Among the ashes of war, the tales rise, and among the ruins of Rafah, the truth shouts naked, tender, surrounded by sons and tanks … a witness of a ruthless period.
I did not know that the city which has always had a paradise and a refuge, and I was its son, will one day turn into a ghost town and an open tomb. Rafah, who overlooked the olive trees of the Mediterranean Sea, is today like smoke and a witness to several massacres.
Rafah was a place to breathe and change many people in the city and the sector, I say it in a broken tone. I did not want to say this literary metaphor, but rather I mean the air and the calm that infiltrates almonds in its ornamental trees, and birds of birds above the remaining country of the devastating airport of Gaza.
I say my testimony in a tired voice, every corner of Rafah told me a story. I woke up on the sound of minarets in the Moshbah district, Khirbet Al -Adas, and I walked a long walk between the old streets that tell the story of its inhabitants. I did not find a city like Rafah, in which there is a good sea and people, a transplantation, a simplicity and a generosity, and our visitors know these qualities.
The occupation cuts the Alasmaire and “Morag” was part of “Qatif Gush”
Today, a mass tomb has remained a corpse; The streets have disappeared their features, the sea is closed and the farmer is burned and its inhabitants have been moved and lost in the country.
In all the corners of Rafah, she left a memory; On its west bank, in its agricultural alleys to the east, between the Goyave stones on rue Al -Bahr, and even near the Porte Salah Al -Din, where the tunnels mounted during the years of siege. The city was the window of Gaza to the world, and it has now become a dark cellar in which the bodies of its children were thrown.
Collar
Since the fifth May 2024, the Israeli forces ramp to the southern city has started. The wild attack was expected, but what happened exceeded all the nightmares of the war. The soldiers were engraved on the eastern periphery of the city, then they crawled in the north, the center, until Rafah is now completely besieged by the four sides.
The occupation did not leave a flaw for life; The crossings are closed, the water is exhausted, the bakeries have been burned and the roads were cut. An entire city has just become a broken gray painting, surmounted by tinnitus, day and night recognitions, and the remains of humans are flooded under the rubble of houses.
The Occupation Army in Rafah, in which the massacres have been carried out since May of last year, and so far it has not left. After returning to war on March 18, he entered every centimeter, then forced hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants to move, and besieged its mechanisms and its planes, some on the escape roads and killed them merciless.
I try every time as a journalist, to deliver the voice of people. But how? There is no electricity or the internet and no life at all. I wrote people’s testimonies on a little notebook, they could find it later, to find out what happened in the city.
In Rafah’s latest wave of trips, I saw people who wanted to embarrass Rafah and can’t find a road. The ambulances are avoided, the wounded bleed with hours and if someone survives bombing, he dies of bleeding. We have experienced unprecedented hours of terror and blood.
Iyad Abu Amra, 42, has been a driver from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society for over 15 years, but he said that in the last months in Rafah were “hard that all previous wars”.
He said: “We worked under fire, and we were running between bombing and smoke. Each time I see the ambulance, offer a farewell to my children, because I did not know if I returned or not.”
Iyad says to the details of a day that he will not forget, when he received a report on targeting a house in the Al-Geneina district: “We arrived at the place after 20 minutes of the call, because the roads were destroyed, and the whole street is rubble. When we arrived, there was the same man. in a field hospital. »»
Despite the injuries and the current danger, Iyad returned to work: “I cannot sit at home. People need us, and injured if we are late for them. But the problem is not only in bombing, there are military barriers, to prevent traffic, in the direct targeting of cars. ”
What hurts the most is the feeling of helplessness: “Sometimes we reach late, we meet the dead child .. or the mother has blown until she loses her life. You feel shouting and bleeding from the jaw, but that does not hear. ”
I was with Iyad in more than one press mission, I quickly watched him drive the ambulance, trying to fly time to death. But until time has become an enemy for us.
