Taken in Rafah: testimony of a journalist waiting for a visa for Canada
While a ground invasion on the border city of Rafah is imminent, according to the Israeli government, the approximately 1.7 million refugees at the crossing point between Palestine and Egypt live in a permanent state of horror, reports Ibrahim Isbitah. This journalist and film director hardly sleeps anymore and has only one thing in mind: to save his family and to show the daily reality of besieged Palestinians.
“Pray for us! exclaims Ibrahim, sitting in front of his cell phone in a tent that he uses as a shelter in the city of Rafah.
Before the current bombings on the Gaza Strip, Ibrahim was a fixer, that is, a journalist for foreign journalists who come to cover stories from the Gaza Strip, and a film director. Since October 7, he has been telling the world about daily life in Gaza on his social networks.
“What makes us happy, when we have the chance to regain an Internet connection, is to see that people are protesting, talking about what is happening in Gaza. We feel understood,” he says, even if he is generally disappointed with the international media coverage.
“I did a Live with media that did not believe me, he said. Sometimes it feels like we're not living in the same world or on the same planet.”
A need to show reality
“It's really social networks that save us,” believes Ibrahim. As soon as he finds the Internet, he testifies, reporting mainly that all people do is share videos or information about the situation with their loved ones or on their account.
Basic needs are impossible to meet. For some time now, he has been receiving news from friends who have stayed in northern Gaza and who are eating with ground animal kibble.
“What makes me sad is to think of my house, of the life before, and to compare it to now,” explains Ibrahim, with tears in his eyes. An article published in the Israeli daily Haaretz has also caused controversy: two reservists explain that they cook, with photos in support of, dishes in abandoned kitchens from evacuated homes in Gaza with “a mixed feeling”.
More than half a million Gazans, or 25% of households in the enclave, live in a “catastrophic hunger situation”, reports the World Food Programme (WFP).
“Trust me, if we're lucky, we can sleep four to five hours a night. Planes fly over us all night, the bombings don't stop, and you tell yourself that anything is going to happen any minute, says the director. We don't have a pillow, anyway, it's not comfortable at all.”
Busy filming all day, he says to himself that he will manage to sleep well. Impossible to turn a blind eye, however. “My friends saw me online, and I said to them, “I am traumatized, I heard on the news that there is a risk of an invasion in Rafah, and I am wondering where I should go, how am I going to protect my family...” My mother needs dialysis three times a week... What am I going to do? ”, he says.
The current situation has nothing to do with what he has already seen, although the 365-kilometer Palestinian enclave2 — smaller than the island of Montreal — has experienced its share of bombings since 2006. Ibrahim has never seen this: “If you ask the people here, everyone wants to leave. [...] Normally, no Palestinian wants to leave their land, but after what we've seen, no one wants to stay here anymore.”
The NGO Human Rights Watch qualifies as “catastrophic and illegal” the evacuation of Rafah. In a statement, a researcher at the organization, Nadia Hardman, argues that “there is no safe place in Gaza; the international community should take steps to prevent further atrocities.”
Traumatized children
Ibrahim often documents the plight of children in the Gaza Strip. He is the father of four children, and their collective fate affects and concerns him. He is very worried, especially when he sees young people who are completely traumatized by the situation. This is the case of a girl with a leg amputated who he wanted to talk to and who refused to speak to anyone.
“She has refused to talk for two months. We tried to give her toys, food, she doesn't talk,” he is desperate.
In a video published on February 15, 2024, he shares the story of little Elias. This boy from northern Gaza had to be amputated at the American hospital in Gaza. Several people are organizing so that he can be evacuated from the Gaza Strip as a priority so that he can be made a prosthesis. “We promise him that he will have Spiderman's leg, that he will be the next Spiderman,” says Ibrahim, referring to the superhero with spider powers.
In an interview, he said that while playing with his seven-year-old son, he noticed that his son had white hair.
“The situation is difficult for the children [...] they are afraid to be outside, they are deeply sad. Those who are injured are traumatized.” He is also worried about the future: after the end of this bombing campaign, collective therapy will be needed for all the inhabitants of the enclave.
Ibrahim also shares a video in which young people jump on a trampoline in the middle of the tents the next day. He asks, “Can you imagine that it has been four months since these children have been caught in the middle of this war and are facing starvation and no longer going to school? ”
In a Facebook post dated December 31, 2023, Ibrahim expressed bitterness: “If you come from Gaza, your life is built around evacuations [...] As a child, I slept with my espadrilles right next to my pillow,” he wrote after 92 days of bombardments in Gaza.
Her four-year-old daughter has already lived through two wars. “What kind of future do I give her if we stay in Gaza? he said during an interview with La Converse. There is no school, no mosque, no hope.”
The price of war
For displaced citizens, everything is lacking.
“Rich and poor, we are in the same situation: even if you have money, there is nothing to buy in the markets,” explains Ibrahim, who says that what is available is very expensive. Things sell for 10 times the price. He also recalls that no one is working at the moment. So there is no cash inflow possible.
“We're borrowing money left and right, and people are starting to turn into thieves. They have no choice, they are hungry, he said. If we don't die from the war, we're going to starve.”
A crowdfunding campaign to come to Canada
It will take many years to rebuild the buildings, schools, libraries, libraries, libraries, universities, places of worship that were completely demolished by the attacks of the Israel Defense Forces. “I have time to die twice,” Ibrahim exclaims outraged.
In the meantime, as two of his brothers live in Canada, he decided that this is where he wanted to live. But there has been no news yet following the request they submitted just a few days after the special visa program announced by Ottawa opened.
Ibrahim does not understand the slowness of the procedures, considering the war that is raging. “We made a request as soon as the program opened, we paid to make this request, we paid for the translations, but since that time we have not heard anything [from the Canadian government].”
“We are talking about a war situation, not a normal moment where it is understandable to take your time to find out if I can come or not. [...] If you want to help us, why take so much time? ” He believes that this program, which aims to offer 1,000 temporary residence visas to Palestinians in Gaza and which was announced by the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship on January 9 last year, may be serving to calm the ardor of Canadian demonstrators.
Despite everything, he remains hopeful: “When I help others, it gives me hope.”
“We don't always have electricity, we can die at any moment: don't stop talking about us,” he pleads.