Related Post
Watching the horrors of war on television from afar excites the Palestinians who left Gaza strip Just now, there was sadness, depression, and a feeling of helplessness, and aroused in their souls grief and nostalgia for a home destroyed by the Israeli war machine.
The American website The Intercept published stories of Palestinian citizens who were forced by the war conditions raging in their homeland to travel abroad.
Journalists Ahmed Al-Sammak and Laila Hassan began their report with the story of Palestinian Walaa Al-Absi (26 years old), who left Gaza just two months before the Israeli ground invasion of the Strip, for the first time in her life, to join the College of Postgraduate Studies in Dublin, the capital of the Republic. Ireland.
Her heartbeat increased
Barely a week had passed since the Israeli bombing when her phone rang at three in the morning. As soon as she picked up her phone and saw her sister’s name, her heart beat increased. A call at that early hour of dawn meant that a tragedy had occurred.
“Everyone (at the other end) was screaming. I ask God to never let you live through the horror I experienced.” She heard a voice telling her, “Pray for us, pray for us,” then suddenly the call cut off.
Walaa called again and again, terrified and crying, until she succeeded the tenth time. Her sister answered to tell her that an Israeli air strike had just hit the house next to her family in Gaza City, and shrapnel had pierced her younger brother’s wrist.
“All the windows were shattered,” Walaa says, “and the doors flew in their faces, and my brother was bleeding, and everyone was screaming and did not know anything, and dust covered the place.”
The connection was cut off again
The call was cut off again, and Walaa remained alone, trembling and sweat dripping from her forehead, in her room in the university residence, thousands of miles away from Gaza.
Since that air strike, she has not recovered from the headache that struck her that day. She continued to struggle a lot to sleep, and she missed her schoolwork. All that occupied her mind was what might happen to her family.
Walaa says that she wakes up every night and browses the Telegram platform in search of pictures or names of her family members. “I feel guilty because of that,” she adds.
They suffer from pain and a feeling of helplessness
The Intercept spoke to a number of Palestinians who left Gaza in the months before October 7, in pursuit of job opportunities or higher education. Like Walaa Al-Absi, they suffer from pain and a sense of helplessness as they watch the Israeli army attack their families and destroy the homes in which they grew up. Mystery surrounds their fate, whether they will return to Gaza, and who will be standing there.
Walaa Al-Absi says, “When I left Gaza for the first time, I only wanted to get a master’s degree in public health because the health system was very bad, and I wanted to help new graduates get jobs. But now everything has changed in Gaza. All my plans have changed.”
As social media is flooded with photos and videos taken by journalists and others from Gaza, psychologists warn of the negative trauma people can experience from regularly consuming distressing content.
Mental health damage is getting worse
The news site quotes Iman Farajallah, a Palestinian psychiatrist residing in California State The American writer, who grew up in the Gaza Strip, said that the mental health effects on the Palestinians of Gaza are exacerbated by the survivors’ feelings of guilt.
“There will be cases where people suffer from excessive anxiety, depression, stress, and exhaustion,” she said. She continued, and in the past two months, 11 members of the Faraj Allah family were killed in Gaza, and her 85-year-old father was displaced after his house was bombed.
“You see before your eyes your family is suffering and might be killed, but you can’t do anything about it,” she said.
Hours passed before Walaa Al-Absi heard news from her family again. Her brother was transferred to Al-Shifa HospitalDoctors determined that the shrapnel severed 4 tendons from his wrist. Because the hospital was overcrowded with cases requiring urgent surgeries, they rushed him to another hospital, where doctors performed a two-and-a-half-hour surgery during which they removed the shrapnel.
According to Iman Faraj Allah, Palestinians living under conditions of conflict, siege and occupation in Gaza are more vulnerable to mental illness.
On the other side of the wall
Another story told in the Intercept report by a young Palestinian named Muhammad Dawwas (24 years old) from the town of Beit Lahia, who made a comparison between life conditions in Gaza and on the other side of the country. Border wall.
“I used to say that Israel is illuminated while Gaza was always in complete darkness. I used to say, they are very lucky. Their life is completely different from ours. I was always thinking about leaving Gaza for a country without a siege.”
In 2019, he traveled to California and got married. Soon after, he moved to a rural town in Utah, where he found work in a factory to send money to his family. But he left his job and returned to Gaza, driven by nostalgia for it.
He lost the joy of life
On October 14, Muhammad Dawwas woke up to a call saying that 25 members of his family had been injured in an air strike on their house. 15 of them were martyred, including his cousin and friend Yousef, and his two children.
“I still can’t believe I will never see Youssef again,” Mohamed Dawwas said. He added, “I have lost the joy of life. I still cannot express the horror of the shock.”
Only hours later, his home in Beit Lahia was bombed. Unable to reach his mother or any of his six siblings, he worried they might die. Hours later, he called again and his mother answered. They had all fled to the homes of their relatives in Beit Lahia, as she told him, and they survived two more bombings.
Living in America is an unpleasant experience
On December 1, his brother Saleh was injured in an air strike, and his sister told him that he appeared to be suffering from an infection, and was showing symptoms of kidney failure. The next day, Saleh died as a martyr.
Muhammad Dawwas discovered that living in America is an annoying experience. He was accustomed to seeing posters of Israeli prisoners and watching biased news coverage, which made him angry and filled with fear. He said that some Americans were upset with him when he defended his family and Gaza.
 "Nina Dobrev and Shaun White are celebrating their first Christmas as an engaged couple")
