guns, the attack would be illegal.
If the Palestinians from the video were to ever appear in court, they could argue that the threat the IDF faced at that time did not justify the killing of more than 10 civilians and injuring 30 others.
I have to use conditional tenses, because I’m writing this in Jerusalem and not after I interviewed eyewitnesses on the scene of the attack at Jabalia in Gaza. Reporters will always struggle when they can’t get to the scene of the story.
Israel allowed journalists to enter their border communities near the Gaza border in the days following the Hamas attacks of last year. I was in Kfar Azza Kibbutz as soldiers fired gunshots into buildings to check on the buildings. They were still recovering bodies of Israelis who had died. They wanted us to go see where Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis in Gaza, most of them civilians. More than 250 were taken into captivity.
Israel is preventing journalists from entering Gaza except for rare and tightly controlled visits with the military. I was only in Gaza once, during the first month of war, and the Israeli firepower had already turned northern Gaza into a desert.
Journalists rely on videos, statements and reports from Palestinians in Gaza, including brave journalists. They also rely upon international diplomats, medical personnel and aid workers, who are allowed to enter Gaza, as well as witnesses with smartphones, such Nevine.
Lina Ibrahim Abu Nmos was haunted in the hospital by the loss of her only son and her eldest child, as well as everything they had called home.
“I used to have seven children and now I only left five… What can I say?” I don’t even know. They have broken our hearts. We are emotionally exhausted and physically tired. “We’ve lost everything.”
What crime have they committed? What did they do? What have we done?
What have we done to Israel? “They’ve destroyed our kids,” I swear.
“I’m so scared. I don’t drink or eat. Nothing. All I want is for my kids to be around me. We are scared and have been displaced. What’s left for me and my daughters? There is no home, no place to be safe, nothing. I’m one of many who have nowhere to go and no safety. I’m exhausted.”
Read More @ www.bbc.com