Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman
The Electronic Intifada / July 15, 2024
Sara Bahar and her family were trapped in their home for a week when Israel invaded the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.
All they had to eat was some bread which they baked by burning their own furniture. They had to ration the water they held in a barrel for fear that it would run out.
After a week, a number of Israeli soldiers stormed their house at 2 am.
The soldiers bulldozed a door at the front before entering the house with dogs.
The dogs attacked Sara’s brother Muhammad, who had a disability.
Muhammad screamed. And the soldiers laughed.
Adam and Seif, two of Sara’s other brothers, were handcuffed and blindfolded by the invaders and taken into another room.
The Israelis proceeded to beat the brothers, demanding information about the Palestinian armed resistance.
After a few hours, Adam and Seif were taken away from the house by the soldiers. They remain in detention.
Sara has another brother named Jad who has been imprisoned by Israel since the early stages of the current war.
Her mother begged the doctors to bring a doctor for Muhammad.
Eventually, they brought a man who they claimed was a doctor. That man went into the room where Muhammad was bleeding.
Suddenly, the rest of the family could no longer hear Muhammad screaming any longer. He had been either killed or sedated, the family surmized.
Delivering a message ?
When the man emerged from the room where Muhammad had been, he smiled at the soldiers “as if he was delivering a message,” Sara said.
The soldiers ordered the women in the house to hand over their phones.
“And all the soldiers sat next to each other, looking at the photos [on the phones] and laughing,” Sara said.
During the several hours they spent in the house, the soldiers ate, drank juice and smoked in front of the hungry family.
Before they eventually left the house, the soldiers kicked Sara and used their weapons to beat her in various parts of the body.
The soldiers then ordered her and the other women to leave the house. When Sara’s mother begged that Muhammad be brought to her, a soldier pushed her outside.
The soldier told her that she no longer had a son named Muhammad.
As the women fled the area, Israel kept attacking it with a quadcopter and artillery shells.
The women hid in the ruins of a shop for an hour. When they saw an Israeli bulldozer a few meters away, they left the shop and rushed to an empty house.
Early the next morning, the women headed to the west of Gaza, where Sara’s brother Jibril lives.
Jibril contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross and asked it to ascertain whether Muhammad was alive or dead. The Red Cross informed him that it was extremely difficult to reach Shujaiya.
So Jibril set out to the neighborhood himself, along with two cousins.
“When they arrived at our house, there was a shock,” Sara said.
“They found the remains of our brother [Muhammad],” she added. “He had been left in the house for four days and his body had started to decompose.”
“The room in which he was imprisoned had traces of his blood everywhere. I think he was killed by the soldier they claimed was a doctor – using a gun with a silencer.”
‘Haunted’
Muhannad al-Jamal and his family experienced similar horrors.
On 27 June, Israeli troops surrounded the family’s home in Shujaiya.
The family gathered together in an upstairs room and recited the shahada – a Muslim’s final testament before God – as they feared the house would collapse on top of them.
Suddenly, the soldiers broke into the house and opened fire. They also threw a number of grenades inside the building.
Shrapnel flew everywhere and the family were injured.
Safiya, Muhannad’s 64-year-old mother, was wounded in the chest and started bleeding heavily.
Muhannad and his four sisters rushed toward her and implored her not to die. His sisters begged the soldiers to bring a doctor but they refused.
His sisters were taken outside and the soldiers ordered them to move southwards along Salah al-Din street. It was dark and the sound of bombardment was frightening.
Muhannad was taken into another room in the house. The Israelis told him to remove his clothes.
He was interrogated.
Then he and his mother were taken outside by the soldiers. His mother was carried on a stretcher and placed on the ground.
Next, the Israelis ran over his mother in a tank. She screamed.
“When I saw the tank running over her, my mind shut down,” Muhannad said.
“I was unable to do anything for her. She was killed.”
Despite being hemmed in by tanks, Muhannad managed to escape. He hid in what remained of a destroyed house for hours.
After the tanks withdrew, Muhannad went back to his mother so that he could say a final farewell.
Some dogs were eating her flesh. He took up a metal rod and chased them away.
Muhannad gave his mother a kiss on the forehead and covered her body with a blanket.
Then he fled the area and went searching for his sisters.
“I wish that I had been able to carry her on my back and take her for burial,” he said.
“But I was physically exhausted. I was about to collapse from hunger, thirst and my leg injury.”
Muhannad went to Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, seeking treatment. He found his sisters there.
“We cried over the loss of our mom,” he said. “The sound of her screaming as the Israelis ran over her haunts me all day and all night.”
Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman is a journalist living in Gaza
