Irish and Palestinian: 'We had to walk through hell to get out and my father is still trapped'

Batoul Hania — pictured with her sons Mazen, Ismael, Ahmed, and Nour Mohamed — shows a phone photo of her husband Zak, who was not permitted to cross the border from Gaza into Egypt, despite being an Irish citizen. Picture: Moya Nolan

He is the teenager who touched the hearts of many when he arrived at Dublin Airport from war-torn Gaza last month.

Gripped with fear, Mazen Hania held onto his young siblings and mother with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Fighting back the tears, the 19-year-old, who was born in Ireland, said he would “sleep on the streets” if he had to, as long as his family was safe, but feared for his father who they “left behind to die”.

The teenager described how he and his three brothers and mother had walked for days making two long journeys from his home in north Gaza to the Rafah Crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza strip.

He describes passing unimaginable scenes including bodies on the streets and dead animals lying in the rubble of bombed-out buildings all along the way.

The Hania family were among 28 Irish citizens including their cousins, who were evacuated last month by the Department of Foreign Affairs via Cairo to Dublin.

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Three weeks after arriving here, the computer engineering student said he is grateful for his safety but is desperate to get his father out of Gaza.

Zak Hania — who has dual citizenship — remains in the south of Gaza, and his family do not know why he was not put on the list to come to Ireland.

“He is still back there, and we wait for news every day,” Mazen told the Irish Examiner at his family’s temporary accommodation in west Dublin this week.

“We don’t know why he was not on the list, he is an Irish citizen, so every day we don’t know if he will live or if he will die. We want to have all the family here, and safe.

“We have left everything behind, but we want our father here, for Christmas and for our family to be together.

The Hania family is currently in accommodation in west Dublin.

“It’s like we left him there to die. The situation over there is like something you can’t even imagine.”

The unrelenting Israeli air and ground offensive after Hamas’ attack on October 7 has now pushed 85% of Gaza’s population from their homes.

There are escalating shortages of food, waves of diseases and heavy fighting in a situation that the head of UN’s agency for Palestine has said is a “living hell”.

Philippe Lazzarini told a meeting of the UN global refugee forum in Geneva this week that his third visit to Gaza since October 7 was distressing.

“There is no more food to buy, even for those who can pay. In the shops, the shelves are empty,” he said.

Mazen Hania said both he and his family and cousins who have been housed beside each other here, are still trying to comprehend the terror inflicted on them and their community as innocent civilians in Gaza.

“It is more than a nightmare,” he said. “We walked for hours just to get out and just be safe.

“We just left everything behind, and we walk from the north to the south. We saw all the dead donkeys and animals on the road, bodies covered in sheets. You can barely look; you just have to keep moving forward with your eyes straight ahead.

“We have nothing — no money, no shoes, everything is gone, and my father he is left to die in Gaza.” 

Waiting until the last minute

The Hania families closed the door on their family homes in Beach Camp last month after the airstrikes became “too close”.

Mazon’s mother, Batoul, said they waited until the “last minute” before they decided to go, choosing not to “give in to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), but then it became too dangerous”.

The Hania family left behind war-torn Gaza after some hesitation to stay or go. Picture: Fatima Shbair/AP

“For three weeks, we prepared to resist and stay,” she said. “We couldn’t make it easy for them to come and wipe us out, but it was more serious than we thought. We are civilians, we don’t have anything to defend ourselves.

“We have put up with their attacks for years, but this is different, this is the worst. It has always been bad, but nothing like this. It has changed.

“One night we decided if we wake up and are lucky enough to have a morning we will just go.

There is no word in the dictionary to describe what we were going through. 

“We were literally shaking, and I consider myself to be strong, but the night before we left, I said we have to go, that is it.” 

Recalling the scenes that left the family with no choice, Mrs Hania said: “I thought the whole window and doors will collapse on our heads in the glimpse of an eye, so we went downstairs. The sounds of the airstrikes, it was so loud. The feeling that night, its really indescribable.

“If you have watched the movie The War of The Worlds, it was triple that. That is a movie, but this was life.

“We were counting every minute, we pushed time just to see, will we make the light for the morning, to find our papers and passports to run out, we have no electricity, no communication, no nothing.”

The journey out 

They first ran to Al-Shifa hospital area, in Gaza city, where up to 70,000 people had sought shelter. There, they stayed with relatives near the hospital.

However medical staff had to abandon their patients last month after Israeli troops took over the hospital and it had to be evacuated.

“The IDF called out to our neighbours and said they are in the area, and we will bomb you,” said Mrs Hania.

“We went crazy, I already had relatives with a one-month-old baby, and we had to go, the nappies, and milk and formula, trying to take these things and go, imagine?

“We knew we had to go to the south area. We moved on and stayed in different houses, but we had to keep going just to get to the south so we could get to the Rafah crossing.

“They (Israeli soldiers) are everywhere they have guns, and they will point them in your face, and pointing them in the face of little children and young people.

“They have big tanks, and they are shooting all the time. There is no connection between who they are shooting.

“My husband’s family were ringing us, and they were like, ‘get out, get out’. So, we keep moving, walking for hours. We left everything behind we could not carry things.

“By the time we got to Dublin, I was just wearing the same clothes and had nothing else, neither did the children.

“I was shaking because it was so cold.” 

Mrs Hania said despite the threat to their lives, fleeing Gaza was one of the most difficult decisions she has ever been faced with — when she was forced to walk away from her husband who could not leave.

