Jabaliya refugee camp

Abu Khaled’s village is just 15 kilometers from Gaza, yet he may never see it again.

So far, my own family is okay but I feel shy to speak about my family. I don’t think like that. Everyone in Gaza is my family. We are suffering collectively as we are being punished and forgotten collectively, and we are dying. It is very dangerous here and everywhere in Gaza. By 5pm the streets are empty. Not even one person goes out of their homes in my area. But even in our homes, we are not safe. I swear sometimes I can smell death around us. Adham Khalil writes from the besieged Gaza Strip.

This morning I was at the kitchen making breakfast for my mother and myself at my apartment near al-Kholafa’ Mosque in Jabaliya Refugee Camp (population 106,000), north of Gaza. The provocative buzz of Israeli drones have not ceased since more than ten days hovering over the camp. I was carrying the teapot when an unprecedented explosion shook our quarter. The glass of the windows smashed, my mum shouted at me but I did not reply as I was frozen and carefully listening to the cries of the neighborhood children.

On the 8th of September, Israeli occupying forces made an incursion into the Jabaliya refugee camp - now home to 80,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendents for the past 56 years. The operation went on for three long days In the first few hours of the incursion 4 people were killed and tens of others were injured, many of them seriously. According to physicians who tended to the wounded the Israeli soldiers targeted the chest, abdomen and lower limbs, of boys who were throwing stones at the army tanks and bulldozers while they demolished homes and razed agricultural land. 30 houses were destroyed — 10 completely and 20 partially — which left at least 200 people homeless. The youngsters were protesting in their own way against the presence of the occupying forces in their town, some of them didn’t live to tell the tale.