What I Witnessed during my Expulsion from Gaza City.  

By Ibrahim Yaghi, a Palestinian journalist, human rights activist, poet and writer living in Gaza. 

It was 9:00am in the morning on December 11, 2023. I was having breakfast with my family at home on el-Meshal street in the el-Remal neighborhood of Gaza City when my brother’s phone rang. My cousin Hesham answered the phone. "Hello, who is this?", he asked. 

An Israeli soldier replied in Arabic: "hello Hesham, this is the Israeli army.” 

The room fell silent. Not before long, my mother, aunts and cousins broke out into tears. 

“You must leave your home now and go to the humanitarian corridor,” the Israeli occupation soldier said. “You must bring your IDs and a white flag. Leave now." 

Somehow, the Israeli army knew to call my brother’s phone and also knew my cousin Hesham would answer. The Israeli military seems to know everything about us.

In fact, the Israeli military has admitted this. They know where we are at all times. They know which Palestinians will be killed in every air strike. “Everything is intentional,” said one Israeli military source with first-hand experience bombing Gaza. “We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

After the Israeli soldier finished talking, my cousin Hesham replied, "my family has 5 elderly people with chronic diseases and injuries, including my uncle who is paralyzed."

“That doesn't concern me,” the soldier said. “Find a solution and evacuate to the south or you and your family will be under the rubble." He hung up the phone.

At that moment it felt as if I entered a coma, unable to hear, move or think. I was supposed to be helping others in greater need than myself but I was the one in need of help. 

Then, my father shouted: "Pack some clothes and prepare yourself for whatever comes next and help get your uncle ready.”

I gathered some clothes and started to think about the trek south from our home to the El-Bureij camp 20 kilometers away. I carried my uncle over to his wheelchair and put him in. 

As we took him downstairs, I started to tear up. We were leaving everything. Our family’s history was in that home, and we were leaving it, not knowing if we would ever return to it.

We left home at 10:30am. We arrived at Salah El-Din Street, an area designated as a “safe” zone, where we found ourselves amidst thousands of other refugees. We raised a white flag as ordered, the emblem of surrender.

The alleged “humanitarian corridor” could be described in many ways, but humane would not be one of them. I would describe it as a rotten corridor. That’s because the road reeked of rotting human flesh. God knows how many people had already been butchered on that road, their decomposing corpses scattered around us.

The Israeli army ordered us to walk south. There were so many displaced people everywhere I got separated from my family. With every passing minute, hunger gnawed at our stomachs, a constant reminder of our desperate plight.

The time was now 2:30pm and I had been walking south for two hours amidst thousands of others. Walking next to me was an elderly man clearly struggling to keep up. He was dehydrating. He stopped to drink some water as he was about to collapse. That meant he was impeding traffic on the road.

Next thing I knew his blood was all over my face. He fell to the ground. He was shot dead in cold blood in front of my eyes by Israeli occupation forces.

Then, I heard the sound of bullets flying everywhere. Israeli soldiers started shooting at us in order to get us to run. 

A few weeks earlier, on Oct. 30th, I suffered a knee injury from the heavy bombardment in Gaza City. My knee got re-injured on Nov. 25th after even more heavy bombardment, and so I was not able to run. 

But somehow, I ran anyway. The pain was unbearable. It got so bad I began to wish I didn’t have a knee at all.

An Israeli tank started moving towards us. As I ran as fast as I could, my knee kept getting worse and worse. Then, I tripped and fell on my head, suffering a head injury. I stood up and started running again until I reached the “safe” side of the rotten corridor. I found my family and we reached the El-Bureij Camp at 5:00pm. I gave every one of them an enormous hug. For a moment, all of the pain in my knee disappeared. 

As we settled down on the unforgiving pavement, the harsh reality of our situation sank in. We were alone, vulnerable and exposed to the elements, living on the streets of the El-zawayda neighborhood, between Deir al-Balah and El-Bureij. Our home that embodied love, tenderness, and cherished memories is gone. 

Now, every night, the roar of explosions overhead shatters the daytime calm. Panic grips our hearts as the sky erupted in flames, casting an eerie glow of chaos and despair. Each day, as death looms menacingly close, my family and I cling to each other, our bodies trembling with fear and desperation, praying that dawn will bring us salvation.