“I was screaming, ‘I can’t go’, but my husband and his family said ‘you have to go, just go’,” she said, fighting back tears. 

“The department of foreign affairs did not have his name on the list, or Isra’s husband Mohammed’s name, and I don’t know why. 

Now we are a separated family.”

She said when she did get to Salah al-Din things became “extremely intense”.

“It was like being on the M50. There is no pavement, and everyone is walking squeezing each other and holding tight, afraid to look anywhere. It was our first time to be faced with soldiers and tanks there was a big, massive queue of people.

“Everyone is afraid to be seen by the soldiers. They shouted at us ‘raise your ID cards’ and we can hear shooting and we have no idea what they are shooting at.

“They grab young men and put them away they have mounds of sand that they hide behind.

“They are really close to us — four metres away — and they are pointing their rifles at kids and small adults.

“It was a nightmare, and I was saying verses from the holy Qur’an. I was having so many scenarios in my head. We shouted, ‘we are Irish’, but I knew they did not care.

“The sun was burning our faces, and the tank was in our way. Then somebody shouted in Hebrew, and we all ran, we ran for 5km or 7km non-stop you don’t look left or right.

I ran behind the children, telling them ‘don’t look back, don’t stop, keep going’.” 

The second part of their journey was from Khan Yunis in the south to Rafah crossing. To get to crossing they had to go by car, but cars were scarce because there is no fuel.

The families travelled to the border mostly on foot with their cousin Isra Hania — who is also an Irish citizen — and her four children.

“Isra doesn’t have much English,” said Mrs Hania, “but she has citizenship here and she is allowed to bring a dependent with her.

“Her four children are here, but her husband Mohammed is also left behind with my husband. We are here without them, and we don’t know what will happen.”

 Both Hania families said when they finally got to the Rafah crossing, they were exhausted, but relieved.

They showed their papers at the checkpoint into Egypt and were collected by officials and taken to Cairo.

“On the way to the border, we were moving, around 20 metres, and there had been a bomb that exploded, and there were dead people, and a man was injured, and a woman shouted, ‘please help my husband’, and nobody can help.

“It was like a day of judgement, you lose your humanity and everything, and you just keep moving with your kids.

“One woman was crying for her three children, and she can’t go back to search for them.

“One woman kept saying, ‘you will find them, someone will find them and bring them to you’, I can’t stop thinking about that woman looking for her children.

“All the separation, I was walking but nobody looks at the other, I was behind them, I was so afraid that the IDF will take my two sons, Mazen and Ismael. They could just take them that is what they do.

“There is no future in Gaza, no life, it is wiped out.” Both Isra Hania and her children Marwan, 11; Ahlam, 9; Sara, 7; and Ilham, 4, as well as Batoul Hania, and her four children Mazen, 19; Ismael, 17; Ahmed, 14; and Nour-Mohamed, 11, all flew into Dublin on November 19.

The families have since been trying to set up home in west Dublin, the children have recently started in national school.

The Hania children were all born in Ireland.

Mazen, who had just started his first year in a degree course in computer engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza, said he hopes to join a course here.

He was seven years old when the family left Ireland to move back to Gaza. His father, Zak Hania, who is involved in research, moved to Ireland in the early 2000s where he gained Irish citizenship.

He returned to his home in Gaza where he married Batoul, in 2003.

“I came here then,” she said. “We lived here from 2003 to 2012, and my children were all born in Ireland. Mazen was seven when we left.

“We went home then and have our home and work in Beach Camp. It makes me very lucky to have Irish citizenship, it is a privilege, but it makes me guilty too; I have another home to go to, but my family, my own people, even the people don’t know, don’t have this chance.

“It is very upsetting and distressing. We can’t go back now, Gaza is destroyed,” she said.

For now, the family say they are “extremely grateful” to be in Ireland, but hope that their father will be evacuated along with his cousin Mohammed by the Irish Government.

Continuing education

Mazen also hopes to go to college here to continue his studies.

“My college was bombed,” he said. “I had just started a five-year degree course. I started in the third semester. I was going to school, and we heard the rockets, and we went home. The college was bombed.

“I want to go to college here, I hoped I can continue my studies here and my future here.

Palestinians inspect a site after it was hit by an Israeli bombardment on Rafah, Gaza Strip last week. Picture: Fatima Shbair/AP

“The situation is very hard; I am still distressed. We have nightmares, but now I have to care for my family and try to speak to my father, always hoping that he will be alive and safe, and that he can be brought here safely with Isra.

“She only has the Irish citizenship, but she is hoping to get this now secured for her little children to make the family more permanent here.

“We are so grateful for everything we are safe here, but we would love to have our fathers here to help our mothers and to have Christmas together.” The Irish Examiner also requested a comment from the Department of Foreign Affairs in relation to the Zak and Mohammed Hania.

In response, the department said: “A small number of Irish citizens remain in Gaza. The Department of Foreign Affairs is continuing to work with the relevant authorities on these cases and to assist in instances where other Irish citizens and accompanying dependents wish to exit Gaza. The department does not comment on individual cases.” A spokesperson for Tusla said it does not comment on individual cases, “this is to protect the privacy of the children and families we work with”.

The statement continued: “Once a family becomes known to our services, the local EWO (educational welfare officers) team in the Blanchardstown area will work with the family and local schools to seek school places for the children”.

While the Department of Further and Higher Education said: “A student can apply directly to a higher education institution to continue their studies in Ireland. The entry requirements and fees would be determined by the higher education institution.”