Two years after Israel’s Nuseirat ‘rescue’ success, we are still bleeding

In May 2024, after seven months of displacement and moving between tents and other people’s houses, we returned to Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Our home had been made uninhabitable in an attack in January, so we rented an apartment overlooking what is now called the “yellow line”.

There were seven of us: my parents, my two sisters, 23-year-old Eman and 20-year-old Yasmin, my nine-year-old brother Abdullah, my bedridden grandmother, and me.

We thought we might finally have some semblance of stability.

On the morning of June 8, 2024, my father looked out of the window and saw a thick cloud of dust on the horizon. He alerted us. When we looked more closely, we saw military vehicles moving in the area.

Some neighbours left, but we stayed. We were convinced the movement was still far from us.

A shell struck our apartment, destroying parts of it. I was in the corridor when the explosion happened. Outside, a drone hovered above the building, as if checking that no life remained.

The pressure of the explosion was suffocating. Sound almost disappeared, as if we were underwater.

I could hear my father calling us, as if from far away, but whenever I tried to answer, my voice disappeared.