In Gaza, the attack may be televised

Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

Derar Mohammed, a 19-year-old Palestinian, spent several hours Thursday watching a surreal scene unfold on television as Israeli forces inflicted heavy damage on the Gaza City neighborhood where he and his family lived until they fled the city nearly three weeks ago.

“This morning the bombing was in the place where I live (the Tel al Hawa neighborhood),  so thank God we are here instead,” Mohammed told msnbc.com, speaking by phone from his uncle’s house several miles south of the city.

Mohammed, a journalism student, said that he was able to watch the destruction of his familiar haunts only because the intermittently functioning electricity came on for a time. More often, he said, he keeps up on the fighting and other news by listening to a battery-powered radio.

When Israel began bombing in Gaza City on Dec. 27, Mohammed said he roamed the streets for hours, looking for a ride out of the city while trying to avoid Hamas strongholds, which he assumed would be targets for Israeli forces.  When he finally secured a taxi, he piled in with his parents, four brothers from ages 8 to 16 and fled to his uncle’s house.

Mercy Corps Derar Mohammed, 19, and his family sought refuge with a relative south of Gaza City immediately after the Israeli offensive started. Their Gaza City neighborhood of Tal al Hawa has been the site of intensive air strikes in recent days.

From the relative safety of his uncle’s home — he said it’s not of interest to either Hamas or the Israelis— Mohammed has tried to remain in contact with friends who remained in Gaza City. Some of them, he said have moved as many as three times since the Israeli incursion began — shifting from home to home in hopes of staying one step ahead of the Israeli attacks.

When the fighting shifted to Tal al Hawa earlier this week, Mohammed said he heard from a friend who sought shelter with many other civilians in the area’s Al Quds Hospital. But then the hospital was hit by a bomb on Wednesday, causing a wing of the administrative building to collapse and sparking a fire. Those who sought shelter, and about 100 patients and medical staff, were trapped in the hospital, with fire burning inside and fighting raging outside, the International Red Cross said.

‘Pray for us’
“My friend was sending me a (text) message: ‘We are in the hospital. Pray for us. There’s no electricity and no water.’"

When the violence ends, Mohammed said, he will not pursue his studies in journalism right away, and will instead try to do something to help rebuild Gaza.  In the meantime, he cannot return to his neighborhood. Israeli ground forces have cut off routes between his current location and Gaza City.

“In the first days after the airstrikes (before ground forces arrived) we kept saying we would go home — today, tomorrow," said Mohammed. “(Now) ground forces cut the land in half to there is no way to go home. I never thought we would still be here 20 days later.”

Jasem Humeid, a Palestinian social worker, has a much closer vantage point to the fighting from his home in the heart of the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Though the sounds of Israeli bombs and gunfire often shake the walls of his three-story home, it is the refuge of choice not just for him, his wife and seven children, but for four other families.

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