BT'selem. Testimony: one year after operation Cast Lead family is still living in a tent
Reageer (0)Testimony: One year after Operation Cast Lead, the al-'Athamneh family , from ‘Izbat ‘Abd Rabo, is still living in a tent, December 2009
Nawal al-'Athamneh , 59
On 8 January 2009, around noon, an Apache helicopter fired a missile that struck my son Ra'id’s house. Ra'id and his family, ten people, were at home, but only his little daughter was wounded, God had mercy on the others. After the blast, I gathered all my children and their families at my house.
We didn't have running water. On 27 December, the army bombed the well east of Jabalya, and there hadn't been running water since. We used the water that was in the water tanks. On 9 January, my sons’ wives and six small daughters went outside with containers and white flags. They wanted to fill up the containers with drinking water, but tanks fired at them, and they ran away before managing to fill them up. We were forced to drink the little that was left in the water tanks. There were about 30 liters of water in the tanks, but they were at the bottom of the tanks and were polluted.
On 11 January, we split up and my sons and their families went to separate houses, so if one house or a particular room was bombed, we wouldn’t all be killed. That evening, around six o’clock, we heard soldiers knocking on the door of our neighbor, Kamal Abu Namus, who wasn’t at home. We heard them enter the house and heard shots fired inside. The shooting struck a gas canister next to the house, but, thank God, the canister was empty due to the shortage of gas. Planes were flying around overhead. I can’t describe how frightened we were. The women and children were crying and screaming.
A few minutes after that, soldiers came toward us. My husband heard them talking, saying that the house was full of people. One of them said to another: “Go inside, I know there are people inside.” In the meantime, two Apache helicopters landed on a hill in ‘Izbat ‘Abd Rabo, and the soldiers went there, leaving us. That night, I decided that we would all leave the house. I could no longer bear the fear and panic, with small children, without electricity and water, and without enough food for all of us.
The next day, 13 January, I took a big white flag, two meters X 1.5 meters in size, that was attached to a long pole. Two small boys and one small girl held flags, and we all left the house. After a few minutes passed, the soldiers opened fire. We were very stunned, but we weren’t hit, and my husband said that if he died, we should leave him there. We continued walking, frightened, with flags waving. It was hard to walk on the roads because they had been torn up and liquid sewage was flowing along them. We walked east and then north, to Beit Hanun, a distance of about five kilometers. We stayed there with relatives until the war ended.
When we returned to our houses, they were completely destroyed. Some were bombed and some were bulldozed..It was all rubble, Everything was destroyed: the houses, the furniture in the five houses, the clothes, household items, as well as the three Mercedes taxis and the olive trees that provided our livelihood. The land and the houses had been torn up by heavy machinery. We were left with the ruins in the cold, without electricity and water, and without the minimum needed to live in dignity, like we had previously.
We set up a tent and for the first five months lived without electricity because the power lines had been bulldozed. We used candles for lighting and made a bonfire from wood we gathered from the doors of the destroyed houses to warm water and for cooking. Later, we hooked up to electricity, but the connection apparatus is exposed to wind and rain. This is dangerous and is liable to cause a short circuit or destroy the electrical devices. Also, the power often goes off, making it hard to maintain a daily routine. It is dark in the tent and hard to see in the daytime and at night, so my small children have difficulty doing their school homework.
This is the second winter that we have lived in a tent, and it is cold inside. It doesn't matter how many clothes you put on, you always feel the cold. We are in an open area, and there are no houses around us to block the cold. The cold air penetrates into the tent because it is not sealed, and we don’t use a heating stove because the tent and the items in it are flammable and might catch on fire. When it rains, in addition to the cold, water leaks into the tent or floods it, and we’re constantly afraid that our things – our clothes, household items, food, bedding – will get wet.
The bathroom and shower are also a big problem. They are outside the tent, which is difficult because of the weather. The shower, which is exposed, is made from blocks, one on top of the other, without cement binding them, so a strong wind might knock it over onto somebody. It is impossible to enjoy the shower. Many times, we put off taking a shower as much as possible to avoid the unpleasantness.
I have a very hard time working in the kitchen. Rain falls on the utensils and food, and when it hits the sand floor, it ends up dirtying everything. This means that I have to wash the utensils two or three times a day. This is very tiring, and takes lots of time, which takes me away from doing other things that have to get done. We have a constant feeling of dirtiness and poor hygiene because of the sand floor. Flies and insects are all around us and the food. The dust gets over us and our things. We feel we’re living like animals, and not like human beings in 2009. We don’t know how to live in a tent. Our life has become like tar. It is hard and awful living without anything pretty. Everything is black.
It’s been almost a year, and we are still living in a tent, and we don’t know how long this will last. We lack any sense of stability or security, and we worry all the time. Our life is one of expectation, fear, and difficulty. We can’t get building materials because the crossings are closed all the time, so we can’t rebuild out house that was destroyed in the war. My husband is building two rooms from mud bricks, and we hope they’ll hold up in the winter. What can we do? We can’t leave our land and rent somewhere else, we can’t rebuild the house, and we can’t continue to live in a tent.
I am tired and frustrated from living like this, and every time I remember the house, I am filled with pain.
Nawal al-'Athamneh , 59, who is married and has fifteen children, lives in ‘Izbat Abed Rabo, in the northern Gaza Strip. She gave her testimony to Muhammad Sabah at the tent that she currently live in on 1 December 2009.
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