The Electronic Intifada 28 June 2024
Palestinians walk between the rubble of houses in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 17 June. (Omar Ashtawy / APA Images)
Mustafa al-Farra, 46, is the manager of al-Iskan Bank in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. At the beginning of December, he heard rumors about possible break-ins in the area and he went to go check on the bank.
While there had been no robberies, he did notice something else: Eastern Khan Younis was a ghost town.
On 3 December, the Israeli military had ordered an evacuation of that area, home to over 350,000 people.
Now, a week after the evacuation order, the Israeli military was relentlessly bombing Khan Younis, including the al-Farra family’s neighbors.
When the family next door to the al-Farra home was displaced from their home by Israeli attacks, Mustafa suspected that his family might be the only ones remaining on their street.
What he did not realize then was that his family was quite possibly the only one remaining in the entire Sheikh Nasser neighborhood.
Mustafa had understood the Israeli evacuation orders clearly, but he refused to live through what his grandparents had endured during the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine. He believed that the goal of this forced evacuation was to relocate all of Gaza’s population to the Sinai in Egypt.
Thirty-four family members had sought refuge at the al-Farra family home since 7 October, including Mustafa’s five children, several elderly individuals and his brother who had cancer. Mustafa felt responsible for their lives as they weighed their options on what to do next.
Would they make the risky and difficult evacuation to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where they would live through the hardships of displacement?
Or would they remain at home?
“Either a decent life or to die with dignity” is what Mustafa told his family members.
The family, ultimately, decided to stay home, and they began to prepare for the Israeli ground invasion of Khan Younis.
Preparing for a ground invasion
The family bought and stored food supplies and water that would be enough for a few weeks, the time they thought the invasion would last.
But they started to run out of water in mid-December, after shrapnel broke through their water tanks. The Israeli drones also targeted water tanks atop the roofs of neighboring houses.
“We saw the water falling from our rooftop, and we couldn’t get one sip of it even though we were extremely thirsty,” said Etimad Shaat, Mustafa’s wife.
“The Israeli drones were fully monitoring our area and we suspected they knew we were in the house.”
The family kept the fresh water for the sick and elderly while the rest of the family drank the dregs from their tank, which was contaminated with particles from the explosives.
Then, on 26 December, the al-Farra family heard Israeli soldiers on the opposite street.
The whole family gathered in the living room and remained absolutely quiet.
“Bombs were dropped everywhere and the Israeli soldiers opened fire in every direction, some of which hit our house,” Mustafa said.
“They were showing off their ammunition because there wasn’t [anyone] firing back.”
The bombing and shooting lasted nearly three hours. After a while, it started again and lasted for 10 hours.
By this point, the family’s water and food supplies were running low and Mustafa knew that their survival journey had just begun.
Running out of water
It was January, and the Israeli army had seemingly taken over Mustafa’s neighborhood.
After spending all of December living off the supplies in their home, the family had run out of water.
Mustafa knew that his neighbor Abu an-Naba had a water tank inside his home, but it seemed impossible to get there due to the Israeli tanks and attacks.
Yet Mustafa had noticed a period of time when the two armored tanks that patrolled the area went away every morning, leaving him a span of 20 minutes before they returned.
“I took along my nephew Jihad every time I went out, as he goes first to check if the doors [of Abu an-Naba’s house] were open,” said Mustafa. “We found them wide open due to the massive bombing.”
Family members kept watch at the windows for drones and Mustafa and Jihad were cautious in every step to their neighbor’s house.
They would walk on piles of rubble to get there. Even though it was a short distance, the path across the street felt like the difference between life and death.
They were able to secure more water for the family but now they had to worry about their dwindling food supply.
A devastating loss
The next several months passed slowly.
At the end of January, Mustafa managed to walk to the northern side of Sheikh Nasser. He miraculously survived an airstrike that targeted a house next to him while he was on the street.
The al-Farra family received food aid from the son of a friend. The young man risked his life to bring some flour to the family on his bicycle, but even then, the family had to carefully ration, as feeding 35 people would require much more flour.
All of February, the family remained indoors except for occasional excursions to find food and water. During those trips, Mustafa was shocked by the levels of destruction caused by Israeli attacks.
March, though, brought new hardships for the family.
The night of 2 March, Mustafa’s brother Muhammad died of colon cancer. This death was not inevitable; it was caused by a lack of access to a hospital or doctors.
When the Israelis continued their bombings that night, per usual, the family hardly paid attention. Their only concern was how to bury Muhammad.
“I thought of burying him in the backyard until things cooled down,” said Mustafa, “but I wanted to honor him with a decent burial ground. This meant another risky adventure.”
Mustafa listened to the Israeli radio channels all night to see what the troops were doing on the ground.
When he learned that the army was gradually crawling toward the Hamad City buildings, northwest of Khan Younis, he decided to go out to bury his brother the next morning.
The plan was set: the kids would watch for drones, Mustafa would wait for the tanks to move to the next street and Jihad would help him carry Muhammad’s body.
A family friend drove him to the European Gaza Hospital in southeastern Khan Younis.
Mustafa managed to bury his brother and returned home with food, supplies and water.
Later in March, after the Israeli army had left the city center of Khan Younis, Mustafa took his family down their street for the first time in four months.
It seemed as if the entire neighborhood was a pile of rubble.
“We have heard every single bomb dropped on our city,” Etimad said, “but as we went out, the scenes of destruction exceeded our expectations.”
As neighbors began to return to Khan Younis in April, the al-Farra family was able to tell them their story, about how they had survived the siege.
Qasem Waleed El-Farra is a physicist based in Gaza.
