Gaza Metropolis – On October 19, a whole lot of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza’s Hamad Faculty in Beit Lahiya heard what everybody within the Palestinian enclave dreads.
“At daybreak, we heard [Israeli] tanks encircling the college, and quadcopters overhead started ordering everybody to get out,” Amal al-Masri, 30, who had given beginning to her youngest daughter so lately she had not named her but when the tanks got here, recalled.
Individuals had been already tense after shelling and explosions all through the night time – the adults too scared to sleep, the youngsters crying in concern and confusion.
“Buildings had been being shelled throughout us,” stated Amal, who lived in a ground- flooring classroom along with her husband Yousef, 36, their 5 younger youngsters – Tala, Honda, Assad, and Omar, all aged between 4 and 11, and Yousef’s 62-year-old father Jamil.
Amal had cradled the infant whereas Yousef held two of their youngest youngsters. Collectively, the adults had prayed.
Now, it was daybreak, and a recording of a male voice talking in Arabic performed by loudspeakers on a quadcopter circling over the college, ordering everybody to come back out with their IDs and palms up.
The quadcopter shot on the buildings and dropped sound bombs, sending individuals right into a panic as they rushed to collect no matter they might. Some fled with nothing.
Yousef, Amal and the youngsters had been among the many first to get to the schoolyard – Yousef and the 4 youngsters held up their IDs and their palms, whereas Amal held the infant in her arms.
Within the chaos, Yousef misplaced observe of his father.
“The quadcopters instructed: ‘Males to the college gate, girls and youngsters within the schoolyard,’” Amal recalled.
The pit
“There have been troopers on the faculty gate with tanks behind them, and extra troopers surrounding the place,” Yousef stated.
He and different males aged greater than 14 years, together with some he recognised from close by faculties, had been ordered by Israeli troopers to collect on the most important gate in teams, line up and method an inspection passage with a digicam, often called “al-Halaba”.
“Every man was ordered to method a board with a digicam on it, one after the other,” explains Yousef, who thinks the digicam used facial recognition know-how.
After being registered by the digicam, the person or boy was despatched to a pit dug by Israeli bulldozers, he says.
Over the subsequent few hours, some males had been launched, others had been despatched to a different pit, whereas some had been interrogated.
As for Yousef, he knelt with about 100 different males in a pit close to the college together with his palms behind his again all day.
“The troopers had been capturing, throwing sound bombs, beating a number of the males, torturing others,” he stated. All through, he anxious about his household.
“I used to be deeply anxious about my spouse and youngsters. I didn’t know something about them,” Yousef recounted. “My spouse had given beginning every week in the past and she or he wouldn’t have the ability to stroll with the youngsters. With out anybody to assist, I used to be afraid of what may occur to them.”
When night got here, there have been solely about seven males left within the pit.
Yousef was hungry, drained and anxious, then a soldier pointed at him. “He randomly selected me and two different males; we didn’t perceive why,” Yousef advised Al Jazeera.
“The troopers took us to an condominium in a close-by constructing,” he stated, including that he thinks they had been close to the Sheikh Zayed roundabout.
The lads had been forbidden from talking to one another, however Yousef had recognised them – a 58-year-old and a 20-year-old who had been sheltering in faculties close to Hamad. All through, he stated, the sound of shelling and bombing echoed round them.
“A soldier advised us we’d be serving to them with some missions and could be launched after, however I used to be afraid they’d kill us at any second,” Yousef stated.
‘Utilizing me for canopy’
Yousef and his exhausted fellow captives dozed off sooner or later within the night time, earlier than being jolted awake by the troopers and pushed out of the condominium and into the streets.
He quickly realised that the troopers had been strolling behind him, to make use of him as cowl.
“The realisation that I used to be getting used as a human protect was terrifying.”
After they reached a college that had been emptied by Israeli troopers, he was ordered to open doorways and go into every classroom to verify for fighters who is perhaps hidden there.
The closely armed troopers would solely enter after his “all clear”.
The day continued that manner, with Yousef getting used to “clear” room after room, after which the troopers would set the buildings on hearth.
