Atef Abu Saif has been Palestinian Authority’s minister of culture since 2019 and is the author of six novels. He was visiting Gaza with his son, Yasser, when Israel started bombarding the strip in response to Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel. He has been keeping a diary, which he has been sending via WhatsApp to his publisher, Comma Press, in Britain. This is an edited excerpt.
Sunday 29 October
Everyone wakes up early. Someone had shouted from the street, at around 4.50am: “The signal is back. The internet too!” I heard the shout while I was sleeping and thought it was part of my dream. The next thing I know, my neighbour Faraj, at whose house I’m sleeping, is waking me. I jump up, thinking we have to evacuate. He says my brother Ibrahim called him and wants me to call my wife, Hanna. I say: “Call?” He nods. So it wasn’t a dream. I phone Hanna. She is crying with happiness, after two terrible nights of not being able to communicate with us.
The street is once again full of people. Hundreds of them. It looks like Eid. Everyone is on their phone calling other parts of their family, as so many families are divided. Everyone is happy, even if only for a few minutes. No one cares that the attacks are continuing and the explosions are getting louder. Everyone is taking a break from everything else that is happening and just checking if their own relatives are OK.
Last night, when the Israelis hit buildings in Shati refugee camp and Nasser quarter, the injured and dead had to be transported on three-wheeled bicycles or dragged along in carts by animals. In wartime, everyone is an untrained medic and everyone is part of a ready-to-go rescue team. But when the mobile networks were cut, no one could call anyone for help. People had to shout at the top of their lungs, from one block to another: “Help needed on Rasam Halawa Street,” someone would call. “Pass it on.” And then someone from the next block over would shout it to the next block, until it travelled, block to block, window to window, all the way to the nearest civil defence station or ambulance team, who would then race into action.
Talk about the impact of the land invasion is getting more serious. While driving to al-Shifa hospital, I see people heading eastwards, away from the coast. Women carrying their kids on their backs and other possessions on their heads; all are moving away from the sight of the gunships. But in what direction? To the tanks on the east side? A teenage girl holds the hands of her two younger brothers, dragging them along, imploring them to walk faster. A woman stops to tell us how they had witnessed hell the night before. “We saw death,” she says. Many have taken the road south towards Jalaa Street. But they seem lost. We are all lost.
Monday 30 October
My sister, Eisha, has run out of gas at her house. From the moment she gets up, she is consumed by thoughts about how she’s going to refill the cylinder. Maher, her husband, has to go to his father’s flat just to prepare the coffee. I tell her that my apartment in al-Saftawi has two cylinders – one in the kitchen and the other for the boiler. We have to go and bring one back. This is extremely dangerous. I’ve stopped going back to the flat, when previously I had been popping in for a couple of hours to eat and relax on my bed for half an hour before another night on the floor in some safer part of town. Since the start of the land invasion, tank shells and gunships have been hitting al-Saftawi continually. “It’s too dangerous,” Eisha protests.
We drive cautiously through Saftawi Street then turn left on to the street where my flat is. My brother Mohammed and son, Yasser, run into the building to fetch the cylinder. I suggest that, on exiting the building, Yasser carries a mattress and pillow with him so any drone operator watching from above thinks we are just evacuating. I know this won’t necessarily dissuade them from wiping us out, but you have to try to make it easier on yourself in any small way you can.
After waiting in the car for what seems like an eternity, I see them in the rearview mirror running out of the building, Mohammed with the cylinder and Yasser with a mattress on his head and a pillow in his hand. They look as if they’ve just robbed a bank.
Eisha is ecstatic to have the gas again. “I think we’ve earned another coffee,” I say. She makes it, but I don’t drink mine, remembering I could really do with some sleep tonight.
During the day, the Israeli forces attack the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, south of Gaza City. This facility, closed since the strike, was the only hospital where people with cancer could get treatment. About a week ago, al-Shifa hospital administrators said they were considering moving some of the injured there. It’s always a question of priority; they need more beds for the newly injured. My wife’s sister Huda’s daughter, Wissam, was supposed to be among them, but for some reason they left her in al-Shifa.
