Gaza: Our lives have been paralysed

31 December 2008

Oxfam's Mohammed Ali continues to report from his home in Gaza City on the fourth day of the Israeli military offensive.

At 12 last night, I was sitting by my wife and two children who were fast asleep; there was an hour of quiet; no drones, no attacks. I thought to myself, "could this be the calm before the storm?"

All of a sudden, I heard ten missiles in a row and my house began to shake once more. My wife awoke in a panic and my small son looked at me with terror in his eyes, he did not say a word.

At 2am there was a total blackout in the Gaza strip, save for the light from Israeli attacks. At some point we must have fallen asleep.

As soon as we awoke, we went for breakfast at my parents. My sister told us how her youngest daughter Nada who is 3 and a half had that morning began to draw. Interested by what her child was creating my sister asked to look at it, and motioned to take the picture for a moment "No!" cried Nada pointing at a drawing of an airplane, "stop, this could kill you!" For a moment after I thought of all the immeasurable psychological damage that this conflict has caused children, what have they done to deserve having their precious innocence destroyed? How will this affect them in the future?

Thankfully, my children do not understand what is happening. Although they often cry from fear, my son seeing everyone gathered around, staying up late at night, thinks that we are having a party, he jumps around us and laughs asking himself, "Why are you all together here?" Every time my phone rings, he dances around to the ringtone. Usually, my wife and I leave him with my mother when we go to work but for a few days straight now we have spent every moment with him.

It started raining, I comforted myself for just one moment with the thought that maybe, just maybe the rain would stop the attacks but of course it didn't, many more lives were soon lost.

As I saw on the news the death toll rise, I thought once again, could we all be next?

We live in a constant state of fear that is slowly killing us.

Every time the phone rings, my heart skips a beat, what news will it bring? Will it be a friend's, a colleague's a relative's death, injury?

Sadly, even those who have been killed cannot be mourned properly.

I felt immense guilt that I was not able to attend my neighbour's funeral, but few did, fearing that they might be the next victims while grieving for another. Even during the three days of mourning at his family home, the house was almost empty.

A few hours ago I was asked abruptly for my phone by my sister-in-law, she wanted to talk to her family immediately, they had just received a call by the Israeli military announcing that their home might be hit during the next attack. She told her family to come over to ours. They might come, they might not.

My wife and her brother started arguing earlier today about where they would be most safe in the event of an attack, upstairs with my family or downstairs in their own home. I did not want to tell them that their argument was futile; if a missile hit us there would no longer be an upstairs or a downstairs.

For a moment today, I stepped outside and saw people sitting outside their homes, running for cover at every sound of an attack. Helicopters were overhead, I soon went back inside fearing the worst.

Our lives have been paralysed.