“Recognizing a State of Palestine is like recognizing someone on their death-bed”

A lot of people ask my opinion and that of Palestinians in Gaza about this recognition of the State of Palestine by the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and later by France. What do the Palestinians in Gaza think about that ? They’re drowning in agony. The Gazans can’t even lift their heads out of that agony to understand what’s going on around them. They don’t even know that those western countries have recognized the existence of a Palestinian state.

And if they did know about it, I don’t think it would exercise them very much. Amidst nonstop massacres and with the bombs falling, thousands of people are trying to get away and find a safe place. Whole families are drowning in the agony of poverty. People don’t have any cash. They sell their women’s jewellery. They sell everything they own. Just to pay for their escape. But to go where ? They have no idea.

We’ve never known anything like it. You fork out thousands of dollars just to find yourself on the street. This plunge into deprivation costs about $5,000 to pay for transportation, rent a piece of land in the south and purchase a tent or a tarp. Many people get together and hire a lorry, as many as six families to one vehicle. Which means they can only take a strict minimum away with them.

Those who leave are fleeing to their death

Chadli, my eleventh floor neighbour, wanted to take everything with him. When the Israelis began bombing the tower-blocks, he went south with his family and all their belongings: the beds, the furniture, even the doors for firewood. Transporting all that by lorry cost him a fortune. He was lucky enough to have found an apartment in the Ain Jalout residences, next to Nusseirat.

An hour after they moved in, they got a phone call ordering them to leave. And the building was bombed. Luckily, Chadli had settled on the first floor and only the upper stories were destroyed. So he stayed in his new apartment where there was nonetheless a lot of damage. Now he is trying to find another place to fall back on. Unsuccessfully so far. I recently spoke to his wife on the phone. She told me, “We have no choice, we’re just going to stay here and wait. We don’t know what else to do now and we have nowhere to go.” That example shows that there is no such thing as a safe place in Gaza. People who can pay are fleeing to their death. We can only choose when and how we die.

Many others are going south on foot, in fear, in panic, since they couldn’t find a lorry, or a place to settle. We’re all drowning in this slow, silent death. Recognizing a Palestinian state is like recognizing a person on their death-bed. They tell us, “There you go ! You’re recognized, now you can expire at ease. You can go proudly because in the end, after seventy years, we recognize you.” It’s really the worst thing we could hear: “Your name is Palestine, we’ll give you a beautiful farewell ceremony and you can disappear.”

The occupied are disappearing

Until now, those western countries have recognized the occupier but not the occupied. It’s good to recognize the occupied at last, but the occupied are in the process of disappearing, and those countries are doing nothing to prevent it. They know we are dying, because the occupiers themselves say so loud and clear. France and the other countries know a genocide is in progress, but all they do is “recognise” us. You can go now because we’ll do nothing to prevent your death.

As for the Gazans, all they think about is surviving one more day. These last few days the flight southward goes on and on. Fleets of lorries chug through the streets of Gaza with loads three to four meters high, which sometimes explains the internet cuts : they regularly tear down the cables stretched over the roads.

After the 48-hour opening of the main north-south highway, the Salaheddin route, the bombing resumed to the east and south of the city. Gaza is gradually being emptied.

A short while ago, the Israelis dropped leaflets right next to my place, near the Ansar roundabout. They ordered us to go south. Many people want to leave, but they don’t have the means. Others could, but they don’t want to go. Often, those who want to stay have already experienced displacement and life under a tent, and they know how horrible that is. Conversely, many of those who want to leave have stayed in Gaza City since the beginning, and they can’t imagine what’s ahead for them. In the south, there is no room left.

Until yesterday, there were no Israeli ground troops in my area. But now whole neighbourhoods are being emptied by the bullets of the quadcopters, by those drones that target people, often followed by massive bombings. There are also remote-controlled armoured vehicles, turned into bombs on wheels that explode just about everywhere. The first targets are always the places where the displaced persons have taken shelter, schools or makeshift camps.

The neighbourhood bellwether

These last few days, the massacres have continued in the North Chati and Sabra neighbourhoods among others. Whole families were wiped out when their homes were bombed, either in Gaza City or further south. My family and I are still at home in our tower block. People around us are undecided. And we have reached a stage I’ve been dreading: I have become a kind of neighbourhood bellwether. Everybody asks me the same thing: are you staying or leaving ? I know that if I stay, many will stay. If I leave, many will leave. It’s a heavy responsibility to bear. I don’t want people to stay at home just because I’m not moving, and bear the weight of what may happen to them.

Many of those who went south were murdered down there, massacred. There is no “humanitarian zone” in the south as the Israelis claim. They are using much more force than usual with an eye to displacing everybody, deporting us out of the country. Right now, I don’t know how things are going to develop, I have no idea. I just hope all this is going to stop.

Translated from French by Noël Burch.