Yousif Tariq Mohammed Abu Naser (31), married and resident of Shati’ refugee camp, western Gaza, gave his testimony to PCHR on 06 February 2024

I got married only one year ago and lived with wife in an apartment in our family house. Due to my poor economic conditions and the accumulated martial debts, I applied for a work permit in Israel and paid 2700 shekels to a broker. Four months later, I obtained an approval and starting doing hard work to pay back my debts.

Unfortunately, when I have just started to repay only little part of my debts for 4 months, I woke up to October 7^th. I was in Gaza on leave and suddenly heard heavy and continuous firing of rockets and we did not know why. From that moment, everything has changed for the worse.

After 7 days, I evacuated with my wife and family at 01:00 to an UNRWA clinic in the refugee camp in Gaza. In the morning, the Israeli warplanes bombed right in front of the clinic, wounding my 2 brothers, Mohammed and Yahia, as Mohammed was on the street. When the missile was dropped, he flew and fell near a wall due to the blast pressure. He then hid under a car whose wheels exploded and hit his body and when they pulled him, he could not move his body or feet. My brother, Mustafa, told Mohammed to utter the Shahadatain as he thought he would die. Meanwhile, Yahia fled away when he heard the missile falling, but shrapnel flew and hit his head. He started bleeding and then transferred in a civilian car to the hospital.

Later, we evacuated to Tal al-Hawa and stayed there for 4 days, spending the worst and most frightful nights as bombs heavily rained on Gaza. IOF dropped leaflets ordering the people to evacuate to the south ahead of the Gaza Valley, so we decided to leave to my father-in-law’s house in ‘Ein Jalout Towers in al-Nusairat, where we suffered from scarcity of supplies, lack of water, electricity and cooking gas. Moreover, the house was overcrowded with displaced people.

At night on 02 December 2023, an adjacent house belonging to my wife’s relatives was directly bombed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), and I found myself buried under the rubble and it was very dark. I freaked out thinking I would die so I uttered the Shahadatain. Suddenly, I heard my brother calling me and asking, “Where are you?” I told him, “I am here under the rubble. Rescue teams then dug through rubble until they pulled me out. I was wounded in both feet and was taken to an ambulance, where I found my wife wounded as well in her head with other persons injured and killed from the nearby house.

When I arrived at the hospital, I waited for 8 hours for a doctor to come and examine me. I was screaming all night out of pain as I suffered from hip dislocation in the left leg and had a deep wound in my right feet.

In the morning, I had a surgery to replace the hip joint but then decided to leave the hospital as the situation was drastically bad amid lack of adequate care from the medical personnel due to shortage of medical supplies and medicines.

I returned to my father-in-law’s house, which was partially destroyed. I was unable to walk for 30 days receiving treatment for my right food injury.

During those days, IOF directly fired artillery shells at us to force us to evacuate, so we went to the house of my wife’s aunt in western al-Zawaydah. Eight days later, we evacuated to Rafah due to the heavy bombardment and I lived with my wife in a tent in a school, where I suffered from contamination and shortage of water and supplies amid dire financial conditions; the situation was catastrophic. After 20 days, we returned to the house of my wife’s aunt and we are still staying there.

All I want is to live without bombings in peace and security and to start over a new life with my wife in our apartment, where we barely lived, hoping it is still fine and have not been destroyed.