She is one of the only members of that family to survive an attack in the first week of the war, although she had to have both legs and a hand amputated when she was eventually rescued from the rubble. “See,” I joke to her when I visit, “you should have been one of those that got moved. Then where would you be right now?” “I should have been killed three weeks ago,” she replies grimly.
There are still a handful of journalists inside al-Shifa, their camera lenses pointing resolutely at the emergency hall entrance where the injured arrive. For journalists, it is dangerous to be out on the streets. If you have a bulletproof vest or helmet with “Press” written on it, it’s like you’re a walking target. Most of the images of Gaza that make it on to Al Jazeera or other Arabic networks are wide shots, taken from rooftops. And there are no western journalists here at all. This has left a vacuum into which local, citizen journalists have emerged.
This new crop of journalists joke that they landed their jobs by simply chronicling the attacks on their own homes, then their videos found their way to the larger media channels, who were desperate for field reporters. Now, for example, three of Al Jazeera’s main correspondents are citizens-turned-reporters based at hospitals.
In the morning, we learned of new attacks in the north and Gaza City. The city gets smaller as the land invasion continues. Bilal is the manager of the Press House, which was set up by independent journalists to host discussions, debates and offer facilities for journalists. He asks, slightly provocatively: “Is it time to head south?” My reply never changes: “Nowhere is safe. It’s the same all over.” But I offer him a compromise: “When the soldiers are in Rimal and the tanks are parked in the street outside, when they march us all out and force us at gunpoint to head south, then we’ll move. Maybe.” At least in that scenario, I explain to him, we won’t be killed fleeing.
Tuesday 31 October
Last night I tried to go to sleep early. Winter is hard upon us and the nights are long, and what with the shelling and bombing right now, they currently seem endless. During daylight hours, you can see people, talk with them, assess the damage around your house, but once the sun sets you become imprisoned in whatever building you’ve taken refuge: no electricity, no TV, no internet. All you hear are the explosions, the never-ceasing buzz of the drones, and the roar of F-16s careering past. Everyone’s favourite time, right now, is when the sun rises: it’s the moment you realise you’re still alive.
Wednesday 3 November
This is the first time I’ve been to al-Shifa hospital early in the morning. It’s hard to know where to step as I walk down the corridors. People are sleeping everywhere, most on the ground, some covered with sheets, a few lucky enough to lie on mattresses they’ve managed to bring from the ruins of their homes.
Navigating the staircase is even more difficult as these seem to have been turned into private homes. In a corner, at the end of one corridor, a young woman is preparing sandwiches for her still-sleeping kids. She spreads the small chunks of bread with chocolate. The steam rising from a kettle she has brought with her reminds me of normal mornings. In its simplicity, this scene makes me long for normality.
It was 7.30am when I set off for Jabalia this morning. A few bakeries appeared to be operating, and the queues outside them were longer than ever.
I have now learned the names and addresses of every supermarket and grocery shop in both Gaza City and Jabalia camp. In the past few weeks I’ve become an expert in them, visiting shops and supermarkets I’d never heard of before, let alone been to. But as stock has dwindled, so has the number of stores. So it’s normal to go into a supermarket one day and find it closed the next. Now, I can count the number of supermarkets still open in the whole of Gaza on two hands.
Tonight, the Israeli army is said to have completely isolated Gaza City and the northern governorate from the south. The tanks are patrolling Rashid Street, the coastal road that runs between Gaza City and Wadi Gaza. It is one of the places where Gazans love to promenade alone and enjoy the view of the sea and sunset. No one can resist walking there and taking photos. Now, the street is just another site of violent destruction.
