Gazan family forced to flee home languishes in war zone
IF ONLY it was the lack of food that compelled Heba al-Haddad and her family to flee their Gaza City home, which it was not.
They had access to clean water and could sustain themselves on boiled peas.
The constant shelling was not the deciding factor either; they believed the stairways would offer protection even in the event of a direct hit on their building.
Even witnessing soldiers forcibly removing neighbors from their homes, some stripped down to their underwear and others taken away for detention, was not enough to persuade al-Haddad to leave Rimal.
Once Gaza City’s most upscale neighborhood, Rimal is now a landscape of destroyed buildings and rubble-strewn streets.
However, it took a unit of 14 Israeli soldiers storming into her apartment to finally force her family out.
They demanded that al-Haddad, her husband, his elderly parents (one partially blind and the other in a wheelchair), their two teenage sons and seven other relatives leave in the middle of the night on March 21.
The soldiers gave them glow sticks and strict instructions: march south with a woman leading the way holding a stick, so soldiers at checkpoints would not mistake them for threats.
Later, al-Haddad discovered that the soldiers had set fire to their house after they evacuated.
“I cannot describe the terror of leaving the house, and we know that outside is a war zone,” al-Haddad said.
She spoke from Rafah, at the far southern end of the Gaza Strip after a harrowing 10hour walk out of the north along the main coastal road, now an obstacle course of craters and debris lined with tanks and snipers.
Witnesses say Israeli troops conducted building-by-building expulsions of residents in nearby neighborhoods during the military’s two-week raid on Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, which triggered furious fighting across the area.
Israeli troops ended their assault on Shifa early Monday, saying they had rooted out Hamas members grouped inside to direct attacks, a claim that could not be independently confirmed.
In many cases, the troops destroyed or set fire to buildings after clearing them of residents, according to witnesses and the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which follows the conflict through researchers on the ground.
Al-Haddad said she saw troops blow up or set fire to nearby buildings after expelling those inside.
A Euro-Med researcher said in a voice message that when he was released from detention by Israeli soldiers in the Shifa hospital, he walked out into fire spreading from buildings surrounding the hospital.
Asked about the reports, the Israeli military said there are no specific procedures for evacuations, only that it “depends on the situation” and if there is an “operational threat.”
The Israeli military did not respond to questions about burning homes, instead saying its troops carry out “demolitions of Hamas infrastructure and other military targets using approved and appropriate means.” It said it could not comment on the specific case of al-Haddad’s family.
Throughout its nearly six-month offensive in Gaza, the Israeli military has largely relied on announcing evacuation orders for large areas through leaflets, text messages or loudspeakers, urging people to leave before ground assaults.