When Ahmad Hegazi and his father Emad left Gaza for Linares (Jaén) last September, because he had to start his last year of high school, they thought that at Christmas the rest of his family—his mother and three brothers—would be away. would finally reunite, after the border closure forced by the pandemic stranded them in Palestine and they chose to continue their life there to care for sick grandparents and wait for their eldest daughters to finish university. However, the war unleashed by Israel in response to the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, has truncated that hope. The bombs, like the virus did before, have isolated the Hegazi, but reunification is now more urgent, because the siege and the blockade of humanitarian aid by the Israeli Army only increase fear for their well-being.
This anxiety has led Ahmad and his father to send a letter to the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to request that he guarantee the evacuation of his family from the Gaza Strip, a request that They have also moved to the change.org platform. “We are all Spanish,” explains Ahmad, who remembers how his father came when he was 18 to study Engineering in Spain in the 80s and, after marrying his mother, Reem Skaik, they settled in Linares where all their children were born: Huda, 25-year-old journalist; Nur, nurse, 22; Ahmad, who just got an 11 at Evau and is going to study Architecture at the University of Granada, 18,; and Ismail, nine.
Ahmad and his father, 56, traveled to Gaza last summer to visit his grandparents because they were in poor health. The rest of the family that lived there had decided that they were going to return to Spain, after four years separated due to the Pandemic. “They had traveled to Palestine, but my older sister got Covid, they couldn’t travel back and then they decided to stay there until my sisters finished university,” he explains. Last September they all said goodbye in their apartment in Talelhaua, the same place where their mother, his sisters and little Ismail took shelter at the beginning of the Israeli offensive in October.
But that apartment was bombed and they had to take refuge in their grandparents’ house, which was also destroyed by Israeli missiles. It was the first of five forced moves for his family. “Then they fled to my mother’s uncle’s apartment near Al Shifa Hospital,” says Ahmad. That hospital center became one of the epicenters of the strategy to destroy the Palestinian territory by the Israeli Army and after the assault by its troops, Reem and her children took refuge in a physiotherapy center. “They lived for a month in terrible conditions, crowded with many more people, eating what they could, sleeping on the floor,” says Ahmad. When the offensive subsided, they returned to their uncle’s house, where they continue to live with another twenty relatives. “They have all had hepatitis due to the poor condition of the water they drink.”
During this time, hunger, thirst and panic have been added to the pain and anger of seeing fifty relatives die. “They had to remove the body of my uncle, my father’s brother, from a mountain of rubble. The situation is terrible,” says Ahmad.
He and his father are in permanent contact with the Spanish consulate in Israel. In fact, his family was on the list of Spanish evacuees, but his location, in the north of the Strip, far from the southern area where the repatriation operations of the citizens of our country trapped in the war. “Accessing there from the north of the border is very dangerous, plus they would have to go on foot, they are alone with a small child…” explains his son.
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That is why they have decided to ask for direct help from the central government, after contacting, without success, the Junta de Andalucía and the Linares City Council, both from the PP. “They have told us that they are not competent, but they have not stopped to try to act as interlocutors with the Ministry,” explains Ahmad.
In their letter they ask Albares to “take immediate and appropriate measures to ensure the safe return to Spain” of his family, “guaranteeing their immediate evacuation from the Gaza Strip.” A protection that extends “to all Spanish people in the same situation.” “They could give them a car, an ambulance, some vehicle that can travel to the border, because there is no security at all,” Ahmad proposes, in turn.
Months pass, and although they can now talk daily with their mother and siblings, the fear in Gaza and Linares does not stop growing. At the beginning of April, his father suffered a heart attack due to the anxiety caused by helplessness and uncertainty. And in the midst of so much anguish, Ahmad recognizes that “the most complicated thing has been getting his Baccalaureate,” an effort for which he has had the support of his friends and which he has also done for his family. “To try to make them escape, so that they would be proud of me.” They are, but not because he has obtained honors, but because he continues fighting for a necessary reunification for his people.
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