More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
November 13 - November 14, 2023
It’s important for the Israelis to admit their moral and political responsibility and start building trust, which is the only way to arrive at an acceptable solution in which both sides can live in partnership and collaboration.
A healthy society needs wise and educated women. An educated and healthy woman will raise an educated and healthy family. We need to link education with health care, and the most effective way to do that is to make sure that education and health care are available to women.
Anger and violence in Gaza and among Gazans is completely predictable. In a situation like ours, the absence of violence and anger would be abnormal.
A Palestinian designation on your papers is enough to warrant a very long wait wherever you are in this part of the world.
I had left at seven thirty a.m. for a journey that in a normal world would involve merely a one-hour drive to the airport in Amman. I barely made it in time to catch the six p.m. flight, but I considered the day a success because I was actually able to board my plane.
It wasn’t lost on me that if I wasn’t Palestinian, I could have boarded a flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv and been home in a few hours.
although it was hard on her and on the children that they couldn’t be together, it never occurred to her or to the kids that she wouldn’t get back home. As for bringing the children to the hospital, it simply was not allowed;
Even in death, a Palestinian cannot travel without a permit.
My children were on their own, watched over by their aunts and uncles, in our apartment, 55 miles away, a drive of an hour and a half at most. I had to wait in Al ’Arish for about two weeks.
Israeli rockets, bombs, and shells came from every direction. Bombs fell from the sky. I learned later the Israelis used two-thousand-pound Mark 84 bombs as well as laser-guided penetration bombs. F-16s and Apache attack helicopters roared overhead, rockets ricocheted in from gunships off the coast, and tanks on the border let loose with an astonishing barrage of explosives.
No one, not even the worst pessimist, had imagined that the Israeli attack would go on for twenty-three relentless days. There was no electricity, no phone service, no gas
Here we are now, more than one month into the current bombardment
Hundreds of tanks rolled across the border, firing at everything that moved and sending merciless volleys into one building after another.
But her choice to study by candlelight wasn’t as simple as lighting a candle. We were afraid that the soldiers outside would notice the light and realize there were people inside; we were terrified of making that one lethal wrong move. We took turns hiding the candlelight by whatever means we could.
January 13 was the most difficult day of the ground attack thus far. We couldn’t see outside because the air was so full of debris and dust from the exploding missiles; you couldn’t distinguish day from night.
For the three weeks during the war, we lost our belief in humanity, so God and each other were all we had left.
I showed these photos to the children and told them that both men had talked to me about coexistence. But how would I explain that the men smiling beside me in the photos were responsible for the death and destruction outside our windows?
Dr. Abuelaish talking about photos of him meeting the then-prime minister of Israel
We had left the girls’ room and were in the middle of the dining room when it happened. There was a monstrous explosion that seemed to be all around us, and a thundering, fulminating sound that penetrated my body as though it were coming from within me.
As the dust began to settle, I realized the explosion had come from my daughters’ bedroom.
Bedroom furniture, schoolbooks, dolls, running shoes, and pieces of wood were splintered in a heap, along with the body parts.
“Bessan, Bessan, where are you? Tell me where you are so I can help you.” But she was now dead, along with Mayar. So was Aya and so was Noor.
I did not realize that tears were streaming down my face. All I know is that my thirteen-year-old son saw the state I was in and gave me a precious gift. He told me not to be sad, that his sisters were happy and with their mother. He meant this; it came from the depths of his faith.
Levana Stern, the Israeli mother of three sons, one of whom was with the IDF in Gaza, tried to blame me for the tragedy, screaming at me, saying I must have been hiding weapons in my home or that some Hamas soldiers must have found a safe haven in my house so they could fire at the Israeli soldiers.
I felt as though my family had been re-attacked, as though my daughters and niece had been killed all over again by this dishonest version of the murderous event.
I wanted the Israeli army to tell me why my home, which had harbored no militants, which was filled with children whose only weapons were love, hopes, and dreams, was fired upon.
One army officer said, “The Israel Defense Forces does not target innocents or civilians, and during the operation into Gaza the army has been fighting an enemy that does not hesitate to fire from within civilian targets.”
These are very sophisticated weapons, and the IDF know precisely what they have targeted. In this case, they had set their sights on a girls’ bedroom.
Then an Israeli official was quoted as saying that I should have left my home before my children were killed. But where were we to go? Mosques, schools—every place was a target.
History repeats itself
There wasn’t one safe place in Gaza.
By the look of the streets of Gaza in the aftermath, you could be forgiven for thinking that every single home must have been a hideout for armed Hamas soldiers.
And in one more breathtakingly cruel addition to this tragedy, I was told that Bessan, Mayar, and Aya couldn’t be buried beside their mother because the Israeli soldiers said no one was allowed to go into that area.
I looked at it as a believer: God had given me my daughters as a trust, and now they were taken back.
the cease-fire that came two days too late,
Cease fire NOW
My three precious daughters and my niece are dead. Revenge, a disorder that is endemic in the Middle East, won’t get them back for me.
As a believer, I feel that I have been chosen to reveal the secrets of Gaza, the truth about the pain of the dislocation, the humiliation of the occupation, and the suffocation that comes from a siege, so that once and for all Palestinians and Israelis can find a way to live side by side.
Palestinians are physically alive, but our spirits are exhausted, our patience is wearing thin, and we feel that we are not being included in this human family, that this human family doesn’t care, so don’t blame us if we don’t listen and don’t behave rationally.
I am very grateful for all the lessons I learned from Bessan, Mayar, and Aya, and for their contributions to many people’s lives, especially mine; lessons that propel me forward with more strength and determination than ever.
The Israeli government has taken responsibility for wrongly targeting my home and killing my daughters, but it has never apologized;
The absence of war does not mean there is peace.
