y family is trapped in the Jabalia refugee camp, crammed into a space no larger than 1.4 sq km with more than 119,000 other refugees, with Israeli tanks stationed just 500m away. They are surrounded – drones constantly hovering above, snipers perched in every corner, always watching.
It’s worse than a nightmare, worse than dystopian fiction. My parents, my sister and her family, and my three brothers and their families haven’t left their house in days, except for a few desperate, terrifying attempts to find water. One time, by sheer luck, they managed to get some. Another time, they waited in line for more than eight agonising hours, only for the water to run out before they reached the front.
Every time I speak to them – every couple of days, if I’m lucky and can get through – I can hear the fear gripping their voices, their terror seeping through the phone. They are living in hell. The bombardments are relentless, the explosions shaking the ground beneath their feet. On Thursday, Israeli strikes killed 28 people, including children, at a school in Jabalia.
Each time something like this happens, my family tells me, the blasts are so deafening it feels like the Earth itself is being ripped apart. It’s a constant, violent assault, and they have no idea where the next strike will hit. They don’t know which neighbour’s house will be flattened next or if their own will crumble around them. Trapped in their home, consumed by the fear that at any moment they could be killed, their meagre reserves of food and water are dwindling. They fear this nightmare, this siege, will never end, that they’ll be left to starve, bombed into oblivion, with no one coming to help.
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