Israel’s recent offensives on Gaza has had a devastating effect on the population, including young students, who have always struggled to complete their education under Israel’s air and sea blockade of the tiny strip.

 

 

Ahmad Noor, a 20-year-old student, studied tirelessly to continue on to higher education and to contribute to his country and society. His hard work paid off in 2011, when he got accepted into medical school. Sadly, Israel’s ongoing blockade on Gaza makes it difficult for students to complete their studies with the proper resources, such as books or equipment.

 

 

The latest offensive Operation Protective Edge on Gaza occurred during the Islamic Holy month of Ramadan, where practicing Muslims abstain from food and drink from dawn to sunset. On the twentieth of July, Ahmad’s family gathered with his uncle’s family to break their fasting in Shuja’iyya, a neighborhood in Gaza that witnessed heavy shelling on that same day. Ahmad’s neighborhood had been blocked and closed out, thus preventing ambulances from rescuing civilians. “No one was picking up ever since we knew ambulance vehicles could not have access to rescue civilians, and the neighborhood at that moment had been marked as a closed military area in which every mobile and moving object were prone to deadly strikes,” he says. To pass time, Ahmad and his relatives read the Quran, and repeatedly tried to call an ambulance several times.

 

 

At 6 A.M., some of the residents in Ahmad’s neighborhood started to leave in groups. “We also decided to leave with them and to rely solely on God. My eyes were then set open to witness events I have never come to imagine even for once in my lifetime—all the ‘damar’ [ruins] in such a short interval of time, and the large number of women, children and men stacking to form one human streak in an attempt to escape altogether,” he says. He adds that as he and his family walked through the streets, they were greeted with the sight of corpses. Ahmad and his family eventually went to stay at another relative’s house. He says that he later went to Al-Shifa Hospital to check on some of his wounded friends, who also happen to live in the same neighborhood as he does.

 

 

A few days later, while waiting for the call to prayer at a mosque, Ahmad found out that his cousin has passed away. “I couldn’t hold it inside and I started to cry like a baby, then headed to the cemetery in a hurry to have a final look at the body. I said goodbye, kissed him on the forehead and prayed for him to be accommodated as a martyr in Paradise.”

 

 

Ahmad says he wishes he had never witnessed the horrific series of events that occurred on that particular night in his neighborhood, and adds that he would tell his future children about it someday. It is indeed difficult but inspiring, having to learn patience from those victims living in such difficult conflict/ post-conflict situations where even recovery takes place at a slow pace due to such massive blockade.