'I felt like I was fighting death': The night Israeli occupation forces raided Jabalia and left families buried alive under the rubble

For years, almost every night between midnight and 5 am, the Israeli army has been breaking into Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Armed and often masked, the soldiers arrive in groups of 10 to 100, waking all family members — from children to the elderly — with the sound of missiles, shells, and stray bullets.

These nightly raids are repeated horrors, but in light of the recent attacks, nothing quite compares to the night of October 17, when residents of the Palestinian city of Jabalia were forced to scramble in their living rooms as the Israeli army intensified its siege on the neighbourhood.

What they had expected to last only a few hours turned into a nightmare, as families found themselves buried alive under the rubble of their homes, unable to escape.

Determined to share their stories, The New Arab uncovers the events unfolding that night through three families' accounts.

Race against time

Of the Dahman family, Imtiyaz, a mother, was the first to regain consciousness, discovering heavy concrete blocks pinning her lower half on the night of the siege.

While the rest of her family soon followed, regaining consciousness, only Alaa, Imtiyaz’s daughter, remained silent.

"Alaa, Alaa, my beloved daughter, why won't you answer?" Imtiyaz recalled, her voice filled with agony, as she and her husband, Tayseer, screamed.

Desperate to help, neighbours who were present that night and heard their cries quickly contacted an ambulance. While waiting for help to arrive, they moved the injured to a nearby home, where a nurse was present to provide first aid.

While it was a relief that immediate care could be given to Imtiyaz and Tayseer’s other children, the nurse brought heartbreaking news: Alaa and her brother Shauqi had sustained serious injuries requiring urgent medical attention.

At this point, Alaa was bleeding heavily, and with Shauqi unable to breathe or even whisper, Tayseer’s nephews and neighbours moved him to a location where the ambulance could reach them.

After an hour of navigating a hazardous route to safety, they finally reached a location where the ambulance could safely pick up Shauqi, and later take Alaa.

A long, dehumanising struggle for passage

Just when the Dahman family thought they had escaped the terror of the Israeli forces, it was far from over.

While Shaqui was safely transferred, Alaa faced a different reality and was informed that due to limited resources at Kamal Adwan Hospital, they needed to be moved to Al-Shifa Hospital.

Showing no sympathy, the Israeli forces denied both Alaa's and Imtiyaz's transfer, and despite the doctors' efforts to coordinate, it was not until five days later that they, along with a group of sick children, were finally allowed to leave the hospital.

After a painful wait, they all headed toward the checkpoint near the Indonesian Hospital, a journey that would normally take just five minutes. However, due to the barriers set up by the Israeli forces, it took them a whole hour to get there.

But the ordeal didn’t end there.

Imtiyaz and Alaa, along with their relatives, were forced to wait for four hours at the checkpoint, during which the soldiers ordered the relatives and the ambulance driver to exit the vehicle for inspection.

As Imtiyaz recalls, their fingerprints were taken with an eye-scan device, and soldiers then demanded that the paramedics remove the sick children from the ambulance and place them on the sandy ground at the checkpoint for further inspection, all while a drone hovered overhead.

Once the inspection was complete, the soldiers instructed the paramedics to return the patients to the ambulance, followed by their relatives.

Finally, in a last cruel act, the Israeli forces inserted a drone into each ambulance for an additional inspection.

After bearing witness to the dehumanisation that nearly cost Alaa her life due to the long delays, she was eventually moved, and a neurologist reassured Imtiyaz that his daughter didn’t need surgery.

However, it was acknowledged that Alaa would need time to recover from the serious head trauma and eye injuries she had sustained.

Eventually, Shauqi received the same reassurance, with doctors providing him with a discharge letter that allowed him to leave the hospital.

Recalling the terror of October 17 with trembling fear, Shauqi said, "It felt like I was fighting death."

Countless other accounts yet to be told

Alongside the Dahman family's account is that of Iman, her husband Atiyah, and Enas and her family.

On the night of the siege, Iman recalled how the air was filled with the sound of drone gunfire, and the noise of bullets hitting the walls of their small room grew louder and more intense.

Uncertain if they would survive, Iman hugged her children and whispered reassuring words, but her attempt to calm them was interrupted by the sound of a massive explosion.

For a moment, Iman felt as though death was closing in on her as an orange hue filled the room and dizziness overtook her. In a panic, she screamed for her husband, "The kids, Atiyah! Where is Mu'min?"

As any mother would, her heart froze when she lost sight of her one-year-old son, but after a moment of frantic searching, she finally saw him peeking his head out from between two stones.

In her testimony, Iman later shared the grim details of explosive drones the army had planted in neighbouring houses days before, realising that their homes were nothing more than targeted sites and that their lives were in grave danger.

Meanwhile, Enas and her family, who had sought refuge in Iman's house, endured horrors they would never forget, with the sound of barrel bombs destroying her neighbours' homes and the constant noise of soldiers and whizzing bullets surrounding them.

"It was like the sound of a heart monitor going silent," Enas said, describing the dizziness and numbness she felt. She added that when the barrel exploded, she thought her heart had stopped, and the explosion's sound echoed through the silence of the room, shaking her family.

Enas also recalled thinking about her children's safety when her husband called out to her, "Are you okay?"

Hearing her children's voices in response, she felt life return to her once again.

Currently, the Dahman family are reunited and in better health, while Iman, her husband Atiyah, and Enas with her family have left Jabaila. 

With many more stories still untold, the horrors these families went through will be remembered in history, a lasting reminder of the suffering they have endured and still face.

Hamza Salha is a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza and a writer for We Are Not Numbers

Follow him on X: @7amzatik