‘In this war, there is no choice but displacement’

When this war began, I imagined it would last a week or two. Friends living abroad would call to check on us and I’d reassure them that before long, our lives would return to normal. There was no need to leave our home of 20 years. My mother has a problem with her spine and struggles to walk. And anyway, it would all be over soon.

Each morning, I’d arrange our house in the al-Fukhari neighbourhood, east of Khan Younis, and prepare breakfast for my parents. Then I’d read the Quran, fill the water tanks by hand and wash our clothes. It wasn’t easy, but at least we were at home. It was the home we’d moved to when I was 10 years old; the year before, Israel had destroyed our previous home.

Remaining in our home gave me some peace of mind but, perhaps more than that, I was afraid to leave it. As a child, I’d been displaced many times. Each time there was a war, we’d go to my grandfather’s building in the refugee camp in Khan Younis. This time, I was determined not to leave.

But that was many months ago and in this war, there is no choice but displacement.

Smaller steps

At first, our displacement came in smaller steps – when the bombing grew too loud and the walls of our house started to shake, we’d leave for the night, fleeing to the European Hospital just 10 metres (33 feet) away. In the mornings, we’d return to our home, relieved to find it still standing.

Then, in December, my sister, her husband and their two children came to live with us. Their apartment – in the same building we’d fled to as children – had been bombed.

As the war continued and the death and destruction grew, the prospect of displacement loomed larger. Still, I consoled myself with the thought that this nightmare would end before we were forced to flee.

Then it came, on July 1 – the order from the Israeli army to evacuate our neighbourhood.

I felt as though the weight of a mountain had been placed on my chest. I didn’t know what to say. I looked at my mother but all she could do was pray.

We had nowhere to go.

The refugee camp we’d fled to so many times before had been the site of an Israeli ground operation between January and March. Tents stood amid the rubble. It was almost impossible for the young to survive in such conditions. How would my frail, elderly parents manage to?

The remains of my sister’s home

We had only one option: the remains of my sister’s home. We collected what we could from our home, knowing that almost everything in hers had been destroyed. We cried as we left – tears for what we were leaving behind and for what we feared we would find.

On July 2, we made our way to the camp. But when we reached it, we didn’t recognise anything. The streets bore no resemblance to what had been there before. It was like an earthquake had struck, bringing down buildings, and leaving the ground strewn with rubble.

We eventually found the building and climbed to the fourth floor – to my sister’s apartment.

It has no walls and no ceiling. We covered the spaces where the walls should have been with large nylon sheets although we can still see into – and be seen from – the destroyed street below.

Everything is burned. The kitchen is covered with ash that does not go, no matter how hard you clean it. The ash contaminates everything and turns your hands black.

The toilets were all but destroyed. Only one remains working but it has no door, so we use it as quickly as we can.

There is no water in the tanks. The infrastructure in the camp is completely destroyed, so our day begins at dawn when residents wake early to get water from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, about a kilometre (0.6 miles) from the camp. With the streets destroyed, it is difficult to pull a cart along them. So you must get just what you can carry, although that isn’t enough for the day.

It is almost impossible to imagine living among such destruction. This building feels so unstable and I am constantly afraid that it will give way and fall upon my five-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew.

In those moments it feels like this camp is our destiny – just as it had been all those times before.