Deir Albala: Niman Abu Jarad was sitting on a tarp on the ground. Around him sheets of canvas were hung on strings, forming the walls of the tent. Over the past year, Neiman. his wife Majida; Their six daughters crisscrossed the Gaza Strip trying to survive as Israeli forces wreaked havoc all around them.
It is a far cry from their home in northern Gaza, a place of peace, love, affection and safety. A place where loved ones gather around the kitchen table or on the rooftop on a summer evening, amidst the scent of roses and jasmine flowers.
“Your home is your home. Everything that was good in our lives was home,” Neiman said. “That included everything tangible and intangible: my family, my neighbors, my siblings who were around me.
“We’re losing them all.”
The Abu Jarad family lost its stability when Israel launched a war on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack.
In the weeks and months that followed, they did exactly what the Israelites told them to do in the devastating war. They followed the call to evacuate. They moved where the military had directed them to move. They escaped seven times, each time finding their lives increasingly unrecognizable: huddled with strangers in school classrooms, searching for water in vast tent camps, and sleeping on the streets. .
The Associated Press followed the family’s journey until they were evicted from their home. Israel’s war has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza (1.9 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians) and killed more than 41,600 people, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Most families, like Abu Jarad’s, have been uprooted many times.
For this family, this journey took them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.
Comfortable life before the war
In Beit Hanoun, who lived in Gaza’s northernmost tip, most of the pre-war days were simple. Niemann went to work as a taxi driver every morning. Majida sent her daughters to school. My youngest, Lana, is now in first grade. Hoda, 18, was a first-year university student. Her eldest son, Balsam, has just given birth to her first baby.
Majida spends most of her day doing household chores, and her face lights up when she talks about the kitchen, which is the center of family life.
Neiman planted vines in his garden and covered his roof with potted flowers. Watering in the evening was a calming ritual. Afterwards, family members and neighbors sit on stoops and roofs and chat.
“The area always smells nice,” he said. “People will say we have perfume because the flowers are so beautiful.”
October 7th: Attack
On the morning of October 7, families heard news of Hamas rocket fire and militant attacks on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 others.
The Abu Jarads knew that Israel’s reaction would be swift and that their home, only about two kilometers from the Israeli border fence, would be on the front lines.
By 9 a.m., Neiman, Majida, their six daughters and Neiman’s sister had packed up everything they could and evacuated as the Israeli military issued the first evacuation order.
“There’s no point in being stubborn and staying,” Majida said. “It’s not about one person. I’m part of a family and I have a girl too.”
October 7th – 13th: Stayed with Majida’s parents
Like many people, the family initially tried to stay close to home. They ended up staying at Majida’s parents’ house in Beit Rahiya, about a kilometer away.
“To be honest, this place was very comfortable. It felt like home,” Majida said. “But we were living in fear and fear.”
Beit Rahiya was already under heavy shelling. During the six days they were there, at least nine Israeli airstrikes hit the town, killing dozens of people, according to conflict monitoring group Air Wars. Entire families were killed or injured under the rubble of their homes.
As the explosion neared, debris pierced the aquarium at Majida’s parents’ home. A window was broken as the family huddled inside.
It’s time to move again.
October 13th to 15th: Evacuated to hospital
When the family arrived at Al-Quds Hospital, they saw for the first time the scale of the evacuation.
The building and its grounds were filled with thousands of people. Across northern Gaza, families fled to hospitals for safety.
The family found a small space on the floor, barely enough space to lay out a blanket as medical staff struggled to deal with the injured.
It was a dark night and there was a strike, Majida recalls. “Martyrs and wounded people were scattered on the floor,” she said.
The day after they arrived, an airstrike hit a house a few hundred meters away, killing a prominent doctor and about 20 members of his family, many of them children.
The Israeli military ordered all civilians to leave northern Gaza, prompting a wave of hundreds of thousands of people to head south across Wadi Gaza, the river and wetlands that separate the north from the rest of the country.
Family members also joined in the escape.
October 15th – December 26th: Narrow school
The family walked 10 kilometers (six miles) to the United Nations-run girls’ preparatory school in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Every classroom and hallway was filled with families from the north. Majida, her daughters and Neman’s sister found a small space in a classroom already occupied by more than 100 women and children. To ensure privacy in the cramped environment, Neiman lived with the men in a tent outside in the schoolyard.
