British-Palestinians have said family members in Gaza are ‘running for their lives’ after Israel ordered half of the besieged region’s population to evacuate their homes.
Fady Abusidu, a 47-year-old business development consultant based in Warwick, said he was ‘really, really worried’ having not heard from any of his cousins in Gaza City in the north of the region since the order to evacuate.
Israel has been pounding Gaza with airstrikes since Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented cross-border attack, killing more than 1,300 people.
The Israeli military said early on Friday that the approximately 1.1 million people in northern Gaza ‘should relocate to southern Gaza’ within 24 hours, which the humanitarian office of the United Nations said was ‘impossible’.
Later that day, Israel announced for the first time that ground troops have been operating inside the Gaza Strip.
Mr Abusidu said: ‘I don’t know where my cousins are at the moment, I’ve tried to call them so many times and it wouldn’t connect.
‘I can only hope that the reason why I’m not in touch with them is because of communication issues, power issues, not because their phones have been destroyed with them, that’s the only hope I have to be honest.’
A British-Palestinian academic based in London said his close family in Gaza – two brothers, one sister and three nephews, including a three-month-old – were ‘petrified’.
He told reporters he spoke to his brother on Friday morning, who he described as a ‘tough man’ but was ‘crying because he couldn’t take it anymore’.
His brother does not know ‘what to do’ or ‘where to go’ and was ‘worried sick’ about his young child, said the academic, who did not wish to share his name because of ‘anti-Palestinian sentiment’ and the risk of being subjected to ‘unpleasant trolling’ online.
The siblings and their children had been living in northwest Gaza before the area was ‘completely levelled’ and have been on the move.
In a ‘very, very brief call’ with his pregnant sister before the phone cut out, she asked him to look after her children ‘should anything happen to her and her husband, assuming they would survive’, he said.
He said the family was staying in southern Gaza at his aunt’s three-bedroom flat which was housing around 75 people.
He told how his family were rationing food and sleeping ‘holding their babies’ while a ‘continuous bombardment’ of Israeli strikes was heard outside.
And he feared for his 80-year-old wheelchair-bound aunt in central Gaza.
As for his extended family members in Gaza, he said: ‘We don’t know who is alive and who is not, we don’t know where everyone ended up, everyone is just scattered everywhere.’
‘My people literally are running for their lives and the Israelis are chasing them to literally obliterate them, to kill them.’
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said 1,537 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the escalation on Saturday, including 500 children.
British-Palestinian Mohammed Awad said his family ‘refuse to evacuate from the north of Gaza’.
His ‘entire close and extended family’, including his parents, siblings and young relatives who are living in Jabalia, were ‘terrified,’ he said.
Mr Awad, an English teacher at a language school in Cambridge, said: ‘They are disconnected from the world. They don’t have electricity or enough water or food to survive.
‘This could be the last time I hear from them tonight as Israel threatens to demolish the north of Gaza.
‘I’m devastated and heartbroken over my family and the innocent people of Gaza.’
He continued: ‘The shameful silence, blatant complicity and the US and Western political and militant support of Israel reveal the true face of their selective humanity, morality and justice.
‘Palestinian lives matter equally to Israeli lives. Muslim and Christian lives matter equally to Jewish lives.’
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