Dying in Southern Gaza: ‘I want to go home. At least I’ll die after drinking fresh water’

Filling a cup with drinking water in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, 28 October 2023

Hanin Majadli writes in Haaretz on 31 October 2023:

On Sunday morning, I received a message from a friend in Gaza. The night before, I asked how he was and waited for his answer. I was so afraid; I was worried there would be no answer.

It was the night the electricity and all communications with the outside world were cut off, so we couldn’t get reports from the people besieged in Gaza. Many of us, the Palestinians in Israel (can we still identify as Palestinians, or is that now against the law?) have family and friends there. We didn’t know if the worst had come that night. We thought the ground offensive had begun.

The next morning, I received a message from my friend, the sign of life I was waiting for. He wrote that he no longer felt human, that he was fed up and wanted to return to Gaza City. At the “recommendation” of the Israeli army, he had fled south, to a place that was supposed to be safe, a place that was supposed to meet, however meagerly, the humanitarian needs of a population displaced by war. But one of the convoys was bombed on the road south, and in the south there was no drinking water.

I asked him why he didn’t stay in the south. He reiterated, “I can’t take it anymore. There’s death everywhere, and I’m thirsty. We’re drinking brackish water mixed with sewage. I want to go home. At least I’ll die after drinking fresh water. I’m calm. Life is worthless in this prison anyway – already before the war, and I have no hope that it will be worth anything after.” I cried that I couldn’t help him.

The truth is, I was afraid to talk to him. I was afraid to ask how he was and how to help him, them. After all, there’s no way to help them. The sentence “How can I help you?” – which I read everywhere in Hebrew, which I receive from Jewish friends who are worried about me, which I’ve said to my Jewish friends – is a privilege they don’t have.

This situation is unlike that of Israeli survivors, who you can meet with, hug and look in their eyes. You can go and console the families of the Israeli victims. There are Jewish survivors and people on the front you can offer shelter to in the north or center of the country – or even a plane ticket abroad. The civilians in Gaza don’t have this.

They can’t raise a white flag. They’re victims imprisoned by this war. They can’t go someplace safe – southern Gaza isn’t safe as reported by the Israeli news. They can’t flee the war to a place that’s not being shelled; not really. They can’t jump on a plane or boat, they can’t escape on foot.

They are besieged, and outside, we can do nothing but pray for them – though not in public, because that could get us in trouble with the emergency regulations that target Arab citizens. On social media, every “like” is an offense, every shared post is grounds for a summons and an interrogation. Private conversations have become incriminating material.

This is an intolerable collective indictment, frightening persecution, a total disintegration of the civil protections that are supposed to be available for Arab citizens, who say that there are people in Gaza. So it must be said: There are people in Gaza. Cease-fire. Return the hostages now.

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