Terrified, starving, crushed: The agonising death of my grandfather in Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict

“Have me buried at the back corner of the house if the cemetery runs out of space.”

That was my grandfather Atiyah’s declared wish decades before the war on Gaza began in October last year. He knew, even then, that burying him after his death would be a challenge.

Since October 7, 2023, when Israel unleashed its continuing, relentless bombardment on the Gaza Strip, my grandfather’s health had been deteriorating. It got markedly worse during each Israeli ground invasion of Jabalia in northern Gaza, our home.

The siege on the northern part of the Strip, which has endured since the start of the war and has effectively cut the north off from the south, meant he never had the chance to recover between those deadly moments.

The drinking water ran out and the food we had to offer him was merely a few morsels. He couldn’t use the toilet for 10 consecutive days because he was so weak he couldn’t move, and that slowly destroyed his digestive system.

Even when his appetite returned and he might have eaten to regain strength, all we had was a little canned food – never enough to make a difference.

As well as air strikes, since the start of the war on Gaza, the Israeli army has launched three particularly brutal ground operations against Jabalia. As the third operation continues right now, hundreds – possibly thousands – of bodies remain buried under rubble, in the streets and homes of Jabalia.

The war on Gaza has left more than 43,000 dead already and we have reached the point that the earth needed to bury our dead is nearly depleted.

It was at the start of this third ground operation into Jabalia, on the evening of October 7, 2024 – the first anniversary of the start of the war – that my grandfather took his last breath. Even if there did remain space for his body to be buried, it would have been impossible. The army’s machinery targeted anything that moved on the ground, so we were forced to bury him in the grounds of our house – just as he had foreseen all those years before.

Catastrophe strikes

My grandfather witnessed the Nakba in 1948 – the “catastrophe” which was unleashed when 750,000 people were driven out of their homes by Zionist militias or left – temporarily they believed – to escape the war that ensued. He fled with his parents, two sisters and his brother from the village of Barbara, northeast of Gaza City, to the refugee camp in Jabalia. He thought he was 10 or 12 years old at the time – he never knew his birthdate.

My grandfather wished he had been educated – he made certain his own children and grandchildren were. But instead of academic learning, his head was filled with stories and proverbs he always shared with us.

For the rest of his life after the Nakba, Atiyah lived with a deep longing for his home. He especially missed the grapevines on his family’s land, he told me, and he kept the millstone and bridal chest his parents carried from their home in Barbara until his death.

That chest became a source of wonder and stories for me and my siblings in later years. It held trophies and photographs of him as a small boy with his parents, Aysha and Mahmoud – the few items they managed to rescue from their home in Barbara.

My great-grandfather had given the chest to my great-grandmother as a wedding gift. “Despite the horrible warfare,” my grandfather told me, “my mother insisted on bringing the chest with her. She wanted her happy memories to live forever.”

He also kept the land deeds which proved his family’s ownership of 75 dunams (18.5 acres or 7.5 hectares) in Barbara.

As a Palestinian refugee, my grandfather spent his life living off his wage from ploughing land, farming and guarding orchards.

He was a large, strong man, descended from a line of large, strong men. My great-grandfather – his father – had been a fighter with the Ottoman Empire in Iraq and his left hand was badly injured. Despite that, he lifted heavy weights, according to what my grandfather told me. Some of my grandfather’s old friends told us children that one of his steps was two metres. We grew up with a fearful image of him.

But for all the physical might he inherited from his own father, my grandfather was a humble man. His happiest moments were when he received United Nations aid at the end of each month – more recently, only every three months because of the disruption to aid caused by the Israeli bombardment.

I find it infuriating to see my grandfather’s generation, my father’s, mine and even my father’s grandchildren, still living off UN aid, 76 years after the Nakba, as if the world has accepted that Palestinians must live their entire lives in the wake of catastrophe.

‘Will I live through two Nakbas in my lifetime?’

Some of our family fled south early on in the war – all five of my aunts and my only uncle – my grandfather’s youngest child – along with their children and grandchildren. My grandfather never stopped asking for them after they left, particularly, my uncle.

I, my father and my siblings all remained and other family members had taken shelter in our house. There were about 40 of us, in all, living together.

On December 5, 2023 – nearly two months into the war – we were startled by a barrage of bullets and shells raining down on the neighbourhood, signalling the first ground invasion of our area. Shells struck the upper floors of our home with force, so Atiyah asked to be moved to his bed on the ground floor, near the door.

The army was blowing up the gates of neighbouring houses, and if they had entered and blown up our door, they would have killed my grandfather immediately. But God’s grace spared us.

Columns of tanks advanced, destroying everything in their path. Soldiers raided our neighbours’ homes and took people away to unknown locations, marking the start of an 11-day siege. These horrific events brought back my grandfather’s nightmares of the Nakba and he asked us: “Will I live through two Nakbas in my lifetime?”

During that first ground assault, the house was partially destroyed; some walls collapsed from the force of nearby air strikes. My grandfather’s sleeping area was exposed to the biting cold of December, which gnawed at his bones. He struggled to move his left hand – his right hand hadn’t moved for years.

On May 10, 2024, the army launched a second, large-scale ground operation against Jabalia, and our neighbourhood was among the areas ordered by Israel to evacuate.

As the army advanced towards our area, most of us – me, my six siblings and their spouses and children – fled to Gaza City. But my grandfather couldn’t come with us as moving him was too difficult, given his weight of about 130 kilogrammes. He also required special care when using the toilet, which caused him great difficulty, often taking hours to relieve himself – something that would be hard to accommodate anywhere we might flee.

My 66-year-old father refused to leave his father behind, insisting on staying with him even if it cost him his life. He told us: “If I die, I’ll die a martyr, but also a martyr loyal to my father.”

According to my father’s account, when the shelling intensified, my grandfather asked him to move him to the ground floor to avoid the shells, as was their usual routine. My father, alone, managed to lower my grandfather in his wheelchair down three flights of stairs, causing severe pain in his back and abdomen. The prolonged siege, lack of food and water, and extreme fear caused my grandfather to lose balance at times.

An agonising decline

Shortly after the siege was lifted and we had returned to Jabalia, we heard groaning from the ground floor late one night. We rushed down to find my grandfather had fallen from his bed and was lying on his stomach on the floor, drenched in blood, barely able to speak.

My siblings and I lifted him back onto the bed and discovered a deep wound on his forehead, above his left eyebrow, from where he was bleeding profusely. He had lost a lot of blood, and it was impossible to get to the hospital at that hour.

My father spent the rest of the night beside my grandfather, trying to stop the bleeding using a technique he learned during his university years called the “magic stitch”, by placing strips of adhesive tape to bind the edges of the wound. We also tried applying some coffee to the wound, but neither method fully stopped the bleeding.

The next morning, my siblings and I took him in his wheelchair, walking the 2km to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where doctors stitched up his head with six stitches without anaesthesia. After a time, the swelling on his forehead began to subside.

The army had turned the once smooth road into a rough path, destroying the infrastructure, and the streets were filled with sewage. It took us nearly two hours to travel back and forth, causing my grandfather to lose even more blood.

Although he survived this ordeal, it severely weakened him and his health rapidly declined. He gradually lost the ability to move, his speech became slurred and his body simply wasted away. He had no access to food, medicine or safety.

Two months before his death, we drew up a night watch schedule among the family to turn him periodically to prevent bedsores – his once large body had become skeletal.

When it was my turn to watch him, every time he called out for me to turn him, I would wonder how the once-strong Atiyah, known by all for his size and strength when he was a younger man, had become so frail, unable to move anything but his eyelids and with his skull bones clearly visible through his skin.

Death under siege

On the first anniversary of the start of the war, before we had recovered from the previous two invasions, the Israeli army suddenly launched a third, even more violent and brutal attack on Jabalia.

This time, my grandfather trembled with fear more than ever before in his life. With each air strike and shelling, he cried out in loud, stuttering words which my father managed to decipher: “What do these people want from us? Who set them upon us?”

He began calling out the names of his grandchildren and children, one by one, pleading for help out of intense fear, while also longing to see the children who had fled south and couldn’t return since the north had been blocked off by Israeli forces.

He spent his last day barely able to catch his breath, gasping, his lips trembling constantly. On the evening of October 7, following a terrifyingly close air strike, he let out his final breath.

My grandfather died, terrified by the bombings, ultimately crushed by two Nakbas, hungry and longing for his children and grandchildren.

At the time of his death, the army’s vehicles were just metres from our home. They had surrounded the cemetery, making burial there impossible. When morning came, we contacted the hospital and ambulance, only to be told they couldn’t reach us. I suggested burying him in a nearby field, but my father saw it as too risky and decided to carry out my grandfather’s will.

My siblings and I began digging the grave under the stairs on the ground floor of one of the storage buildings attached to our house, breaking through a 7cm-thick layer of concrete, then digging 60cm deep and 170cm long into the sand. Fear gripped us with every strike and gunfire.

We asked our neighbour, a tailor, for a large piece of fabric to serve as a shroud. It was a miracle that our neighbour made it to our house without harm.

We washed my grandfather, prayed over him, said our goodbyes and, finally, buried him. During the burial, we placed asbestos sheets over beams, covered the asbestos with nylon, and filled the grave with the sand we had dug out.

The Israeli army didn’t just deprive my grandfather of food, water, treatment and safety – it also denied him the right to a dignified funeral and burial. Yet, I consider him lucky to have had anyone to bury him at all.

The rest of us have since fled to Gaza City and we don’t know when we will be able to return – if at all – to move his body to a more dignified resting place. The soldiers who invaded Jabalia in the latest incursion told everyone to leave – and to never even think of returning. We expect to be forced out of Gaza City as well.

I may die and have no one to bury me, as has happened to thousands of Gazan Palestinians before me.