In Gaza, ‘we hate the night for what Israel does to us’

Filmmaker Ruwaida Amer describes life in the Gaza Strip after Hamas launched a surprise offensive against Israel.

Gaza Strip – When I was a kid, big, rumbling Israeli bulldozers rolled into our neighbourhood one day and flattened all the houses. Just like that.

The grownups were sad, but they did not seem surprised

We moved from shelters to borrowed houses for years until we finally managed to find a home of our own in Fokhari, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

We’re close to the Rafah crossing into Egypt and to the separation fence. It has been turbulent, but at least we haven’t had to move so often.

A stained day

When I woke up on Saturday, it was to the sound of rockets being fired. We were pretty sure they were Palestinian rockets being fired into our occupied lands outside Gaza. Lands that our grandparents were forced out of 75 years ago during the Nakba, lands some of us have never been allowed to step onto.

They went on for hours. It wasn’t clear what the reason was though. Was it retaliation because Israel assassinated a Hamas leader? They do that sometimes, assassinate people in the ruling party of Gaza.

Were the rockets a response to what was happening in Al-Aqsa Mosque for the past week, the settler incursions and violence against Muslims trying to pray there?

It could have been anything, Israel does so much to Palestine and the Palestinians.

Then the mosque loudspeakers came on people started sending around news and pictures on their phones. A large group of resistance fighters had snuck out of Gaza, “infiltrating” our own occupied lands.

The scenes were horrific, they resembled so many we had seen before from Gaza. But this time, the people lying dead on the ground were not Palestinians. Any and all deaths are traumatic.