Witnessing the Nakba twice: the harrowing story of a Gaza grandmother’s survival and death

Halima Abu Dayya thought she was experiencing the worst day of her life when Zionist militias expelled her from her home during their 1948 campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestine, known to Palestinians as the Nakba.

But that day was just a glimpse of the ordeals she endured during Israel’s campaign of bombing, starvation and forced displacement in Gaza. Ordeals that ultimately led to her death in Gaza City, her family explains.

Middle East Eye spoke to this grandmother, a resident of Gaza City, in 2018, when she was 91 years old. She then remembered her forced displacement from her home in Dayr Sunayd, a village in the Gaza subdistrict, as Zionist massacres and the destruction of Palestinian towns paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel.

We were forced at gunpoint into cars that took us to a place near the borders with Gaza, where we stayed for three days, before being moved again to the Gaza Strip. “, Abu Dayya told MEE at the time.

I had three children and was pregnant when we were displaced. It was the hardest day of my entire life. “, she emphasized.

As Israel’s abominable year-long war on Gaza intensifies, MEE contacted Abu Dayya’s family for a further interview.

The family told us that Abu Dayya had been displaced more than ten times in almost seven months. They struggled to provide her with food during the famine Israel unleashed in northern Gaza earlier this year, as she could not eat bread made from animal fodder – the only food available. at the time. She eventually died.

The haunting fear of leaving

Afnan Abu al-Qumsan, Abu Dayya’s granddaughter, accompanied her on her multiple trips. She remembers her grandmother’s final days as being filled with confusion: As Alzheimer’s disease worsened, Abu Dayya began to think that her son was her father.

She constantly asked questions about her hometown and the orchard (which belonged to her family before the Nakba) “, Qumsan tells MEE.

The first trip was to a neighbor’s house after their neighborhood, al-Tawam, in northwest Gaza City, was bombed by Israeli warplanes. “We took refuge with our neighbors in their basement and we contacted the Red Cross, but they were unable to come,” explained the 29-year-old young woman.

It was difficult for us to move, especially because of the rings of fire, which did not stop. Even an ambulance that came for one of our neighbors was bombed as soon as it arrived. »

Abu Dayya and his family moved between different neighborhoods in Gaza City several times over the following months, adapting to incursions by Israeli troops.

While hundreds of thousands of residents were forced to move to the central and southern Gaza Strip following Israeli expulsion orders, Abu Dayya’s family preferred to stay in the north, fearing that the Nakba would repeat itself.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe” as it is known in English, refers to the ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes in historic Palestine to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.

Qumsan says her grandmother always had a haunting fear of leaving her home, as she had 76 years earlier.

She constantly asked why we left the house, demanding to be taken back and asking about her belongings and clothes. Almost every morning she asked to go home “, Qumsan told MEE. “ Every house we entered confused her, and she kept asking where she was, begging to go home. »

In 1948, Abu Dayya was pregnant with Qumsan’s father, moving from one region to another while carrying him in her womb. During the current war, her 76-year-old son has reversed roles, carrying his elderly mother on multiple trips.

Grandma couldn’t walk, she needed a wheelchair or someone had to carry her. My father carried it with the help of my 12 and 14 year old nephews “, remembers Qumsan.

Once, on March 29, we left the al-Shifa hospital area in the early morning of Ramadan, while we were fasting, after spending days without sleep, without food and without drinking water. There was a tank in the street. We left with our neighbors, but we were the last to move because we had to carry Grandma, it was difficult to push the wheelchair. They fired shells at us after we crossed the intersection, but God spared us. The streets were filled with rubble and her feet were injured “.

An “even worse” Nakba

Abu Dayya has lived through two major displacements – the Nakba and the current war on Gaza – and his granddaughter believes this one “could be even worse” than that of 1948.

“She was a witness to the Nakba twice. In 1948, it was moved once from Deir Sunayd to Gaza. But during this war, it was moved around ten times. At her advanced age and with her inability to walk, traveling was a thousand times more difficult for her.

“Each time we fled, the devastation and bombings left her in shock and tears. Sometimes she saw martyrs lying in the streets.”

These scenes triggered painful memories for Abu Dayya, which his children and grandchildren had already heard many times. “During the Nakba, the bombings were heard everywhere,” she told them. “Terror was also at its peak, especially after news of the Deir Yassin massacre spread. »

This massacre was committed on April 9, 1948 by Zionist militiamen who went from house to house, killing more than 100 people in the small Palestinian village near Jerusalem, although a truce had previously been concluded. Many of those killed were women, children and the elderly.

“During this period, pregnant women in Deir Yassin were killed or forced to have miscarriages,” says Qumsan. “I think it just increased her fear, being pregnant and having children with her. They were forced to leave under gunpoint, under bombings, towards Gaza. »

Today, nearly two million Palestinians are displaced within the Gaza Strip.

Abu Dayya told her grandchildren that when she left her home in Deir Sunayd, she thought she would return in a few days.

“We dug a pit and put our clothes in it, thinking we would come back. We have not returned,” Abu Dayya said in a video recorded by his grandchildren and seen by MEE.

For months, the Israeli army prevented or severely restricted the entry of essential and vital food supplies into the northern parts of the Gaza Strip, causing widespread famine that claimed the lives of many Palestinians, including especially children and the elderly.

Like most elderly people in Gaza, Abu Dayya’s health deteriorated rapidly during this period.

“In her last days, she stayed with us in my sister’s house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. His health began to deteriorate, especially due to the lack of basic necessities like fruits, vegetables, milk or yogurt,” Qumsan recalls.

“At one point we only had bread made from fodder, which she couldn’t eat. She and my father grew weaker due to age and constant travel without adequate transportation. »

Return to Haifa

Abu Dayya died on Sunday May 26. Initially, his family was to bury him in a stadium that had been converted into a mass grave for those killed in the current war, due to the danger of going to the Sheikh Radwan cemetery.

But the family still took the risk of going to the cemetery and burying her next to her husband, Mahmoud Moussa Abu al-Qumsan.

At the time of her death, Abu Dayya was separated from most of her family, as some of her daughters and one of her sisters had fled to the southern Gaza Strip, while most of her sons found abroad.

“After his death, we returned to (our neighborhood) al-Tawam. Much of the house had been destroyed and the area was almost deserted. Most people went south, their homes had been completely destroyed,” Abu al-Qumsan recalls.

She explains that despite the family’s constant efforts to comfort her grandmother and help her overcome traumatic memories of the Nakba, the conditions she endured during the war continued to traumatize her.

“She couldn’t sleep at night, waking up suddenly to the sound of bombing. Every time there was a bombing while we were traveling, she was terrified by the noise and destruction, saying, ‘The (Israelis) are going to bomb us,'” she explains.

“Before the war, grandmother loved the series “Returning to Haifa,” based on Ghassan Kanafani’s novel about the Nakba. She watched it with me on the phone and always asked me about Safiya (a Palestinian refugee), and if she had found her lost son. »

“She mourned them as if they were her own family. »

Maha Hussaini is an award-winning journalist and human rights activist based in Gaza. Maha began her journalism career covering Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip in July 2014. In 2020, she won the prestigious Martin Adler Prize for her work as an independent journalist.

Translation: JB for the
Source: Middle East Eye