Yesterday, the Israelis dropped leaflets over Shati camp, just north of Rimal, demanding people evacuate. The leaflet said this was going to be their last warning before an attack of “overwhelming force”. The colour of the leaflet was red. The first wave of leaflets was green, the second yellow. Our life and destiny is colour-coded it seems. But this is an old tactic of the Israelis. If you ever try to cross the Erez checkpoint, the soldiers use a colour scheme to detect your individual level of danger to them. Likewise, in the West Bank, if you apply for a work permit for the settlements or in Israel (where most of the work is), you can check your own name on their website. If you’re green, you’re clear to work. Yellow, you’re under inspection. Red, forget about it.
Yesterday, a housing complex in Bureij camp, south of the Wadi, was hit, and my neighbour Faraj’s wife’s entire immediate family was wiped out. Her mother, her two brothers, and two sisters. All of them, with kids as well. Faraj’s wife had spent two weeks with her family in Bureij too, but moved into a UN shelter in Rafah, so she survived. For three hours, we all tried to get through to her on the phone, so Faraj could console her, but the signal was too weak.
Thursday 4 November
It was nearly sunset when I saw death up close. He came to embrace me and take me off on a one-way trip. I was talking with my friend, Mohammed Hokaiad, who is staying in al-Shifa to take care of his injured wife. I had met him near the main gate of the hospital after visiting Wissam. For 10 minutes we talked, exchanging prayers and promises of future meetings, when a missile hit the gate of the hospital.
This was around seven or eight metres from where I was standing. Not long before, I had been chatting with a young man I used to know back when I was a teacher. He is from Shati camp, but now was sheltering with his family at the hospital. He suggested I should move here with Yasser. It was a typical wartime exchange, short and to the point. Then I carried on walking a few metres to where I met Mohammed and we heard the boom. We’re always hearing explosions, of course, and each time we feel it’s just a few metres away, but this time it was.
We all jumped and fled in different directions, not knowing where the attack had struck. Then we looked up and followed the plume of smoke back down to the gate. People were shouting, screaming and running. The area is crowded at the best of times, with ambulances coming and going, families, salesmen, cars, journalists, doctors and nurses. The Israelis knew exactly what they were doing.
I had to run, but where to? Mohammed was afraid that this would be the first of a “ring of fire”, meaning they’d strike the other end of the block, to the north, then to the east, before destroying the whole area inside the ring. “We have to get out,” he shouted. Usually, these rings are actually square-shaped blocks, with main roads on all four sides. So we ran as fast as we could to the north. Luckily, there was no “ring of fire” on this occasion, or we might not have survived. As we drove east towards Jalaa Street, I kept thinking that if for some reason I had carried on chatting with the young man I used to teach, I – like him – would be history now.
Later, we heard that 16 people were killed in the attack and the ambulances were damaged. I phoned Hanna to ask if she managed to communicate with Wissam to see if she was OK. She is, and I keep hoping she will be sent to Egypt for further treatment. Every day, new patients are transported there through the Rafah border. Wissam’s name is on the list. She had been promised to leave today, but in a short note we have been told it may be tomorrow. News of the delay breaks her, as here in al-Shifa she is treated without anaesthetic. She screams all day long from the pain. For her, the worst moment is when the nurses clean her wounds or when she has to undergo more surgery. She was told that everything was ready for her to be transported to Arish hospital in the Sinai. But now, since the Rashid coastal road has fallen under the Israeli tanks’ fire, movement towards the border is slower than ever. Yesterday afternoon, dozens were killed while heading south via the Rashid road. The images of their mutilated bodies (or, should I say, body parts) scattered across the road were shocking. All they were doing was what the Israeli army had asked them to do: move south. Being blown to bits was their reward.
Back in the Press House, I prepare my coffee. I don’t let the water boil, as this will use too much gas and we grow wary of running out as there will be nowhere left to refill the cylinder. The water is warm. That’s good enough.
The Fakhoura schools in Jabalia were hit this morning and 12 people killed. The same schools were hit during the 2009 and 2014 wars. Hundreds of families are living there. Hundreds believed the UN logo would help them. What a world.
Atef Abu Saif has been Palestinian Authority’s minister of culture since 2019 and is the author of six novels
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