Survival in Gaza: how one UNICEF staff member survived 50 days of violence

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza. September 2014 - The entire front of Bassam Nasser’s house has disappeared; a tank shell has left a large hole in the roof and his flatscreen tv has been put out of action – apparently by a piece of shrapnel.

But as he takes me on a tour of Beit Hanoun, the neighbourhood on the north-eastern fringe of the Gaza strip where he lives with his wife and six children, it is immediately apparent why Bassam – a UNICEF driver since 2001 – counts himself a lucky man.

Abandoned, bombed-out houses and flattened apartment blocks line both sides of the main street. The minaret of a once-imposing mosque lies toppled in a shattered heap. A group of factories and warehouses close to the border look damaged beyond repair.

“There’s my relative, Alaa!” says Bassam, pointing to a teenage boy, crouched atop a collapsed house, who is attempting to prize something from between concrete floors that are now pancaked tight together. Alaa looks up and waves, then settles back to his task.

“You see that building over there? Eighteen members of the Wahdan family died there,” says Bassam. We drive on in silence.

Amid the dust and debris, a huge bougainvillea bush sprawling across an ornamental fence provides an incongruous burst of colour. But the villa behind is shattered and derelict. Gaza is a poor place, but some of the homes here were clearly substantial.

Amid the destruction, we see a few coloured awnings and lines festooned with washing – some families have chosen to return to what remains of their homes, rather than stay in the schools and other shelters which were crammed with the displaced and the fearful, during the worst of the conflict.

And with the returning families have come children, lots of them. They scamper in the dust, wave as we drive by, and pose for photos. Their apparent ability to deal with the devastation that has befallen their community is staggering.

Sitting in Bassam’s living room –the front wall of which is now replaced by canvas from an old advertisement hoarding – two of his sons listen quietly as he recounts the tumultuous events that began on July 8, when conflict between Israel and Gaza erupted.

“The first week we heard shellfire and F-16 warplanes overhead.” It brought back memories of the last two occasions that Gaza was engulfed by violence, in 2009 and 2012.

“We thought we could stay put. But each day it got worse.”

The family moved in with Bassam’s elderly parents, in central Beit Hanoun. His brother and other relatives moved in too. “We felt safer together,” Bassam explains.

After another ten days, the shelling and tank fire in the area had reached unbearable levels. Bassam decided they must flee.

“I called a colleague at the office. I told him to send help urgently, otherwise I felt we would die.”

Soon afterwards, an armoured UN vehicle arrived. Bassam, his wife and children, crammed inside.

“It was very hard to leave my parents and my sister. I was crying, but we had no choice,” Bassam says.

The car sped through streets that were filled with people running, trying to escape as best they could.

At the UN compound in Gaza city, Bassam’s family joined other staff and their relatives– over two hundred people in all – in the shelter beneath the main building. Forty days passed before an open-ended ceasefire was declared on August 26.

By then, Bassam was already back at work, part of a UNICEF team that remained on the ground in Gaza throughout the conflict. And he had been reunited with other members of his extended family.

“I found my 80-year old father in a mosque in Jabaliya. My mother and my sister were in another place. They were ok.”

Bassam’s two boys have left the room; the stress they have been through had been clearly etched on their faces as they listened to their father.

“We don’t speak easily together now, just sitting and thinking. But they tell me they don’t want to live in this house anymore,” Bassam adds. “But what to do? We have to stay here.”

Note: The Gaza violence which ended with a ceasefire on August 26 left more than 500 children killed, 3,300 injured and many thousands more distressed by their traumatic experiences.