One Death Under Siege

JVL Introduction

This moving essay tells the story of one man’s death in Gaza and some of what life was like before that.  This was Atiya, the author’s grandfather who died from illness rather than a bomb, exactly one year after this iteration of Israel’s attacks on Gaza began.  He lived in the Jabalia Refugee Camp, where he had been since 1948 and where he was to end his days: “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.”

LL

This article was originally published by Al Jazeera on Sat 2 Nov 2024. Read the original here.