Testimony Date: March 13, 2025

Location: Al-Masmiyah Camp – Deir Al-Balah 

I am Iman Bassam Hassan Al-Kafarna, 30 years old, originally from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. I am married to Mahmoud Saad Abdullah Al-Kafarna and a mother of three: Siraj, 7, and my twin daughters, Karmel and Retal, 2. 

In the early hours of October 7, 2023, we were forced to flee our home in Beit Hanoun, seeking refuge at my grandfather’s house on Faiz Hamad Street. However, the bombardment quickly reached us, and Israeli army messages ordered us to evacuate. Terrified, we fled into the darkness under relentless shelling. That night felt like the apocalypse. We ran in a daze until we reached Jabalia Camp and took shelter in Abu Zeitoun School. 

My father refused to leave our home despite the warnings. He stayed behind, alone. For three months, we heard nothing from him. Eventually, we were informed that he had been killed under the rubble of our house, which had been completely destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. We never had the chance to say goodbye, and no one was able to bury him—his body remains trapped there. 

We stayed at Abu Zeitoun School for nearly two months before moving to Al-Fakhoura Clinic, an UNRWA facility, where we endured another month of siege and bombing. Later, we returned to Beit Hanoun—not to our home, which no longer existed, but to Ghazi Al-Shawa School, where we remained for seven months until July 2024. During this time, Israeli tanks besieged us for 20 days. We survived on wild plants and whatever aid supplies remained, mixed with flour and sand. We drank contaminated water and even resorted to mixing flour with animal feed to bake makeshift bread—bread that resembled everything except food. 

At the same time, my husband was trapped in Jabalia, and we couldn’t reunite for those twenty days of relentless danger. The Israeli army bombed the upper floors of our school, attempting to force us out, but we refused to leave. We relied on stored canned goods and legumes to survive. I bore the full weight of responsibility, especially in my husband’s absence, whose presence alone had once been a source of security for us. 

When the Israeli army finally withdrew, easing the siege slightly, we decided to move to my husband’s brother’s house in Jabalia refugee Camp, where we stayed for three months, catching our breath after endless days of fear and deprivation. 

In October 2024, a second military operation erupted in Jabalia. Once again, we received evacuation orders, and the siege returned as if it would never end. We barely escaped, but instead of heading to Gaza City—where we had no contacts—we took the risk of returning to Beit Hanoun. This time, we did not seek shelter in Ghazi Al-Shawa School. Instead, we stayed in a house belonging to acquaintances. We spent a month and a half there, enduring one of the most difficult periods of our lives—there was no medicine, no water, no milk for the children, and even diapers for my twin daughters were unavailable. 

By early November 2024, Israeli tanks had sealed off our area. Quadcopter drones hovered everywhere, monitoring every movement of the hundreds trapped with us. Artillery fire rained down indiscriminately, leaving us with no escape. Then came the order: “Everyone must evacuate their homes and schools and follow a designated route leading to Salah Al-Din Road.” This message arrived at 6:00 a.m., after a night of horrifying, random shelling, where all we saw was blood and unrelenting terror. 

My husband feared being arrested, so I had to take the children and leave on my own, following military orders that did not guarantee survival. There were no assurances, no safety—everyone was a target. We moved in front of the tanks and soldiers until we reached the Civil Administration area, where they separated men from women and children, forbidding them from continuing the journey. The men were left behind, their fate entirely unknown. 

The path assigned to us by the Israeli army was a death march. Many were killed by sniper fire and shelling. No one dared to stop and help, nor even to look back. We had to keep moving in a single line, no deviations allowed—no matter what we lost, even if one of our children went missing. 

Israeli soldiers shouted through loudspeakers: “This is your death, Gaza!” They took photos of us, mocked us, and laughed. They humiliated us, turning our suffering into their amusement. 

After an exhausting journey, we finally reached Gaza City. Our first—and last—night there was spent at Al-Yarmouk School, amid freezing cold and hunger that I could not soothe for my children. The next morning, I made a difficult decision: I had to leave. My family had already moved south, and I found myself stranded in Gaza, with no one to turn to and no means of securing food or water. 

We chose to take the coastal road, despite its roughness and the bitter cold. My children sobbed and cried from exhaustion and fear the entire way. We waited three hours at a checkpoint before soldiers finally allowed us to cross. But instead of opening the gate, they ordered us to crawl beneath it, treating us like cattle. Even after we passed, they fired at us, hitting and destroying our belongings. 

They denied us even a sip of water. My daughters cried from hunger until we found some discarded medical suppositories on the ground—they ate them just to ease their hunger. It was not enough. Even stray dogs attacked us along the way. 

We continued on foot until we reached the American field hospital, where the medical team provided us with food and water. That night was the first time in months that we felt even a small sense of security. 

But the worst in Gaza was not just the relentless bombardment—it was the constant forced displacement, the endless hunger that spared no one. By mid-November 2024, we were forced to flee south again. After an agonizing journey, we realized that the south was no safe haven. I do not remember the exact date of that forced displacement, nor do I want to. 

A tent is not a home—it is daily suffering. We pitched ours near the coast of Gaza, where the cold was unbearable. I suffer from a winter illness that causes severe swelling in my hands and feet, making it impossible to sleep from the pain. The tent was unfit for human life—it could not shield us from the freezing winter or the scorching summer, nor could it provide us any sense of security. It was an extension of the street, an exposed and fragile place. Nothing can replace a home. 

I had no warm clothes, no blankets, not even the basic dignity of a proper bathroom. There were no toilets, so I had to use a bucket. Inside the tent, the living space merged with the kitchen, the bathroom, and the sleeping area. It was everything, yet it was nothing. 

When we finally reached southern Gaza, specifically Deir Al-Balah, we managed to contact my husband at first. But soon after, all communication was lost. The last thing he told us was that Israeli forces had invaded the area, arresting or killing everyone in sight. Since that moment, we have had no news of him. My children cry every night, asking for their father, and all I can do is pray and hold on to hope. 

At the end of January 2025, when roads between northern and southern Gaza briefly reopened, I returned to Beit Hanoun with my children, knowing our home was gone. But we found my husband—and that alone was enough to bring life back to us. We never imagined that, throughout the months of his disappearance, he had been hiding in the north, unable to find any means to contact us. 

Now, we are living in a shelter at the garage area in Beit Hanoun, in what used to be a classroom—now our only refuge. This is our reality, surrounded by a devastated infrastructure, with no clean water or food. 

We still cannot access the Al-Bura area in eastern Beit Hanoun, where my father remains buried under the rubble of our home. The area is close to the border, occupied by Israeli forces, and any attempt to reach it means certain death. 

We dream of an end to this nightmare, of a day when Gaza is restored—a homeland that gives its people hope again.