The situation was as if we were experiencing the Day of Judgment (...) Crowds of people escaping from the death on foot and others riding donkeys and camels, while children ran in front of their families as the sound of bullets fired by the Zionist gangs towards us [...] Living in tents is the height of tragedy, without protection and privacy for you and your family (...) We felt naked in front of each other and felt ashamed all the time, even when we had to relieve ourselves inside tents.
An 84-year-old refugee from Julis recalls walking to Gaza as a girl during the 1948 exodus and the humiliation of the first years in tents at Deir al-Balah.
Dalal Nassar was a girl of about eight in 1948, when her family fled Julis, in the Gaza district, walking with her mother and brothers to reach safety in the Gaza Strip. Her family had lived quietly on their land, planting legumes and vegetables and keeping a cow for milk; in Gaza they sheltered in tents at Deir al-Balah that gave no protection from winter cold or summer heat.
She is the eldest of three sisters interviewed by Sally Ibrahim for The New Arab in May 2024, in a piece tracing how displacement has repeated across the family’s generations — from 1948 through the 1967 war to the war that began in October 2023, in which her younger sister Amina was again displaced to tents in Rafah.
Sources
Source
Quoted exactly as published by The New Arab. Visit the archive for the full testimony.
The New Arab