CITY OF THE DAMNED

“It hurts me as a Palestinian,” says Noor Harazeen, “to know the rest of the world is dealing with us as numbers, not as names. Two hundred and thirty Palestinians have been killed in the past 10 days. People watch and listen to us as numbers – numbers that go up and up. They don’t see the reality behind the headlines. These people have families. These people matter.”

Noor's grief is understandable. On the afternoon of July 16, a group of Palestinian children were playing soccer by the sea wall in Gaza City. Among them were Ahed, Ismail, Zakaria and Mohammad Bakr – four members of the same extended family, living in the nearby al-Shati camp. The sons of impoverished fishermen, they would scrape together whatever cash they had and buy bags of crisps to sell to beach-goers for half a shekel’s profit (around 10 cents). This small open area, across from the al-Deira hotel, was where the boys played, laughed and, for the most part, lived. It was also where they died.
A little after 4pm, the first shell landed: a missile fired by Israeli forces. The boys ran, desperate for cover. Less than 40 seconds later, as they scampered across the beach towards the potential safety of the hotel, a second missile struck. Hamad and Motasem Bakr survived with shrapnel wounds. Their four cousins – all aged between nine and eleven – breathed their last there on the ruined beach.
Harazeen, an English-language television journalist, was working at the time. Reporting on rumours that a truce in the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza was imminent, she had just finished a live broadcast outside al-Shifa hospital when the ambulances started to arrive.
“We went to see if there were injuries, or if people had been killed, and we saw the bodies of three little children,” she states. “First came one injury, then others. They were bombed, cut in pieces, shrapnel everywhere. When we got back to the hotel, we took footage from the American and European TV journalists, and saw what happened. The children were playing there. They targeted them with the first missile, so they tried to run away, then they targeted them again. That’s what caused their deaths.”
The Israel Defence Forces offered the usual insulting platitudes.
"Based on preliminary results, the target of this strike was Hamas terrorist operatives," read an IDF statement. "The reported civilian causalities from this strike are a tragic outcome."
For Derek Graham, the tragedy was close to home in every sense. Born in Mayo, his passion for the Free Gaza movement took him with his wife Jenny to Gaza City, where they now live, directly across the road from where the attack took place. He not only knows the location, but also the dead boys.
“We knew these kids, knew the family," Derek tells Hot Press. "They were really pleasant, very polite. They had no money, very little education. But they would come up and try to talk to you in English. The family are very poor, but they brought their kids up right.”
This particular incident has shocked the world. International journalists staying at the al-Deira hotel witnessed the attack first hand: its appalling brutality could not be hidden. But it's something with which those in the area have become horribly familiar. “After three wars, and experiencing all of this, it’s daily life," Harazeen reflects. "It’s not just the wars, because there are hundreds of escalations and attacks on the Gaza Strip all the time. This is life. As a journalist – as a person – I have seen a lot.
“At first, I would see something and cry over it. Now when I see these scenes, I feel anger. I don’t want to cry; I just feel so angry. I want people – television viewers, all my Twitter followers, people in the US and Europe – to know what I have experienced.”
It is a shocking thought, but tragedies like this take place so often in the Palestinian territory that their impact diminishes.
“You become desensitised," Derek Graham says. "When I talk about seeing injuries, I’m talking about some of the worst you can imagine. You see it every day: limbs missing, blood everywhere, the lot. These people have been living with this for years. In a sense, they’re completely desensitised.”
“This kind of life, became – how would you say? – normal," Harazeen agrees. "People are used to these scary explosions, not sleeping at night because their homes are shaken five or six times in one hour because of the bombs, seeing dead children. This is something people in Palestine are used to.”
Hot Press got a small taste of the relentless nature of the violence; our first conversation with Harazeen was aborted when missiles flew past her downtown Gaza office. Launched somewhere in the north of the country, and destined for targets over the Israeli border, they were two of an estimated 1,000 fired by Hamas militants in the first 10 days of the conflict...

