Natalie Abou Shakra: They wait for people to gather at the bomb site...then they bomb again

Monday January 5, 2009

11a.m.

Sitt Wafaa tells me that every time Abdel Aziz is on vacation “something” happens (a “celebration” from the Zionists). We listen that in the ‘Abasan area, central Gaza Strip, they bombed a secluded area. The reporter on the radio said a donkey died! (again, pigeons, donkeys, kousa farms… they are all targeted by the Zionist death machine of war and terror… oh, and the most important thing: Mickey Mouse lunchboxes… remember the first day when they murdered the children coming back from school? Are you noting this down for war crimes tribunal?)
Then he, the reporter, says: we shall never leave our land. Sitt Wafaa replies back to the radio: where can we go you idiot?! (remember the Gaza Strip is an enclosed space, prison-like, reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camps; it actually transferred from a collective prison during the siege, and now it is a concentration camp).

They bombed quite close to us. No one is sleeping at my home. I am the only one sleeping these days- I have gotten used to it. No more fear for my life. A sublimation to another stage of existence for me.
I spoke to comrade Layla this morning, asking her how her ambulance helping experience was. She told me she couldn’t even write. That she couldn’t do anything but hear people screaming.
Beit Hanoun is now under Zionist occupation. Layla told me they couldn’t get through it.

I heard an F16 plane got shot down in Rafeh! I am now celebrating with “Palestinian cookies.”
Dr. As’ad just came in saying there is no bread. We officially have no bread.
Sitt Wafaa told me she put nail polish on. She said she was shy about it, and did it just to feel better. I tell her not to worry, and that from now on, both of us will look our best each day. I told her I shall put on my kohl in solidarity with the nail polish.
So, Mubarak opened Rafeh for the… dead. Yes, Mubarak, La Vache Kiri, just set the dead free.

3:39p.m.

So, there is a bread crisis… we have no bread…Sitt Wafaa tells me that people show their true selves in times such as these (true selves?). Then she speaks about Muhannad, how he brings bread in, and asks for the money to be put forth first. She doesn’t like that.
Abdel Aziz is being naughtier than he is on previous days. He insistently interrupts and teases. I am not bothered with him at all. On the contrary, I think this is the only way for this child to express himself openly. He has nothing else to do: no toys, no friends around (Rima, Raghad and Rita are visiting relatives). The only thing he can do is get traumatized.

6p.m.

They bombed the adjacent building. Ambulances drive by with their loud sirens. They try to squeeze in, after many gather. I go outside, but Sitt Wafaa grabs me from my sleeve. "Don't you know that they wait for more people to gather to bomb again! Get it, now!" I try to calm her down. At the beginning she was the one calming me down, now I am. How did that happen? I hear women screaming and crying, and many are in a state of utter fright. I hear the men crying and screaming for their families to gather. "Where are the children?! Where are the children?!" a man hysterically asks the people around him, some calming him down. So, as I just said and please note this down for war tribunals to try Israel against its war crimes: the Zionist planes, after bombing once, bomb again as they see people gather… they bomb again.

8:18p.m.

The Zionists are using more devastating weaponry now. There is one plane that flies at a very low altitude and it passes by your house, and you feel it is you to be targeted the moment it passes. They are bombing extensively around us… our building is shaking and the furniture moves to the shock.
"We are not going to give in to Israel… to those modern day crusaders. Either martyrdom or victory… Samidoun, samidoun! We shall not be humiliated" says Dr. As'ad to a journalist on the phone.

I am fed up of this! We are in a holocaust, mass killing, devastation and destruction of human kind, death and massacring… I am running out of words in the dictionary of death and terror that the Israelis arranged for us: Lebanese and Palestinians!

They sent us bread today… it was rotten. Dr. As'ad told me that Dr. Haidar is eating rotten bread. "He said that mold is used for making penicillin. So, it must be okay." He joked. So, we are going to heat the bread on the stove and eat, so that the moldy taste is diminished.

Natalie Abou Shakra
International Solidarity Movement
Gaza, Palestine