To mark World Refugee Day (20th June), we're sharing an exclusive story from Asylum Speakers by Jaz O'Hara.
(Content warning: graphic violence)
GAZA
“Imagine being 20 years old and living through four different insane aggressions,” began Yara when we sat down together to record a podcast episode about her home country of Palestine. I couldn’t imagine but I wanted to try. My interest in Palestine had begun during my teenage years, when my first boyfriend played for a Sunday league football team that raised money for projects in Palestine. At the time, I knew nothing about what was happening there, having not learned about it in school, so I began my own explorative journey. I watched The Promise, a TV series about a young British girl who visits Palestine, and went to Open University lectures in London. I created a timeline of key moments in the history of Israel/Palestine relations and stuck it to my bathroom wall so anyone sitting on the toilet would read it and learn. But it wasn’t until I heard Yara’s story first-hand that I began to understand the human cost of these events.
Yara is from the Gaza Strip, a small area of Palestinian land bordering Egypt and Israel, home to around 1.85 million people. Gaza has been under a permanent Israeli blockade since 2007, causing unemployment to rise to 40 percent, and depriving people of food, water, medical supplies and more, with no freedom to leave. Since the blockade, there has been almost constant conflict in Gaza, displacing and killing thousands of civilians. According to the UN, there are at least 58,000 people in Gaza who are internally displaced, many of whom have lost their homes to Israeli bombardment and now live in refugee camps. Yara was one of these and grew up in a camp called Il Bereij until she left Gaza at the age of 16 after winning a scholarship to a boarding school in Wales, UK. She now studies International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. She also travels across the UK to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause. But leaving Gaza was not easy, emotionally or physically.
“Imagine being 20 years old and living through four different insane aggressions,” began Yara when we sat down together to record a podcast episode about her home country of Palestine. I couldn’t imagine but I wanted to try. My interest in Palestine had begun during my teenage years, when my first boyfriend played for a Sunday league football team that raised money for projects in Palestine. At the time, I knew nothing about what was happening there, having not learned about it in school, so I began my own explorative journey. I watched The Promise, a TV series about a young British girl who visits Palestine, and went to Open University lectures in London. I created a timeline of key moments in the history of Israel/Palestine relations and stuck it to my bathroom wall so anyone sitting on the toilet would read it and learn. But it wasn’t until I heard Yara’s story first-hand that I began to understand the human cost of these events.
Yara is from the Gaza Strip, a small area of Palestinian land bordering Egypt and Israel, home to around 1.85 million people. Gaza has been under a permanent Israeli blockade since 2007, causing unemployment to rise to 40 percent, and depriving people of food, water, medical supplies and more, with no freedom to leave. Since the blockade, there has been almost constant conflict in Gaza, displacing and killing thousands of civilians. According to the UN, there are at least 58,000 people in Gaza who are internally displaced, many of whom have lost their homes to Israeli bombardment and now live in refugee camps. Yara was one of these and grew up in a camp called Il Bereij until she left Gaza at the age of 16 after winning a scholarship to a boarding school in Wales, UK. She now studies International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. She also travels across the UK to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause. But leaving Gaza was not easy, emotionally or physically.
“Nearly two million people are trapped in a small, very densely populated strip,” explained Yara. “There has been a blockade by land, air and sea for more than 15 years [since 2007], so it was almost impossible for me to leave. You can’t get in or out. So many children and so many of my friends have [won] scholarships to study [abroad], but they couldn’t leave. We don’t even have an airport. The only way to leave Gaza is through Egypt, and the border with Egypt is closed.” She paused. “We don’t know what the real world looks like but we still dream of it.”
Yara uses social media to amplify the stories of people impacted by the Israeli blockade. We first connected after I saw a video of hers on Instagram which had a lasting impact on me. Facing the camera, distraught, she explained through tears that she had heard that her neighbour’s house had been bombed and she didn’t yet know whether her own family had survived the attack. This hugely vulnerable video brought the reality of living in a conflict zone into sharp focus. It hit me hard, and I wasn’t the only one; it was seen by half a million people.
“Talking about my trauma is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I did it on social media because I thought, this is for you Palestine,” Yara explained. “I’m talking for all those generations who lost their lives, who lost their voices. I feel a responsibility to show the whole world what happened. Palestine is a struggle for every human being who believes in freedom. It’s not a struggle for Palestinians only. I’m documenting history.”
Yara’s family survived that bombing, but returning to Gaza to visit them is near impossible. When I interviewed Yara for our podcast, she hadn’t seen her family in five years. “That alone is traumatising,” she told me, with a wobble in her voice. “[I’m] constantly worrying whether my family are dead or alive. And I’m only talking about my family. I have a whole childhood of friends, bookshops, memories, places, the beach – my whole existence. It’s my home and I can’t go back. I haven’t been back since I left. I feel so angry at the world for allowing this to happen. For five years, I haven’t seen my baby brother who has suddenly grown up. I haven’t seen my pet tortoise, Casper, and he just died in a bombing.” She paused to correct herself. “Actually, he was murdered".
“With all that pain comes responsibility. We’re born to be activists just by being Palestinians. In a parallel universe I’d be studying art or cinema, but our reality drove me to do this. I realised how underrepresented we were as Palestinians and that’s why I feel this is my mission. I managed to learn English and expose what’s happening in my home. I’m sharing stories of what’s happening to my friends and family. I’m not being political in the sense that I’m supporting a political party in Palestine. I’m just conveying what’s happening. Real people. Real stories. Real humans, just like me and you.”
GROWING UP IN GAZA
During Yara’s childhood there were three aggressions in Gaza — in 2008, 2012 and the most difficult one
in 2014.
“I don’t even know what word to use,” said Yara, referring to the word ‘aggression.’ “I refuse to say it’s a war now that I have more knowledge of the English language. When you say it’s a war, you imply that there are two equal sides. But what’s happening in Palestine, it’s an oppressed and an oppressor. What’s happening in Gaza is not a war. Israel has one of the most advanced militaries in the whole world, facing children with rocks. It’s really unfair. To me, the word ‘attack’ seems too small to describe the pain my friends and family have endured.”
Yara witnessed the bloodshed of these aggressions firsthand, with her family fleeing the Il Bureij refugee camp after it was shelled by the Israeli military. “I witnessed death in front of my eyes. Blood. Pieces of humans, not even whole people. We escaped my camp because the whole neighbourhood got destroyed again. We escaped to where my grandparents lived because we thought it would be safer. I saw people dying in the street in front of us. [I was] running with my brother. It breaks me every time I think about his crying face. He was eleven. He was running and he had just a bag of marbles. I took a book with me I think. Just one book. “It doesn’t get easier talking about this,” she said, a wobble in her voice. “I get teared up because it still affects me as if it happened yesterday. The trauma of it is beyond words. “That attack changed my life forever. Luckily we survived. My best friend’s house was bombed. I didn’t know if she was alive for two days. She was under rubble. She lost her dad, her grandad and other relatives. When I called her, she was in the hospital and we stayed on the phone for 30 minutes, just crying, no talking, just crying, thanking God that she was alive.”
It was only once Yara made it to the UK that she understood that she was suffering from PTSD. “Trauma is barely talked about in situations of conflict or war zones,” she explained. “I was so anxious, I couldn’t leave my mum. I was really unwell for a while. It wasn’t until I left, and I met people in the UK, that I realised it’s not normal to be 14 and to see your best friend killed before your eyes. It’s not normal to be imprisoned and tortured as a Palestinian child. I managed to get back on my feet, but 95 percent of Gazan children are dealing with heavy trauma. It’s not PTSD because it’s still ongoing, it’s still happening.
“You know trauma can be inherited through generations?” she continued. “When I found this out I was shocked. When I have kids, even if I live outside of Palestine, the fact they could be born with trauma because of my trauma breaks my heart. That’s why we have to stop what’s happening now. It stops here. It has to. We’ve had enough, more than enough.
“Over the past ten years, 3,000 Palestinian children have been killed – and I’m just talking about children. Seventy-three years of oppression, and even before that. The British mandate of Palestine was more oppression, more colonialism. We’ve been fighting for the liberation of our land since we existed, but we can’t do this alone. We’re angry because we’re hopeful that there’s another reality.”
