I Fled to a City in Southern Gaza. It’s Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen.
Palestinian author and editor Atef Abu Saif—who since 2019 has also served as the Palestinian Authority’s minister of culture in the West Bank—was visiting the Gaza Strip when Hamas launched its Oct. 7 attack, and when Israel then launched its military response on the territory. Saif took shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where he began writing daily diary entries documenting his experiences with friends and family there. Surviving airstrikes on the camp, he recently fled Jabalia to the south. He spent two days in Khan Younis, before moving to Rafah, where he has spent the past week. Slate is publishing three of his diary entries from the days ahead of his move to the south, the third of which is below. Read the first entry and the second.
Wednesday, 22 November (Day 47)
Last night was my first night in the south. When I opened my eyes this morning, I looked around, not immediately sure where I was. It’s the first time this war that I’ve woken and not seen my son Yasser lying beside me. Then I remembered: He agreed to stay in the European Hospital to keep an eye on his grandparents.
Around 3 p.m. yesterday, after setting up my in-laws in the hospital, I decided to go to the Khan Younis camp. I told Yasser to stay with [my niece] Wissam and the others in the hospital. “Just for one night,” I said. There were no mattresses or spare beds at the hospital, he protested. They had a chair at least, I said. Be grateful of that. For me, coming to the south is a nightmare. I don’t have any friends or networks here. Khan Younis is a long way from Gaza City in many senses. And here, I’m completely out of my comfort zone; I worry about where we’ll sleep each night and how we’ll get what we need. Yasser had a chair in the room beside Wassim; that was enough for now, I told myself. I had to sort myself out separately. Mohammed [my brother] had gone already to stay with his wife, who’s staying at her uncle’s house in Rafah. I tried calling my friend Mamoun, who fled from Rimal when his apartment was destroyed in the first week of the war to his family house in Khan Younis. “I was expecting you,” he said the moment he picked up. Outside the European Hospital I stopped a very old, dilapidated car and asked for a lift to Khan Younis. Fuel is so expensive in the south, most cars are now using cooking oil instead of petrol (something they did in Gaza when the blockade first started in 2007), and his car stank. I didn’t know the way to Mamoun’s exactly, so the man said no. I had to walk. I was so angry with the situation generally, the walk actually did me some good. It let me work off some steam. I headed toward the town center and the camp where Mamoun’s house is located.
On the way, I happened to bump into Bilal’s brother, Mohammed Jadallah, a photographer who works for Reuters. [Bilal Jadallah, a friend of the author’s, press freedom advocate, and director of Press House–Palestine, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Nov. 19.] We embraced and failed to hold back tears; the size of the loss we had both experienced overwhelmed us. No one could believe that Bilal was gone. His kids still think he will return after the war.
In the town center, hundreds of people crowded in front of a Western Union office, hoping to pick up cash transferred to them from abroad. Everywhere in Khan Younis there are people queuing for one thing or another. Bread, water, power. I walked through streets I’ve never walked before. The first thing that surprised me was the availability of vegetables. In the truck that brought us to Khan Younis, the woman in the front seat had started crying the moment she saw a grocer’s stall heaving with tomatoes and cucumbers. “It’s been 40 days since I’ve seen vegetables,” she confessed.
Khan Younis is a city that normally hosts 150,000, but today contains a million. There is barely enough room to walk. People have flocked here, not just from Gaza City and the north, but from the villages to the east. I walked for an hour or so until I reached the Red Crescent Hospital. I realized the only way I was going to find Mamoun was if he came and got me. While I waited for him outside the hospital, I saw many friends who had moved here from the north. I had been carrying my laptop bag all day and was more tired than I realized. My back had gotten worse. Back at the European Hospital, I’d asked the doctor for painkillers. He gave me some but said I should only take one while eating. I hadn’t eaten since the day before.
On the way to Mamoun’s house, we talked about the situation in Khan Younis. Despite the apparent abundance of vegetables, many other products are missing, he told me. Things like salt, and coffee. With the division of the Strip into two, the supply chain from the wholesalers in Gaza City had been cut off from Khan Younis.
I had dinner with Mamoun’s family then talked until nearly midnight. I even managed to go on the internet with my phone, something I hadn’t had in two weeks.
This morning I slept all the way through till 9 a.m. As soon as I get up, I go to see Yasser at the European Hospital. He is frustrated from having had a bad night’s sleep on the chair. I make a series of phone calls, checking on [my brother] Ibrahim, [my sister] Eisha, and Mohammed separately. Now we are spread all over the south.
[My friend] Faraj calls to ask if I’ve heard any news about an attack in our street in Jabalia. Someone in Rafah told him that the house next to his house had been hit. He was afraid that his house had been damaged as well. His mother is still on the ground floor. There were many attacks on Jabalia last night, some of them in an UNRWA [U.N. Relief and Works Agency] school where newly displaced people are sheltering. I spend an hour reading the news about the different attacks. The drones never stop hovering above me; the buzzing is continual. Occasionally I hear the sound of explosions, but they are very faint. I shake my head, unsure if these are real or just memories now.
