7 / 1973 War

IN 1973, Hussein graduated in Alexandria. Ibrahim went to see him, because he had found work in Libya and wanted to go there directly from Egypt. To get there, Ibrahim travelled to Cairo through Cyprus because that was the only way to leave the Gaza Strip. The border to Egypt was closed to everyone except for the Red Cross, which helped university students obtain permission from the Israeli side and then took them in buses to Cairo through the Israeli/Egyptian border. For a long time, the Egyptians had secretly planned for the 1973 war, which started in October during Ramadan.1 The Egyptians placed advertisements in their biggest newspapers and international newspapers that stated that army officers were allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and listed hundreds of them as going. But this wasn’t true. It was a trick so the Israelis wouldn’t expect an Egyptian attack when their officers were thought to be away. Also, war usually stops during Ramadan, so the Israelis did not expect one to occur at this time. The Egyptians were at the peak of readiness and chose the holiest day in the Israeli calendar, Yom Kippur, and the Jewish Shabbat, to attack because the Israelis would be busy celebrating that day and would not be prepared. The Israelis then controlled the eastern part of the Suez Canal and the Egyptians controlled the western side, and the Egyptians prepared everything necessary to cross it. To reach the eastern part, the Bar Lev Line2 had to be destroyed and the Egyptians succeeded in breaking through different parts of it.

The first wave of Egyptian soldiers carried with them powerful pumps. They used them to draw water from the canal and direct it through water cannons to blast large openings in the high sandy embankments that the Israelis had built along the canal to protect the Bar Lev Line. This enabled the mass of Egyptian armoured divisions and vehicles to cross the canal on floating bridges and pass through those openings into the Sinai desert behind the Bar Lev Line. The Egyptians then attacked from behind and destroyed all the strong fortifications of the Bar Lev Line and captured many Israeli soldiers. The fall of the Bar Lev Line in such a short time was a miracle because it was very strong, so it was a very big victory. Israeli propaganda had declared that nobody could destroy the Bar Lev Line and that they were invincible, but the Egyptians broke this legend and defeated that army, entered the Sinai, and continued on their way to liberate the rest of their land.

I turned on the radio and heard that land troops had attacked the Israelis occupying the Sinai and a battle was in progress. I couldn’t believe the Egyptian troops were fighting the Israelis, and that they would liberate their land and our land from Israeli occupation. I kept listening to the news until midnight, and then I heard that the Egyptians had crossed the Bar Lev Line and thought they would soon reach Al Qantara, then Al ’Arish, then Gaza. Then I heard that the Egyptians had passed through Al Qantara and I jumped with happiness. I thought that they would take Al ’Arish the next day and then they might be here, and then the Israeli military occupation would end. We hoped the 1973 war would last a long time and liberate our land, but orders were given to stop it.3 If the war hadn’t ended, the Egyptians might have at least liberated the Gaza Strip.

The next day, Israeli soldiers came asking about Ibrahim, who was still in Egypt, and searched our home looking for papers that might give them some information. They didn’t find anything, and as they were leaving, they said in Hebrew that they should go to the house of the old mayor of Gaza, Muneer Al Rayyis, who was a sick old man by then. The Israelis thought that because Ibrahim and he were Gazan leaders, they might have some important information. I understood what they said, so I quickly telephoned his home. I waited a long time and thought that the lines had been disconnected, when a Jewish voice answered, and I asked to be connected to the home of Muneer Al Rayyis. His daughter answered, and I told her, “Look, your cousins are on their way to your home to see your father, so prepare him for the visit. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The girl said, “Yes.”

I also told her that they had just left our home and if there was something not clean, or if things needed to be gotten rid of at home, to take care of it because her cousins should find the house clean. The girl said she understood, and I rang off. In fact, since the time that the radio announcements had accused Ibrahim of planning the attack against The Hebrew University, I had gotten rid of any papers related to the PLO and anything political that might harm us. So, when they came in 1973, they didn’t find anything.

When the war finished, Ibrahim returned to Gaza, coming back from Cairo through Cyprus. He phoned us from Cyprus to say when he would arrive at the airport, as there was no telephone communication between Egypt and Israel, so Adala and her fiancé and I went to collect him. On our way, we saw the Israeli cars, jeeps, and tanks full of soldiers and military equipment returning to Israel from the Sinai. This was November 1973, and Adala was married on November 30, 1973. So, in 1973, Adala found work, got engaged, and married, Aida completed tawjihi, and Azza was at school. Hussein also graduated that year and worked in Libya until 1975. Now he is in Riyadh, working as the manager of an engineering company that builds hotels.

At the end of 1978, I learned to drive, and I asked a girl who was being taught with me if she knew me. She said no, so I asked her whether she had ever heard my voice on the telephone, and she said no. Then I asked if she remembered a woman who had phoned in 1973, saying that her cousins were coming to her home. She said, yes, she remembered, and asked if I was that woman. She said that since then she had prayed for God’s blessings for me because of the warning, and she had wondered many times who I was because I hadn’t given my name. She thanked me, and from that day on we were friends.

The situation was getting more difficult, and Ibrahim and I decided that Hamed should leave Gaza and go to study in Egypt with his brothers or in Kuwait under the supervision of his uncle. So, Ibrahim went to the civil administration in Jericho and applied for permission for him to travel as he wasn’t yet sixteen and was still on his father’s identity card. He also organized a separate ID card for him to travel. I took Hamed to Amman, as Ibrahim was prohibited from leaving Gaza then because the Israelis thought he might meet with the PLO. We travelled via the Allenby Bridge. When we crossed over to Jordan, we obtained visas to Kuwait and went to his uncle’s home to arrange his studies. Hamed was very young and we felt it would better for him to be with his uncle’s family. Then I flew to Egypt, and from there I returned to Gaza with the Red Cross.

