She’s from Gaza, and she’s not from Israel: When she meets Um Mohammed, a refugee from a camp for Palestinians
Between tears, she tells us she’s been in Jordan for 46 years. When we ask her where home is, she points – right around the corner. But her heart, she says, is in Gaza.
“I don’t sleep,” she continues. I know what my children did. They broke the TV so I don’t watch it. I get on the phone all the time.
“I don’t cook anymore. She says that she doesn’t like to eat because of what’s happening in Gaza. Two of her daughters are sheltering at a U.N. school in Gaza near Rafah Crossing.
She asked us to identify her as Um Mohammed, because she’s worried about the potential security risks for her daughters who are still living in Gaza. She came to this camp when she got married, but is from Gaza.
An old woman sits with us on the cushions. We realized that she doesn’t know anyone in the room and was following us right into a stranger’s home after she saw us walking the camp.
Rashaideh, Abu Emad Al Din, and the State of Israel during the October 7, 1948 Gaza War: a Palestinian Perspective on Israel and Palestine
Rashaideh says when he does manage to get a call through, his questions and message are simple: “I told them, ‘How are you? Are you living? Take care of your sisters, take care of yourselves.
His family, his children, are all inside Gaza. His biggest priority is just trying to reach them. Internet and cell phone service in Gaza has been disrupted over the past month. Israel, which maintains a blockade on Gaza, hasn’t said if it’s trying to cut off communications.
The man next to Ghawanmeh tells us he was visiting the camp from Gaza for a few months, because his father is from here. He’s not allowed to return to his home because of the war.
The cease-fire deal calls for more aid to be allowed into Gaza. Besides its devastating bombardment, Israel has also imposed a near-total siege on Gaza since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls the territory. Humanitarian situation for the population that pre-dated the war worsened due to restricted deliveries of food, fuel and medicine.
Nonetheless, a young boy circles the room offering each of us small thimbles of Arabic coffee and plump dates on a plate. We begin to talk about the war, and he says he doesn’t want to see a humanitarian pause. His wife is from Gazan and her family lives there.
Many people follow our team into his house. We remove our shoes and sit on brown, flowered cushions lining the wall. In the center of the room, a TV is turned to Al Jazeera Arabic, which is showing footage of the carnage in Gaza split screen with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking about the war.
Many of the people we spoke to in Jordan agreed that a difference between people and their government is a thing that should not be underestimated. In 1945 he was born in Gaza. He was three when his family was forced out during the Nakba, and has been here ever since.
Abu Emad Al Din tells us that America is the enemy, but he agrees to talk to us. The United States government offered billions of dollars in military aid for Israel in response to the attacks by Hamas, and many people in the region feel this way.
As we walk with Musri, we’re approached by an older man wearing a traditional red and white keffiyeh. As we introduce ourselves, he stops and asks, “American?” We confirm.
Samir Musri and his daughter in the Gaza Strip: a Palestinian migrant in the middle of the 1948 Nakba
Many of the residents were born in this camp, and some arrived in Jordan at other moments of conflict, like the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe” – the mass displacement of 1948.
The market is where we find Samir Musri. He is shopping with his eight-year-old daughter. He has resided in this camp for many years. He identifies as Palestinian, from the West Bank. As we strike up a conversation, we’re quickly interrupted by another passerby – an older woman. She says that many people have died in Gaza and that whole families are being eliminated. She tells us no one is helping them, not even fellow Arabs.
He says that children are being massacred and that they’re angry. Hospitals were damaged. There are angry people in the camp.
We came here earlier in November to ask what’s on their minds, as war and violence unfold in places that may be miles away, but that feel central to their identities.
The First Day of the Second-Generation Gaza War: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip And Their Families. A Palestinian Journalist Says That Two Israelis Are Dead
A total of 230 trucks carrying humanitarian aid, medicine and fuel were scheduled to go in on Friday through the Egyptian border, said Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing.
Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, communication has been difficult since Israel bombed the telecommunications tower and sometimes there have been phone and internet disruptions due to fuel shortages or Israeli disruptions.
People are interested in seeing what remains of their homes. They don’t know what happened to relatives after they lost contact with them.
She said people want to go back to see what they can find after their homes have been destroyed.
Nayrouz Qarmout, a Palestinian author from Gaza City in the north, said she fled with her family to the south weeks ago. She said they were trying to figure out if they could come back.
Video posted by local journalists in Gaza showed hundreds of Palestinians carrying bags and bedding items and walking along roads in the southern city of Khan Younis heading to homes in other parts of southern Gaza, at least temporarily.
Crowds of Palestinians poured into the streets in the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis, as the fighting paused. The media reported on Israeli strikes in northern Gaza prior to the cease-fire. The Israeli army’s reported air raid sirens near the Gaza border about 15 minutes after the truce was supposed to start, indicating there could be rockets fired into Israel.
The skies above the besieged territory were free of Israeli warplanes for the first day in seven weeks, a brief respite from what has amounted to one of the most intense bombardments of the 21st century. Israeli forces opened fire on them when they were on the ground trying to return to northern Gaza.
After the cease-fire took effect early Friday morning, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip would go back to their homes to make sure they were still intact and to make sure their relatives were still alive.
An Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, described the same scene, saying an Israeli tank fired at a group of Palestinians at an Israeli checkpoint south of Gaza City on Friday morning and killed two people.
“Displacement of parts of Gaza’s civilian population is permitted only if required for the civilians’ security or imperative military reasons,” said Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. Permanent displacement is a war crime, so the civilian population should be able to return as soon as possible.
On Friday morning, Kareem al-Nasir, 30, joined thousands of other Palestinians trying to return from central Gaza to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip. But as they tried to make their way along a road on foot, he said, Israeli forces nearby opened fire on them. Mr. al-Nasir can’t walk because of the gunshot wound to his leg.
The first day of the Gaza Strip will see 130,000 liters of diesel and four trucks of gas enter from Egypt. “Humanitarian aid will begin to flow from Egypt to the Gaza Strip as soon as the truce agreement enters into force, where 200 trucks, loaded with food, medicine and water, will be entered daily for the first time since the start of the Israeli war on the Strip about fifty days ago,” it said.
Large areas of Gaza have been devastated by Israeli air strikes and tanks since the conflict began, leaving much of the territory’s 2.3 million people without electricity, food and clean water. According to UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency overseeing Palestinians, more than a million Gazans have been internally displaced as a result of the conflict.
A video on social media addressed to the population of Gaza was released shortly before the cease-fire took effect.
The last day and night saw IDF troops on the ground in the air and at sea engaging with terrorists and searching for suspicious structures. The forces hit a terror tunnel route over the past few days.
The Israel Defense Force said it had accomplished its operational preparations according to the combat lines of the pause, as well as destroying a tunnel under the hospital in northern Gaza.
Israel responded with heavy air and ground strikes on the Gaza strip after last month’s Hamas attacks. Israel now owns a large portion of Gaza’s north.
Israel has also not said exactly how many hostages will be freed or how many Palestinians it will release. Hamas says it is prepared to free 13 hostages on Friday in exchange for around 39 Palestinians. There are reports that some 50 Israeli hostages may be released in exchange for 150 Palestinians.
A deal was brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States regarding the release of hostages taken by Hamas during their attack on Israel. In return, Israel will free some of the Palestinian prisoners it holds.
There was no official announcement of the start of the agreement until after 7 a.m. local time. It comes after weeks of Israeli bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians.