Imelda Ryan
I married into a Palestinian family 36 years ago; my husband is from Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip.
I have four adult children. In those 36 years, we have witnessed every kind of inhumane, tortuous, harsh, and psychologically destructive behaviour of the Israeli state.
What our family is enduring now in Palestine, and those of us outside are watching it all helplessly, is unlike anything experienced before. Today (Tuesday, October 17), the al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, was bombed.
An unprecedented attack on this civilian population. Our family lived in central Gaza. They have fled their homes several times and been told to go to the South. Central Gaza has been subject to constant bombing, which means there will be no home to go back to.
My brother-in-law has taken his family to numerous locations. He is now sheltering in a flat in the south with no electricity, water, or food coming in. He keeps his phone charged using a car battery. We are petrified that we will lose this communication soon. He lives in a small flat with seven other families.
He has described running from place to place with hysterical, traumatised children that he struggles to console.
He cannot keep them safe; he has no reassurance to give them about when the bombs will stop, no explanation of why there isn’t electricity, fuel, food, or water.
No explanation of why, when they see disasters in other countries and humanitarian aid pours in, why are they not receiving that?
How do you explain that to young children? He and the rest of the family living in Palestine can, hour-by-hour, hear the drones and the bombing.
Having gone to the South, Israel gave themselves permission to bomb them there as well.
This week, families are writing farewell letters to family members. They are having to make a agonising decision if it is better to stay together and die as a whole family rather than leave children without parents.
They are being placed in a state of mind that no person or parent should have to go to. We outside Palestine must wonder ‘What next?’, ‘Will family members die?’
What will be the aftermath of the destruction? We have been made powerless to help right now. We also cannot keep them safe. There are no words to describe something that is beyond heartbreaking.
There is no way to describe the present pain and future pain of all the destruction to the Palestinian mind and their right to peace in their own homeland.
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