Dear President Biden,
I am writing to you for the second time. I first wrote to you in November after 47 members of my community, including 36 of my family's girlfriends, were killed in a single attack by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). It was 4 days. The massacre occurred in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, where ally Israel claims people are safe.
I don't know if you received my first letter or if your media team informed you of its contents. In any case, your position has not changed. Your clear support for Israel, including large-scale arms transfers, means that many more such atrocities have been committed with your help since then.
Since writing that letter, I have lost 220 more family members.
Exactly one month ago, on January 31st, my father's cousin Khalid Ammar (40 years old), who had evacuated to Khan Yunis, was attacked by an Israeli tank and his entire family was killed. Murdered. Khalid's wife Majdoreen (38), four daughters Malak (17), Sarah (16), Aya (9), Rafeef (7), and two sons Osama ( (14 years old) and Anas (2 years old) were all killed in the attack.
Among the victims were Khalid's disabled brother Mohammed, 42, and his mother Fatiyah, 60. The body remained unburied for over a week. Khalid's surviving brother Bilal, 35, repeatedly asked the Palestinian Red Cross for assistance, but without IOF permission, they were unable to send a rescue team to search for survivors.
When I visited Gaza last summer, Majdreen and her two young daughters, Rafeef and Aya, came to see me. I still remember Rafeef trying to ride my youngest niece Rasha's bike. I still remember them racing down the street, eating candy bought from my cousin Asad's store. I can still hear their laughter.
But Mr. President, today, we don't have Aya, we don't have Rafeef, we don't have Assad. He was also killed by IOF along with his wife, children, mother, two sisters, his sister-in-law and her children. No roads, no houses, no shops, no laughter. There are only echoes of devastation and the deafening silence of loss.
Today, the residential area of Khan Yunis refugee camp where I grew up has been reduced to rubble. Tens of thousands of refugees, including all the surviving members of my extended family, are currently taking refuge in Al Mawashi and Rafah. They live in tents. They're not doing well, Mr. President.
There was no contact for a while because Israel cut off communications. On February 10, my nephew Aziz, 23, risked a 3km walk to the edge of Rafah to use the internet. He told me that death had passed before them many times, but for now it had escaped them. They are hungry, thirsty, and cold.
Despite the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel must ensure the delivery of aid to Gaza, electricity, sanitation, medicine, communications and other services are unavailable to them.
Even if people survive Israeli bombing, they may not survive the wounds sustained from Israeli bombing and the explosion of communicable and non-communicable diseases. The medical system collapsed under the Israeli onslaught.
In February, IOF laid siege to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the second largest hospital in the Gaza Strip. There were 300 medical staff and 450 patients trapped in the hospital, and around 10,000 internally displaced people seeking refuge in and around the hospital.
For days, IOF did not allow World Health Organization (WHO) rescue teams to evacuate patients and staff or deliver much-needed food, medical supplies and fuel. Throughout this time, medical staff showed incredible courage and dedication to their patients, trying to keep them alive in the face of Israeli attack. A shining example is Dr. Amira al-Asli, who rushed to the aid of one of the wounded in the hospital courtyard under Israeli fire.
Countless people who took shelter within the hospital premises were killed or injured. Some of these murders were recorded on camera.
On February 13, IOF sent Jamal Abu al-Ola, a young man who had been detained and tortured by Israeli soldiers, to the hospital and told displaced Palestinians to leave. Wearing a white personal protective suit and with his hands tied, he delivered the message and headed to the hospital gate as instructed, where he was shot dead. His execution was recorded by journalists at the hospital and made available to the public.
Could you order an investigation, Mr. President? Will you demand that those responsible for killing Jamal and many others at Nasser Hospital be punished, or will you accept the IOF's interpretation again?
On February 15, IOF attacked a hospital, displacing thousands of people amid heavy shelling, and forcing hundreds of people, at least 70 of them medical workers, to disappear. This continues the pattern that began in Gaza City. When IOF attacked Al Shifa Hospital, they arrested some of its staff, including the hospital's director, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, who remains in an Israeli prison. The excuse then, and still is, was that they were looking for Hamas headquarters. Mr. President, you were quick to accept this false story.
During the attack on Nasser Hospital, electricity and oxygen were cut off and at least eight patients died. When the WHO team was finally allowed into the hospital, staff described it as a “place of death”. After hundreds of patients were evacuated, around 25 medical staff remained at the hospital to care for the remaining 120 patients, with food, water and medicine supplies unsecured.
Among the regular patients at Nasser Hospital was my relative Insira, who suffers from kidney failure and requires weekly dialysis. She lived in the al-Kararah region, east of Khan Yunis.
When IOF bombed her area, she moved to a displacement camp. She moved to Hay al-Amal when IOF attacked the camp. When the latter was bombed, her children decided to move her closer to Nasser Hospital.
As conditions at the hospital worsened, the frequency of dialysis sessions decreased to once every two weeks, then once every three weeks, which caused her great distress. When IOF surrounded the hospital, Insira was forced to leave. We lost contact with her and her children after that. She doesn't know if she survived.
Following Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza's healthcare system, the vast majority of chronically ill people like Insira are unable to access proper medical care. This is a death sentence for them. Destroying the health care system is a war crime, Mr. President, do you know that?
Mr. President, 2.3 million people are living in concentration camps in Gaza. They are starved and brutally killed. They are bombed in their homes, on the streets, while fetching water, sleeping in tents, receiving aid, and even while cooking. People tell me that in Gaza, drinking water means soaking in blood, a loaf of bread is soaked in blood, and moving from place to place means shedding blood.
Even the act of asking for food to feed your children can be deadly, as happened to many parents on February 28th. Some 112 Palestinians were killed by IOF while trying to obtain flour to feed themselves and their families.
Their deaths are painfully real. So were the deaths of small babies like Anas, children like Aya, mothers like Majdreen, and elderly people like Fatiyah. The official death toll is more than 30,000 people. Thousands more died but were recorded as “missing in action.”
Approximately 13,000 of those killed were children. Currently, many people are starving to death. Israel kills 6 children every hour. Each of these children had a name, a story, and a dream that was never fulfilled. Don't the children of Gaza deserve to live, Mr. President?
Palestinians are one of the most educated populations in the entire Middle East. They are very curious people. The most pressing question they all have today is “why”? Why are the Palestinian people being forced into arms and money at the hands of your allies while you have rejected your calls for a ceasefire? Will we have to endure the genocide that was committed? Can you tell me why, Mr. President?
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
