Mohamed Farra had not seen his sister Simat for a quarter of a century. He now knows that he will never do it again. The war is just ending thousands of Palestinian families who have been living for decades in the West Bank, cut off and divided by the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Cameraman Mohamed Farra, 45, originally from the Strip, was doing a live broadcast for the Al Araby network on Wednesday during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah when he learned that an Israeli bombing, which has already left more than 7,0000 dead, he had just taken the lives of his sister, his brother-in-law and three nieces. Both had spoken for the last time on the cell phone that same morning, around seven, he details.
“We have no hope as a people,” he laments, devastated and with red eyes, in the living room of his house. The room hosts something similar to a wake without the dead, a funeral in the distance. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything,” he laments between calls from people who convey their condolences. Furthermore, he is aware that he must endure the bitter mourning in the distance, despite the fact that only a hundred kilometers in a straight line separate Ramallah from Khan Yunis, where the attack took place. If before Farra could not access Gaza, now, under the bombs and surrounded by an army preparing the land invasion, much less so. Barely able to speak a word and in tears, it is one of his sons who offers coffee and dates to the visitors.
“We are fine,” was the message that the cameraman expected daily through the phone or social networks to confirm that his relatives were still alive under the constant bombings. Since violence spiked 20 days ago with Hamas’ attack on Israel, Farra has barely tried to maintain contact with them despite the difficulty of communications. He had given them the order to never be all together in the same place to avoid a missile killing them all at once.
The editor who accompanied him on Wednesday, Fadi Al Asa, explains that when they found out about the fatal result they tried to remove Farra from the scene without really knowing how to break the news to him. But misfortunes, like bombs, fly, and soon her phone rang. He was still wearing the bulletproof vest, as seen in the video recorded at the scene at the time he was taken away in a car.
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Life goes on and so does war. Al Asa maintains the rhythm of live connections on Thursday and goes to cover a demonstration called in the central square of Ramallah in solidarity with the victims of Gaza. A sign made of traditional ceramic marks the distance to Jerusalem: 15 kilometers. In the middle, the concrete fortress of the Qalandia Pass, controlled by the Israel Security Forces.
About 200 people, who are given photos of corpses from Gaza to show, parade through the streets surrounding the square in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the West Bank. They chant slogans against the occupation, deny being terrorists and shout against Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “Please make our words heard,” pleads Ama Matjar, a 61-year-old march attendee.
Yasser Amor, a 45-year-old interpretation professor at Bir Zeit University, carries a white cardboard in his hands explaining the reason for his presence at the protest. “The end of (Israeli) terrorism, the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the right to self-determination,” he explains while tracing the text written in English with his finger. “Since 1948 everything has gotten worse,” he comments, referring to the date of the creation of the State of Israel. That same year, the Palestinian people experienced what is known as Nakba (catastrophe, in Arabic), in which 700,000 people—more than half of the total population, according to the UN—were expelled by Israeli forces. These days, a million civilians have been forcibly displaced under bombardment from northern Gaza following the ultimatum issued by Israel. An exodus reminiscent of that of 75 years ago and to which Palestinians constantly refer these days.
Mohamed Farra is originally from Gaza, but he married a woman from the West Bank in 1998 and has lived in Ramallah since then. In this quarter of a century that has passed, he has not been able to return to his house. The last time was precisely when he returned from his honeymoon trip to Tunisia, he remembers. On five occasions, he adds, he tried to return to the Strip, but Israeli forces prevented him from doing so. This enclave is surrounded and isolated from the rest of the world by an authentic fortress made up of concrete walls, barbed wire, surveillance cameras, turrets and hundreds of Israeli soldiers who control the entry and exit of the Palestinian enclave.
The home in a four-story building in Khan Yunis (southern Gaza), where Simat, Farra’s sister, lived with her husband, Esam, and their five children, was hit by a projectile on Wednesday morning. In addition to the parents, the three daughters died: Adian, Rosol and Tuka, and the two sons were injured: Hatem and Khalil, rescued from the rubble. “We are all fighters for the country!” Hatem intones, among other religious phrases, on a hospital stretcher, according to a video published on social networks that shows his uncle Mohamed Farra. The teenager is still covered in dust and blood and with his head bandaged. “This is not a war. They are simply killing us,” says Farra, as he stands up to shake hands with two new visitors who have just arrived at his home.
The attack that killed five members of that family took place a few hours before another Israeli bombing killed the wife and two children of Wael Dahdouh, chief correspondent for Al Jazeera television in the Strip. Since the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7, around twenty Palestinian journalists have died as a result of army airstrikes, and the headquarters of 50 media outlets have been destroyed or damaged. Farra is broken just 24 hours after losing an important part of his family, but he is already thinking about returning to the streets. “We have to continue telling stories as soon as possible,” he defends.
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