Nahed Basheer Isma’il Na’eem (38), a resident of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, and currently displaced in a school in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza Strip.

I have been married for 14 years to Muhammad Farid Muhammad Na’eem, and I have 4 children and a stepdaughter: Sandy (14); Karam (12); Sally, (10); Dima (8); and Kareem (5) who suffers from a heart disease.

On 07 October 2023, I woke up to prepare the children for school, as the car was ready to drop them off at school. However, before they could leave, unexpected events occurred: the sound of bombings echoed the area, the house started shaking, and the bombing was everywhere. My children were crying and terrified, and the glass of the house shattered above us since we lived so close to the border. Everything happened suddenly—I could not understand what was going on. We stayed in our house that day until the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) called us to evacuate. At around 02:30 on 08 October 2023, we evacuated barefoot, carrying only a change of light summer clothes for each of us and a bag of documents I had prepared earlier of my medical records concerning my breast cancer and my son’s open-heart surgery. We took my husband’s car heading to my parents’ house in Tal al-Zaatar, near Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza where the streets were overcrowded with people from northern Gaza who had received evacuation calls in the middle of the night. Panic and fear engulfed our hearts as there were no taxis available, and the roads were so congested that a route that takes minutes took us an entire hour. We reached my parents’ house and stayed there for only two nights. Amid bombardment pounding everywhere in the area on 10-11 October 2023 at 23:00, the Israeli warplanes directly bombed my uncle Muhammad Ismail Rayan’s house, which is adjacent to my parents’, without prior warning. There were about 70 people in the house, including family members and displaced people, and no one survived except for my uncle’s wife and two daughters, who sustained fractures in her legs. The bombardment damaged part of my parents’ house while shrapnel scattered everywhere. We were about 40 people on the ground floor living room, and thankfully, no one was injured. My maternal uncle Sami Yousuf Shaheen, with his entire family, came to our house fleeing the bombing after receiving an evacuation notice from IOF. However, a neighbor called them back, saying the notice was false, and they returned to their home. As soon as they returned, at 02:00, their house was bombed, and all my uncle’s family members, about 20 people, were killed. That night was so difficult for my family having to endure two tragedies with only just two hours apart as we were just trying to wake up from the first shock of losing my paternal uncle’s family, we received news of the killing of my maternal uncle’s family amidst crying, screaming, fear, and bombardment coming from all directions, not knowing what would happen next. My family stayed that night at the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital until 05:00. I still shudder when I remember what happened that day and the loss of so many family members.

I have suffered from breast cancer since 2011, as I discovered a large tumor in my breast when I was still a new bride, and I had surgery to remove the tumor without needing a mastectomy. Since that time, I had been following up with a doctor, but he passed away before the war, and no other doctors could understand my case as my health condition deteriorated. I could not breastfeed any of my children from the breast where the tumor was removed because I was having bloody and pus discharge from my nipple.  The discharge got even worse during the war, and my breast started to hurt again as it once did when I first got diagnosed. I fear the tumor may return, and I suffer from a persistent abscess under the skin in my breast that I do not know what to do about, not to mention my period that has become irregular, getting it once every three months.

After the continuous airstrikes and random artillery shelling in the area, we decided to leave my parents’ house and move to Al-Fauqa schools in the Jabalia refugee camp. Therefore, at 05:00, We left Tal al-Zaatar amid intense fear from the evacuation texts and phone calls we continuously received from IOF and passing by dead bodies scattered everywhere on our way to school. Around two hours after arriving at the school, my parents’ house, where my brothers Muhammad and his wife and their 8 children were staying along with my brother Ahmed, his wife and their 6 children, my brother Mahmoud and his wife and their 6 children, my niece, her father-in-law, her mother-in-law, and my 70-year-old mother, was bombed. The upper floor and part of the ground floor, where my family was, were destroyed. Thankfully, they were on the other side of the house and were not harmed. We stayed at the school for three days, yet we received text messages to evacuate the area and head to the south, as northern Gaza was designated a “dangerous combat zone” and the southern Wadi Gaza was designated “safe”. On Friday, 13 OSalah Al-Din Streetne at the school decided to move southward, as the streets were very crowded, and my father-in-law came with us, while my husband drove the rest of the family southwards via Salah Al-Din street while there were bombings all the way long and we saw many injured, including a person lying on the ground with his legs amputated, crying for help. We were too afraid to do anything, and the car was full. Everyone on the road was terrified, fearing that any stop would cost us our lives. We went on our way, fearing for our lives, with my youngest son in my arms, crying and screaming, “Mom, the man is dead.” 

My father-in-law dropped us off at Deir al-Balah Primary School (A) and (B) and returned to pick up the rest of the family. My children and I were frightened because of what we had witnessed on the way, the shelling we had to escape, and the fact that my husband was not with us.

Since we arrived in the southern Wadi area at the Deir al-Balah Primary School A+B, we have been clinging to the hope of returning home. I was alone without my family in Deir al-Balah as my siblings and mother remained in northern Gaza. I cannot sleep thinking about my 70-year-old mother and worried about her as she sustained a bullet injury while seeking shelter in Abu Hussein School in Jabalia refugee camp. I learned about her injury three months after it occurred because of communication blackouts in northern Gaza. She was injured again, breaking her pelvis when she was fleeing the Israeli bombardment in the school’s proximity, so she had to undergo surgery to implant platinum plates into her pelvis. I constantly try to contact them, but the poor network connection and frequent communication blackout were not helping.

My condition is getting worse; my breast is discharging a lot of pus and blood, and the pain under my armpit has returned to what it was at the beginning. Additionally, my youngest son, who suffers from a heart disease, requires a specific diet that is unavailable in these wartime conditions, as he should not have fever, but if he does and he starts coughing, then he needs a particular type of drugs for children to remedy the cough. In the acute shortage of this drug due to the war, I had to use normal cough syrup that has negative impact on my son’s health.

Now, when I take a shower and just dry myself, I find pus coming out of my breast like milk, which has frightened me. However, I cannot see any doctors during these times due to the devastating status of hospitals, the escalating bombardment across the Strip, and the lack of medical supplies and doctors to manage all the diseases with so many patients and injured people.

I still hope that we will go back to northern Gaza. IOF claims that southern Gaza Strip is “safe”, yet how come when we are stuck between fear of another displacement and unknown fate. We are staying in tents at shelter schools with no safe place. Goods are available, but their prices are skyrocketing, and we suffer from poor economic conditions, with no jobs, no security, and inadequate healthcare.