Hamed did not like studying in Kuwait and wanted to go study in Egypt and to be with his brothers and cousins, so his uncle, after consulting with us, sent him to join Moeen, who was studying medicine in Alexandria. Hamed shared a flat with him and his cousins and attended high school.

We highly value education and were worried that Hamed wouldn’t settle in while in Cairo as was the case in Kuwait, so the next year, when Nawaf and Nasser finished tawjihi, Ibrahim and I took them to Cairo for university and moved Hamed from Alexandria to Cairo, and rented a place for the three of them. We registered Hamed in a high school in Cairo in September 1976. Then we stayed with them for a year to get him settled, and when he passed his exams and finished the school year in May 1977, we gave him money and told him to concentrate on his studies and his future because he had already lost time. Hamed finished tawjihi and got high marks. Immediately, Moeen sent a letter for him to apply to the university in Buffalo, in the United States. At the end of 1981, Moeen sent word for Hamed to travel there quickly so he wouldn’t miss the new semester at the university. Hamed studied mechanical engineering in Buffalo starting at the beginning of 1982, and we visited him in 1985. He eventually moved to Canada in the early 1990s and got married in 1995.

When we returned to Gaza from Cairo in 1977, we found out that one of Ibrahim’s relatives, Anwar, had been arrested. I decided to go to visit him with his family. At that time, families were allowed to visit prisoners every fifteen days, while before we had been able to visit every month. Three adults and one child were allowed to go, so I visited with his mother, his wife, and his son. I drove them to the Ansar 2 prison in Gaza, which was beside the Israeli civil administration building, and we stood in line with others who were there to visit prisoners. I hate that place, so I always avoid looking at the area when I pass because I remember the thousands of Palestinian youth held there, the torture they undergo, and the suffering of their families. When we went to visit, we stood behind a long bench in front of the windows that separated us and the prisoners on the other side, and we spoke to them from a distance. Around 10:00 AM, they called us and we were taken to the place where the prisoners were waiting behind the wires of the windows. We walked toward Anwar’s window and his mother was in tears when she saw him. Anwar was happy to see us, and while we were chatting with him, I heard a woman weeping very loudly next to us. I guessed she was the mother of the prisoner who was standing next to Anwar. The prisoner was pale, and he stood bent over. The right side of his face was very blue, and his eyes were red. His mother could not stand like us, but kneeled on the floor, and she started to cry out in a loud voice, Yamma, Yamma, Ya Habibi Yamma (my dear son, my beloved son). The mother was asking her son what had happened, while the two young women with her cried and the child with them was silent, staring at the soldiers. I did my best to avoid crying, but at the same time I felt my heart was crying, in fact, bleeding, for the young man and his mother. At that moment I remembered my two brothers, Nadid and Hassan, who were killed in 1956. I remembered my father and how he bore that agony. I remembered Nadid and the feelings of his mother when he was taken and shot before her eyes. All these agonies came before my eyes when I was looking at Anwar, the other prisoner, and his mother and all of these young men held behind bars. The mother kept weeping, and naturally I, along with many other prisoners’ families, went to calm her down, but none of us could. All the people started to shout “God is great,” and ask God to avenge them. There was chaos and soldiers came in and the visit was cut short. When we got into the car, Anwar’s son kept asking questions about the situation in Ansar, and about why we were ordered to leave. He asked one question after another, and neither his mother nor his grandmother responded. I passed the boy a candy I had in my bag and asked him to tell me what sort of toys he liked so that I could buy him a present.

I was shaking from the horror of the injustice as we returned home, and I don’t know how I drove from the prison back home. That day, I was supposed to go to a party to celebrate my brother’s new home in Khan Younis. But all the happiness had vanished from my heart as I felt that man and his mother’s pain deeply. I don’t know how I dragged myself to Khan Younis and joined the party. On our way back to Gaza, I asked Ibrahim to stop at a funeral at a friend’s home, and as soon as I entered, I started crying. People tried to calm me. They said that even the daughter of the deceased was not so upset as I was, and told me that everybody has to die, that this is their fate. But I couldn’t stop crying, because I needed to empty myself of all the pressure I had been under the whole day. I cried for Anwar, I cried for my two brothers, I cried about the situation, the difficult life, the lady who had died, our people, and all of the people who live under conditions of injustice. When Ibrahim saw me, he asked me what was wrong with me and why I was so sad, but I opted not to tell him, as I know the heavy weight that he carries on his shoulders. Ibrahim is very sensitive. He is the type of man who hides his feelings and doesn’t express them, while women have the patience and means of releasing pressure and expressing their feelings. I love him and didn’t want to add more to his full plate, so I preferred to hide what I saw in the prison and my own feelings, rather than make him feel as helpless as I felt. The next day, Ibrahim followed me around the house and eventually I told him the story and could not hide my tears, as doing that would have made him worry more. Ibrahim looked carefully at me and left.

He drove very fast and I heard the car hit something, and then a few minutes later, our neighbour came and asked what was wrong with Ibrahim. Before I could answer her, another neighbour came and asked the same question, and I asked them why they said this. They said that he usually said good morning, but this time he didn’t even look at them and his face showed he had received very bad news, and he had even hit the side of the garage with the car. So, I told them the story of the prison and about my own feelings, as I felt their sincere worry about Ibrahim. Our neighbours cried.