‘My days just feel wasted in Gaza, living in fear, screaming from the sounds of rockets and bombs’

Like all Palestinians in Gaza, 30-year-old Abeer Harkali has lost everything over the past 12 months, she has been displaced from her home, and again from so-called ‘safe shelters’ numerous times. Her father has been killed, and she lives in constant fear as a result of Israel’s endless bombing and the siege it has imposed on the enclave.

But Abeer has another struggle, she was born with hemiplegia, a condition caused by brain damage or spinal cord injury that leads to paralysis on one side of the body, and uses a wheelchair as a result.

“Its been a year full of cruelty and torture in its various ways and manners, I left my beautiful home that represented safety and comfort for my family and I, which has now been destroyed completely like the rest of our entire neighbourhood,” Abeer tells MEMO.

Abeer says she was only able to escape Israel’s attacks on her family’s home in northern Gaza’s Shuja’iyya in October last year because her brother carried her to safety.

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She describes her life before the war as being “a simple and normal life that was full of colours”, but the past year has transformed it to one that is “dark, and devoid of any hope”. Palestinians in Gaza are deprived of many things, she says, including the most basic human need; sleep.

“I wish I can sleep safely, without nightmares or the constant sounds of bombings, fighter jets and gunshots by random snipers that never end, plus the insects and bugs that are overflowing in our camp,” she says. “I don’t feel safe enough to sleep at night.”

30-year-old Palestinian Abeer Harkali is among the nearly 2 million Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homes in Gaza in order to stay alive [Abeer Harkali]

A view inside a makeshift tent where displaced Palestinians stay amid Israeli attacks

A view inside a makeshift tent where displaced Palestinians stay amid Israeli attacks

Over the past year, each season has brought with it its own challenges. Summer’s overbearing heat almost killed people, especially as many, like Abeer’s family, are sheltering in tents made of plastic.  Winter had the opposite effect, as the cold paralysed people who had little by way of shelter and no winter clothes to wrap up in. When the rains came, floods were common in displacement camps and Palestinians had nowhere to turn to protect themselves or the few items they had with them.

As a disabled person with various medical needs, Abeer has no access to the medication and other essentials she needs to live in comfort and dignity. Even the electric wheelchair that she relied on and which gave her independence was destroyed along with her home, leaving her reliant on an old second hand manual wheelchair, which she cannot operate herself.

Abeer and her family now live in a tent on the fourth floor of a former UN school. “I live in constant fear, like a horror film, but one that doesn’t seem to have an end,” she explains.

I feel like I am in a jail that I will never be able to leave

she says, highlighting that the only way she is able to leave the shelter is if her brother carries her down the four flights of stairs to the street level.

“Imagine strangers living on top of one another, this has led to so many family tensions, resulting in a high rate of divorce and huge mental pressure,” she says of the living conditions in the camp. “There is also an increase in children begging in the streets, depression and mental health issues have also spread rapidly with suicide on the rise too.”

As Israel continues to besiege Gaza, the cost of basic essentials has skyrocketed, leaving them out of reach for the majority of Palestinians. According to the International Rescue Committee, “All of Gaza’s population of 2.1 million is now in need of humanitarian assistance, and more than two million Palestinians – half of them children – are living without access to sufficient water, food, shelter and medical care.”

“Food is another luxury that very few can afford,” Abeer explains. “The prices are beyond the imagination as many traders are taking advantage of the situation and the few that aren’t, have no choice but to increase the prices to cover their own cost, almost everyone that I know is suffering from malnutrition.”

“No matter how much I try to give you an idea of the crazy prices, you won’t appreciate the severity of the situation. A kilogramme of tomatoes used to cost two shekels [$0.53], today it’s 40 shekels [$10.65] and who knows how much it will cost in a few days, because prices are constantly going up.”

“Most of the time we manage to find zaatar [thyme] and falafel. We don’t eat all of it as we have to ration our food and eat just enough to keep us going,” she says .

It is not just food and water that are out of reach for Palestinians. Sanitary products “are so hard to find, very rare,” Abeer says, “almost like gold and if you are lucky enough to find any then the cost will prevent you from getting it. Thirteen months ago, the price of one pack of sanitary towels used to be around six to eight shekels [$1.60-$2.13], now it’s between 50 to 80 shekels [$13.31-$21.29]!”

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To make do without, she explains, women “substitute sanitary towels which they can’t afford with a cut out cloth from torn dresses they own, which then causes various infections.” These infections, like other illnesses in besieged Gaza, go untreated for lack of medication.

“I have personally witnessed a wounded person having worms come out of his rotten wound, with no medical facilities people are left to die, like my beloved father and so many others.”

“Women are also suffering from acute respiratory issues due to cooking on wood fires and nylon as there is no gas to use for cooking, plus living in very crowded and compact areas has enabled infections and diseases to spread widely.”

But Palestinians have adapted, Abeer explains, sharing cooking utensils with strangers in the same displacement camp and helping one another to get much needed firewood to cook, sometimes even by breaking the legs off chairs in the school to use the timber.

Prior to the war, Abeer was part of a dabke dance troupe, she says most of its members “have died; either by bombs on their homes or because they were shot as they tried to find a refuge or when they went looking for flour or anything to eat.”

We are all awaiting our death, some of us might still look alive but we are dying slowly, no one sees or hears us, we are in a world that is more like a jungle and we are its victims, our crime is being Palestinians.

“My days just feel wasted, living in fear, remembering my previous life before the war. I sit in the corner of my tent crying at what I have lost and the lack of safety I constantly feel,” she says. “I wonder how the world is not bothered about us, why is our blood so worthless?”

But as every day comes to an end and night falls “we begin the daily journey of fear and screaming from the sounds of rockets and bombs.”

That, Abeer says, is what life is like during a genocide.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.