Death and destruction may be a day-to-day reality for the people of Gaza, but it is crucial that we do not treat it as if this is just the way it has to be. “You can’t normalise the situation. It will never be normal,” says Awni Farhat, a 25 year old translator and interpreter, who helps journalists from all over the world to tell the truth about what is happening to the Palestinian people.
Farhat lives in Jabalia, close to a tiny refugee camp, where over 100,000 people are packed into a space covering little more than half a square mile. He has just come from one of the UN schools where evacuees seek shelter.
“It’s horrible. When I was in the school, you can touch the fear," he says. "It’s in people’s eyes. You can see the children lying on the ground with no safe place to sleep or play like normal children.”
According to the UN, more than 81,000 people have taken refuge in their facilities. Most of these, Farhat says, are from Beit Lahiya or the Shijaiyah neighbourhood, areas in the north of Gaza. Sometimes, the Israeli forces issue radio warnings in Arabic. Other times, it will be a phone call – a pre-recorded message – telling the residents to leave their homes and move towards the centre of Gaza. Farhat feels the warnings are a weapon in their own right. “It’s psychological warfare,” he says.
Those who receive phone calls are the lucky ones.
“Not all of the families that have been targeted receive these calls,” explains Harazeen. “Some homes are targeted without warning. Some were targeted with a warning rocket; a rocket that destroys the ceiling of your home. I read in the Israeli media that Israeli people only have 15 seconds to evacuate to their shelters. Compare that to Gaza: we don’t have any shelters, so where would we evacuate to? At the same time, there’s less than 60 seconds between the first missile and the second. They’re warning us of a bombing with another bombing. It is sickening.”
Those who flee to UN schools do so in the belief that they will be safe, but even that cannot be guaranteed. A 2008 incident at the al-Fakhura school in Jabalia saw 42 people die as a result of Israeli tank shells. It was claimed that the shelling was in reaction to Hamas gunfire, and investigations concluded the dead were all outside the school rather than indoors.
“If we talked about the safest place in Gaza, it would be the UN school,” Harazeen reflects, “but everywhere is a potential target.”
The fig leaf used by Israel to justify this is that the rockets fired towards Israel by Hamas often come from civilian areas. Farhat disagrees, insisting that the notion of firing rockets from near houses would be “ridiculous.” But finding a non-civilian area in a region that's only a third of the size of Co. Dublin – and has a population of around 1.8 million – is easier said than done.
“When Israeli forces attack houses,” says Farhat. “Maybe one of the people inside is involved in the resistance. But more than 20 people live in the same house, and they are mostly women and children. And the Israelis know this.
"One of the worst was the al-Batch family,” he adds, referring to the attack on the home of a Gazan police chief. “They found 18 people under the rubble – all killed at once – and among them were nine children."
Even with the rising death-toll, support for the Hamas rocket fire is unwavering.
“You don’t have to support Hamas,” Graham notes, “to support what they’re doing. They’re fighting to protect their land and their people; that’s what every Palestinian has being doing, and is doing.”

Farhat echoes the sentiment. “People look up to the resistance," he says. "They have the right to resist; they have the right to exist. The resistance is the guarantee of existence. This is how people think about it. We have the right to defend ourselves.”
Harazeen says that most Palestinians see Hamas as fighting for their basic human rights. Right now, the Palestinian people are short of even the most straightforward necessities. Estimates suggest that around half of those living in Gaza are without water.
“We are facing the lack of everything in Gaza," Harazeem states. "Not only water, but food, electricity, flour, bread... We fear that what happened in 2008, when it reached 22 days and people could not find anything to eat or drink, is going to happen again. Everything is closed: Egypt is blocking Gaza from the south, Israel is blocking it from the North. We just have to live off what is left in the Gaza strip for these next few days.”
There is very little left. Hospitals are without basic supplies: surgical operations – including amputations – are being performed without anaesthetic. Those in need are being turned away, or being told that there’s nothing that can be done; others aren’t even able to get to the hospital because of the aerial bombardment.
Last week, Farhat watched his grandmother die at home; they couldn’t leave their camp while the shells fell. Every day, there are deaths that won’t make it into the official body-count and will instead be attributed to ‘natural causes’.
“These deaths are as a direct result of this conflict,” Graham says.

The day after the death of the Bakr boys, a ceasefire is proposed. Hamas reject the Egypt-brokered deal out of hand; Israel responds by launching a ground offensive. For Hamas, it represents an opportunity to inflict damage on Israel’s international image. For the people of Gaza, it means further misery.
“People are very tired,” Farhat explains. “They are exhausted. We have experienced three wars. Every time we build our city, and our government institutions, they attack again. There is no safe place; everyone is under attack. It doesn’t matter if you are a civilian or not.”
Harazeen agrees: absolutely no one feels safe.
“They are scared that at some point an Israeli attack is going to target their home, or that their son will be walking and they’re just going to target and kill him. They are very afraid.”
A day after talking to Hot Press, Harazeen posts a picture from the very office from which she spoke. The windows have been smashed; the walls are crumbling, as a result of collateral damage from targeted attacks on a building next door. Palestinians, meanwhile, are struggling to understand why the international community has not intervened.
“We are a part of the global family,” Farhat reasons. “They have to stand against crimes, not justify them. I ask people to stand and scream out and make a protest and go out on the street.”
Harazeen makes a similar plea “ I want people to understand what is happening in the Gaza Strip and in Palestine," she says, "and to take action, whether that be protests, sharing the news on Facebook, emailing their parliament members, talking to people and spreading awareness. Every single action can help the situation in Gaza.”
Harazeen lost cousins and other members of her family in 2006 and 2012. “Everyone has lost someone,” Graham says. As of Tuesday, July 22 the death toll stands at over 600 and is sure to keep rising!