'You could say we escaped hell and it's still going on in there', mother says of fleeing Gaza

People rush to landing humanitarian aid packages dropped over the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. Picture: AFP/Getty

Seven-year-old Samma Shammalan smiles as she remembers playing Lego with her cousins, her grin revealing gummy gaps where adult teeth have yet to appear.

“You could say that we escaped from hell and it’s still going on in there,” her mother Haneen says of their experience fleeing Gaza. Yet, the family wishes more than anything to go back.

They’re among 300 Palestinians waiting at Rafah with an endless line of aid trucks that will also be denied entry to Gaza, where 1.7m people have been displaced. Half the population is now at risk of famine.

Incubators for babies, playsets with children’s scissors, water filters, solar panels, generators, oxygen masks, green sleeping bags, CT scanners, and crutches are all on a growing list of items that are deemed as having “dual use” and are piled high in warehouses.

Meeting UNWRA and Red Crescent aid workers at the border, Tánaiste Micheál Martin is told that chocolate croissants have been stopped from entering Gaza — deemed a “luxury item” and, therefore, on the banned list.

“There is no rationale or logical reason as to why CT scanners, basic generators, sleeping bags have been rejected as aid into Gaza,” Mr Martin says after being brought on a tour of the warehouse and speaking firsthand to those who have been able to enter Gaza to provide at least some aid.

“It’s a really punitive system that is denying Palestinians living in Gaza very basic humanitarian aid.

It all leads to one prevailing narrative that the people of Gaza are being collectively punished, it seems to me, I cannot rationally come to any other conclusion.

Fridges are also on the rejection list, which makes getting life-saving injections and other medication that must be kept cool safely to the people of Gaza extremely difficult.

Lotfy Gheith, operations director with the Red Crescent, warns that hepatitis and water-borne diseases are yet another real threat to life in Gaza.

At the start of the war, the vast majority of citizens evacuated to El Arish hospital across the border in Egypt were direct casualties of the conflict, those who had been wounded by strikes, ripped open by shrapnel, or trapped under buildings. 

However, with the health system in total collapse, the hospital is now receiving patients who need care for chronic conditions, cancer care patients, or organ transplants.

Lian Abu Shammalan, 10, and her younger sister Sama, 7, wait at the Rafah crossing with Gaza. They fled Khan Younis with their parents and brother, Mohammad, 5. Picture: Elaine Loughlin

In a two-bed ward at El Arish, Josef Samir holds a small black plastic action figure in his hand. When the four-year-old holds it aloft, he reveals the toy has no legs — the same as his mother Dua, who lies beside him in the next hospital bed.

Both were badly injured in a bomb strike on their home in Khan Younis and will need ongoing medical treatment in Egypt.

And yet Gaza, this small strip of land the same size as Louth, will always be home to an extremely proud people who simply want to be allowed to exist.

Back at the Rafah border, it’s around 30C as Samma waits in a white minibus with her parents, 10-year-old sister Lain, and five-year-old brother Mohammad, along with around 300 other Palestinians all hoping to return to family still tramped in the enclave which has been relentlessly bombarded over the past seven months.

“They have seen and heard too much,” Haneen says. “I am scared but, at the same time, I want to go back, scared for them.

"If anything happens to them my life would be worthless, but they need to learn that home is home and home is precious.

“Living in another country that is not your home is very hard. You get home sickness, it’s just very very hard.”

Looking over at her children, who have been denied an education since the bombing began seven months ago, Haneen, a teacher herself, adds: “They have seen and heard too much. I am scared but at the same time I want to go back, scared for them.

“I’d like to live in peace, I’d like my old life to be back, I’d like to get my old self back.”