This was their home for over 10 weeks. Majida and the girls were sleeping curled up on the floor, with no space to even stretch their legs. When winter started, we didn’t have enough blankets.
Majida said the worst part was the bathroom. Only a few toilets were available for thousands of people. Taking a shower was a miracle, she said. People were unable to bathe for weeks. Skin diseases were widespread.
Every day, the girls would go at dawn, wait in line at the few bakeries that were still open, and return in the afternoon, sometimes with just one flatbread. One day, Neman and his daughters walked 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the town of Deir al-Balah in search of drinking water.
“If the kind people of Deir al-Balah hadn’t taken pity on us and given us a half-gallon, we might have gone home empty-handed,” Neiman said.
As the strike continued, the family decided to go as far as possible, trekking 20 kilometers (12 miles) to Rafah, the southernmost tip of Gaza.
December 26th to May 14th: Tent life
The Abu Jarad tribe was not alone. Israel’s evacuation orders increasingly encroached on the Gaza Strip, with nearly half the population crammed into Rafah.
Here, the family experienced tent living for the first time.
They set up in a massive spread of tens of thousands of tents on the outskirts of Rafah, near a UN aid warehouse known as the “barracks.”
“Winter was hell. The water drenched us,” Majida said. “We slept on the ground, with nothing underneath us and no cover.”
They did not have money to buy food in the market where prices had soared. The youngest girls suffered from colds and diarrhea, and there was no nearby pharmacy where they could buy medicine. The family survived only on flour and other necessities distributed by the United Nations.
“It was like a dream to buy a tomato or a cucumber and have it in the tent,” Neiman said.
Like many others, they believed Rafah was the last safe place in Gaza.
It wasn’t.
In the first week of May, Israel ordered the evacuation of all of Rafah. Then the army entered the city. The shelling intensified.
Neman and Majida tried to stay as long as possible. But an airstrike nearby killed four of Neiman’s cousins and a girl, he said.
May 16th – August 16th: “Humanitarian Zone”
More than 1 million Palestinians packed into Rafah fled en masse once again to escape Israeli attack.
They were scattered across southern and central Gaza. New tent cities filled every open space: beaches, fields, vacant lots, schoolyards, cemeteries, and even garbage dumps.
Abu Jarad and his friends, traveling on foot and in donkey carts, arrived at a former amusement park known as Asdar City. The Ferris wheel now stood over a landscape of tents that stretched as far as the eye could see.
Here, in Mwasi, a barren area of coastal dunes and fields, Israel had declared it a “humanitarian zone” even though there was little aid, food or water.
Every amenity we once took for granted has become a distant memory. Now, in the kitchen there was a pile of kindling sticks and two stones for starting the pot. There are no showers, just occasional buckets of water. Soap was overpriced. The only thing separating them from their neighbors was a draped sheet. Everything was filthy and sandy. Large spiders, cockroaches and other insects have invaded the tent.
August 16th to 26th: Escape to the sea
Even the “humanitarian zone” was not safe.
Majida and Neman’s family was once again uprooted in an Israeli attack less than a kilometer (half a mile) away. They headed to the Mediterranean coast without deciding where to stay.
Fortunately, he found some acquaintances.
“God bless them. They opened a tent for us and let us live with them for 10 days,” Neiman said.
Late August: Things start moving again, no end in sight
When Abu Jarad and his friends returned to Mwasi, they found that their tent had been robbed and all their food and clothing had been lost.
From then on, the weeks become a blur. Amid endless conflict, the family realizes that survival itself has lost its meaning.
Food has become even more difficult to find as supplies flowing into Gaza have fallen to their lowest levels during the war.
Israeli drones buzz constantly overhead. The mental burden is on everyone.
One day, Neiman said, her youngest daughter, Lana, told her, “You’ve stopped loving me.” Because now, when I come near you, you say you’re tired of it and tell me to stay away. ”
He kept telling her, “No, darling, I love you.” I can’t stand it all. ”
They all dream of home. Neiman said he learned that his brother’s house next door was destroyed in the strike and that his own house was also damaged. He wonders about his flowers. He hopes they will survive, even if they are left homeless.
Majida says the difference between then and now is “a world of difference.”
The Abu Jarad family feels far removed from the warmth and love of home, surrendering to despair.
“We are jealous,” Majida said. “Who are you jealous of? The people who were killed, because they found salvation while we were still suffering and living with fear and torture and heartbreak.”