The entire time, Yousef feared a quadcopter would shoot him, or an Israeli sniper may mistake him for a menace and kill him.
When the day’s searches had been full, he was introduced again to the condominium with the 2 different males and given the second meal of the day, a bit of bread and a few water, identical to the morning.
On the fourth day, Yousef and the 58-year-old man had been ordered to go to a close-by faculty and the Kamal Adwan Hospital to ship evacuation leaflets to individuals sheltering there.
They got an hour and advised {that a} quadcopter could be hovering overhead. As they handed the leaflets to individuals, quadcopters had been saying the evacuation over loudspeakers.
Escape
Yousef determined he would attempt to escape that day by hiding within the hospital courtyard.
“I used to be afraid to return,” he defined. “I wished to flee and discover out if my household was secure, as I had overheard troopers instructing girls and youngsters to go south to Khan Younis.”
He determined to get in a line of males being compelled to evacuate, ready anxiously as time dragged on. The troopers had stated they need to solely be gone for an hour, and it had been a number of.
The road of males was advancing. “I used to be praying they wouldn’t recognise me,” Yousef stated.
Then a soldier sitting atop a tank shot him within the left leg.
“I fell to the bottom. The lads round tried to assist me, however the troopers shouted at them to depart me,” Yousef recollects.
“I clung to one of many males, then a soldier stated to me, scolding: ‘Come on, stand up and lean on this man and head to Salah al-Din Avenue.’”
Regardless of the ache as he hobbled away, Yousef was in disbelief that the soldier had not killed him. “I anticipated to be killed at any second,” he stated.
Somewhat additional on, he was taken by a Palestinian ambulance to al-Ahli Arab Hospital for remedy.
Reuniting
Amal, who had taken the youngsters to the New Gaza Faculty in al-Nasr within the west of Gaza Metropolis, heard at some point that Yousef was at al-Ahli Hospital.
She rushed there, relieved after having suffered by days of conflicting experiences as some individuals stated they noticed him detained, whereas others stated they’d seen him elsewhere.
She had barely made it to al-Nasr, she advised Al Jazeera over the cellphone.
On the day the household was separated, she says, the ladies and youngsters had been stored within the schoolyard for hours.
“My youngsters had been terrified. Many youngsters had been crying. Some had been asking for meals, water. Moms pleaded with troopers for meals and water, however they simply yelled at us and refused.”
Within the afternoon, the Israeli troopers moved the ladies and youngsters to a checkpoint with a digicam.
“They advised us to stroll out 5 at a time,” Amal stated, describing how her 11-year-old daughter Tala was held again to hitch the group after her.
“She began crying and calling, ‘Mama, please don’t go away me,’” Amal recounts, her voice shaking.
They had been ultimately advised to stroll south on Salah al-Din Avenue.
“The tanks surrounding the college had been overwhelming – I believed to myself: ‘God! An entire brigade of tanks has come for these defenceless civilians.’
“My physique was exhausted – I had given beginning solely every week earlier, and I may barely carry my child, a lot much less the few belongings we had.”
As tanks rumbled round them, they kicked up waves of mud and sand. “With all of the mud, I stumbled, and my child lady fell from my arms onto the bottom,” Amal recollects, telling how she screamed and the older youngsters cried when the infant fell.
Finally, she left all their belongings on the highway; she was too weary to maintain carrying them. She wanted to get her youngsters someplace secure.
“My four-year-old son didn’t cease crying: ‘I’m drained, I can’t do it.’ We had no meals, no water, nothing.”
Early within the night, she reached New Gaza Faculty with different displaced individuals from the north.
Amal, Yousef, and their youngsters are collectively now, in a classroom on the faculty.
Yousef spent two days within the hospital and, after 13 stitches, walks cautiously with a limp.
Yousef’s father Jamil has been lacking because the day the troopers got here to Hamad Faculty. He heard from some folks that his father had been taken prisoner, however he doesn’t know.
Their child daughter, unnamed once they had been compelled to depart northern Gaza, has been named Sumoud, “steadfastness”, a logo of their refusal to depart.