When I asked Yara what her dream was for the future of Palestine, she said: “I want basic human rights for my people. I want no child to be scared that they might lose their family any minute or any second. I want no child to be held at a checkpoint just because of their nationality. I want children to have their basic movement rights. We’re talking about literally just having a normal life. That’s what I want for my people. I want every Palestinian to be able to go back to their home feeling safe, and not to be kicked out any moment just because they’re Palestinian. I want no child to feel like they’re less, just because they’re not Israeli. I want us to sing and dance and laugh, instead of cry. I want people to have their basic human rights. I would not wish what was happening to Palestinians on any Israeli child or adult. I want peace for everyone.”
During Yara’s childhood there were three aggressions in Gaza — in 2008, 2012 and the most difficult one
in 2014.
“I don’t even know what word to use,” said Yara, referring to the word ‘aggression.’ “I refuse to say it’s a war now that I have more knowledge of the English language. When you say it’s a war, you imply that there are two equal sides. But what’s happening in Palestine, it’s an oppressed and an oppressor. What’s happening in Gaza is not a war. Israel has one of the most advanced militaries in the whole world, facing children with rocks. It’s really unfair. To me, the word ‘attack’ seems too small to describe the pain my friends and family have endured.”
Yara witnessed the bloodshed of these aggressions firsthand, with her family fleeing the Il Bureij refugee camp after it was shelled by the Israeli military. “I witnessed death in front of my eyes. Blood. Pieces of humans, not even whole people. We escaped my camp because the whole neighbourhood got destroyed again. We escaped to where my grandparents lived because we thought it would be safer. I saw people dying in the street in front of us. [I was] running with my brother. It breaks me every time I think about his crying face. He was eleven. He was running and he had just a bag of marbles. I took a book with me I think. Just one book. “It doesn’t get easier talking about this,” she said, a wobble in her voice. “I get teared up because it still affects me as if it happened yesterday. The trauma of it is beyond words. “That attack changed my life forever. Luckily we survived. My best friend’s house was bombed. I didn’t know if she was alive for two days. She was under rubble. She lost her dad, her grandad and other relatives. When I called her, she was in the hospital and we stayed on the phone for 30 minutes, just crying, no talking, just crying, thanking God that she was alive.”
It was only once Yara made it to the UK that she understood that she was suffering from PTSD. “Trauma is barely talked about in situations of conflict or war zones,” she explained. “I was so anxious, I couldn’t leave my mum. I was really unwell for a while. It wasn’t until I left, and I met people in the UK, that I realised it’s not normal to be 14 and to see your best friend killed before your eyes. It’s not normal to be imprisoned and tortured as a Palestinian child. I managed to get back on my feet, but 95 percent of Gazan children are dealing with heavy trauma. It’s not PTSD because it’s still ongoing, it’s still happening.
“You know trauma can be inherited through generations?” she continued. “When I found this out I was shocked. When I have kids, even if I live outside of Palestine, the fact they could be born with trauma because of my trauma breaks my heart. That’s why we have to stop what’s happening now. It stops here. It has to. We’ve had enough, more than enough.
“Over the past ten years, 3,000 Palestinian children have been killed – and I’m just talking about children. Seventy-three years of oppression, and even before that. The British mandate of Palestine was more oppression, more colonialism. We’ve been fighting for the liberation of our land since we existed, but we can’t do this alone. We’re angry because we’re hopeful that there’s another reality.”
When I asked Yara what her dream was for the future of Palestine, she said: “I want basic human rights for my people. I want no child to be scared that they might lose their family any minute or any second. I want no child to be held at a checkpoint just because of their nationality. I want children to have their basic movement rights. We’re talking about literally just having a normal life. That’s what I want for my people. I want every Palestinian to be able to go back to their home feeling safe, and not to be kicked out any moment just because they’re Palestinian. I want no child to feel like they’re less, just because they’re not Israeli. I want us to sing and dance and laugh, instead of cry. I want people to have their basic human rights. I would not wish what was happening to Palestinians on any Israeli child or adult. I want peace for everyone.”