Farms until the last minute
Abu Tamer Madi was one of the last farmers who were in their land until the last minute. He tells the story looking at a photo of him on a broken phone screen, in which he appears among the coasts of Olive: “I planted the 30 -year -old floor. She was looking for a flower, wandering and frozen, we sold and lived. But the last time I came back, the land was burned, the wells are destroyed and the tanks were walking on the plantation. ”
Abu Tamer was forced to escape with his family after seeing with his eyes a reservoir which installed his farm on the ground: “They not only destroyed the trees, but they buried the fatigue of all life. The earth fed me and fed my children. ”
On the way to his station, their convoy was bombed. He survived, but his grandson did not survive. He says, and tears are silently on his cheek: “He buried it on the sidewalk, and no one knew it. Rafah has become the city of collective death, not the city of people. ”
From graduate dream to tents
Amna Tubasi, 23, was preparing to graduate from the College of Nursing from the European Hospital of Khan Yunis before the war. She lived in the Al-Mawasi district, one of the most beautiful districts of Rafah, and overlooking the sea.
She says in a humiliating voice: “I woke up in the morning, going to college, returning home, helping my mother, by studying .. the whole neighborhood was green, cultivated .. we were going to play the sea or ride our bikes. As for today? People have become ashes.”
A safe house was subjected to direct bombing in July 2024. She explains: “We are sleeping, at three o’clock. I only felt nothing while I was under the rubble. My little sister died. I kept between the rubble 6 hours before looking at myself. ”
Now you live in a temporary tent in the city of Khan Yunis, and you do not think of anything other than to leave Gaza: “I don’t want to immigrate .. but I want to live, I live, even if one day is sure.”
In a press release, the mayor of Rafah, Ahmed Al -Soufi, said that the city had become “unsuccessful for life”, noting that “90% of the city’s infrastructure was completely destroyed, including 22 main water wells, drainage networks, hospitals and schools and all vital roads.”
Al-Sufi added that Rafah today is classified as the “red zone”, that is to say which cannot be saved currently without urgent international intervention, because the occupation besieged it on the four sides, and it is not authorized to enter aid or medical staff.
Al-Sufi warned against a “complete humanitarian disaster”, saying that “what is happening to Rafah today is a systematic forced displacement, and a crime against a city that represented the hope of thousands of displaced people, and is now the greatest mass of Gaza.”
“Morag” the separation line
Dr. Iyad, Palestinian political and strategic analyst, believes that the occupation did not come to Rafah for temporary control, but rather to achieve a very dangerous strategic objective.
He says: “Israel wants to transform Rafah into an axis of permanent separation between Gaza and Egypt, then cut the Gaza strip permanently, and for that, he established the axis of Morag, compared to the colony (Morag) which was in the” Qative Gush “colony block and withdrew in 2005 within the framework of the penalty plan.
He adds: “This axis extends longitudinally from east to west, along the border band, to form a material and safety barrier which completely separates the southern sector from the rest of the regions. This axis is parallel to what Israel has done in the middle of the war of war.
According to Dr. Iyad Joudeh, the objective of the “Morag” axis is not limited to geographic isolation “, but also includes the imposition of political facts on the ground, which hinders any project to link Gaza to its Egyptian or Palestinian environment in the future.” “Israel is trying to convert the axis into a military stamp area which prohibits the entry of civilians, in which it builds a safety wall equipped with cameras and radars, to serve as a permanent ceasefire line,” explains Abu Amer.
Many residents of Rafah have lost their agricultural land in this area because of the bulldozers who updated the trees and paved the way for tanks. The numerous information and testimonies of this region reveal that Israeli trucks worked there, to open up earth roads between the city of Rafah and Khan Yunis, known as Western “Morag” axis, and the occupation operations of this region prepare everything with precision. (Morag Axis) is not a street, it is an integrated military colony project.
Gouda explains that Rafah’s control allows Israel to fully catch the crossing and to disrupt any future possibility of rebuilding or re -CONNOTER Gaza abroad: “In other words, Rafah is the last knot. If she fell, the return dream fell with her, and the idea of unified Gaza fell. For this, the war on Rafah is the most brutal and the most brutal.
I conclude my testimony from the cities of Rafah: “Rafah is not only a city, Rafah is the soul. When the soul falls, everything after it becomes dead.
