"Lena's Story"
It's a cool October evening in Amman, a welcome relief from the continuing heat this year in Jordan. I am sitting in the gym with my friend Lena as our kids practice martial arts together. The gym is humid and loud from the kids yelling and playing, enjoying their lives as kids should be. Sitting here, it is hard to imagine only 145 kilometers away (90 miles), Israel is waging a war on the Palestinian Gaza Strip killing more than 8,000 people with at least 4,195 of those being children to date. They are currently dropping white phosphorus on the people of Gaza which is illegal.
Lena tells me they are also bombing the residential area of Tal Al-Hawa, Gaza where she still has family living. Specifically, her uncle who worked with the Red Cross in Gaza his entire life, and who retired 15 years ago, lives in Tal Al-Hawa with his family. It has been 5 days since she last spoke with them and has been unable to reach them since. Israel along with cutting electricity, water, and humanitarian aid to Gaza, also imposed a communication black out when they cut telephone and internet lines from Gaza, imposing a new kind of blockade for at least 48 hours. This disabled all communication inside and outside of Gaza, making it nearly impossible to find those who were injured by Israel's bombing. Until now, Lena has no idea if this side of her family are living or dead.
On October 16, when Israel bombed The Baptist Hospital, Lena lost 30-40 members of her family who were sheltering there, after having been displaced from their homes in Rimal. Rimal was one of the first areas Israel bombed in this war and the area has been completely flattened. The only survivors from her family, were a baby girl and an aunt who is currently in the hospital. The loss, the devastation, and the heartache are more than anyone can bear. How does one grieve this massive loss of life when an entire family has been wiped out? (Israel initially took responsibility for the bombing of this hospital and then quickly denied it with backup from the US. However, independent investigations from both the New York Times and Al Jazeera have proven this was an Israeli missile. As stated before, this is a typical move from the Israeli playbook to cause chaos and confusion, and to avoid charges of war crimes.)
And the bombing continues.
Lena recalls with me the history of her father's family to explain how they ended up in Gaza. Gaza is not their original home, and like thousands of other families, Lena's family was pushed there in 1948 during the Al-Nakba, when Israel stole her family's land by force. Abu Lena was born in 1941, in an area of Palestine called Bir Saba' where his family worked as carpenters. Today, this area has been ethnically cleansed of all the Palestinian families who used to own and work this land. The name of the city was changed, and it is now known as Beer Sheba.
The district of Bir Saba' (Beer Sheba), which has archaeological ruins dating back from the 4th century, is one of the most under-represented and perhaps the least understood areas of Palestine when it comes to the number of refugees and land claims. In 1948, this entire area became occupied by Zionist forces, and Israel has tried to claim this area of Palestine was empty and had no owners. Fortunately, documentation dating back to the time of Napolean shows this land was full of Arab families and tribes in 1799. Details of this area are written in the La Description de I'Egypte, historical records compiled by Napolean's 85 servants.
We also have the eyewitness accounts of those who lived there such as Abu Lena. In 1948 during Al-Nakba, when Abu Lena was 7, his family was expelled out of Bir Saba' by Israeli forces, and pushed into what is now known as the Gaza Strip. Abu Lena grew up in Gaza with his family, who became traders, making shoes and handbags. Abu Lena, along with all of his family, were highly educated, finished high school and went on to higher education. They quickly became quite wealthy, as one of the richest families in Gaza. Abu Lena later went to Egypt to study in Alexandria, where he took a degree in economics and accounting. This of course was all before the occupation of 1967.
Before 1967 and upon returning to Gaza, Abu Lena became one of the leaders for the first Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Palestinians attempted to organize themselves and resist the Israeli occupation, in order to return to their homes. There is a book in Gaza which records the history of Gaza and it has Abu Lena's picture on it, as he was an important figure for the Palestinian cause.
In 1966, Israel went into Gaza and collected many of the men who had university degrees, including Abu Lena, and threw them into trucks like animals. They drove them to the Jordanian border and dropped them there. Although Abu Lena's parents and the rest of his family stayed in Gaza, this is how Lena's family came to live in Jordan. Fortunately, he had distant relatives living in Al-Tafila and Al-Karak.
In 1971, Abu Lena married Um Lena, a very distant relative whose family was also expelled from Palestine during 1948. Abu Lena went to Saudi Arabia to teach math and Um Lena later followed becoming an Arabic teacher.
In 1984 Um Lena returned to Jordan and Lena was born. In 1988, Abu Lena returned also and stayed the rest of his life in Jordan. Unfortunately, the last 7 years of Abu Lena's life were very difficult as he had a brain infection. Lena said he forgot everything including how to write during those years. But he never forgot who she was or who Um Lena was, and he still remembered to pray 5 times a day. Two years before the passing of Abu Lena in 2013, Lena's mother got special permission for him to go back to Gaza and see his family whom he had not seen since he was expelled in 1966.
The border from Jordan to the West Bank is only a short 40 minutes' drive from Amman. Abu Lena had to take special permission from Egypt, and then travel all the way down to Egypt, to the Sinai, and then cross into Gaza at the Rafah border. He stayed there for 2 months becoming reacquainted with all of his living relatives. Two years later, Abu Lena passed away, but his memory remains strong in the hearts of his wife and children as was so clear to me during my time speaking with Lena.
Like many of the other nearly 3 million Palestinians living in Jordan, Abu Lena's life story stays close to his family as they remember and grieve their heritage of a lost land, lost dreams, and now even more lives lost senselessly at the hands of the Israeli government.
Lena says, being a Palestinian in Jordan makes her very proud and she is thankful to live here where it is safe. The government and people in Jordan collectively support the Palestinians, especially during times of war where you will often hear people say, "Jordanians and Palestinians are one." Lena's wish is to someday be able to visit Palestine to see where her family came from. This is something that all Palestinians living outside the land share in common. They feel a deep sense of loss and heaviness over their heritage, the lost land, and the continued dehumanization of Palestinians around the world. Palestinians like Lena cannot visit Palestine without special permission from Israel and this can be nearly impossible to receive. Even if one does take permission, there is a good chance Israel will turn them away at the border. As Lena has said to me before, "Why should I have to take permission to visit my own land from another government?"
Lena also wishes for the deep pain of this war to end soon. In the beginning of this war on Gaza, we were counting the losses by ones, then by tens, and now we are counting them by the thousands as each day it seems more than 1,000 are killed. How much blood spilled is enough?
In spite of everything that is happening to the people of Gaza, most of them will still say, Alhamdulillah (praise be to God), no matter what their circumstances. Lena believes if we could just have 1% of the faith and strength as the people in Gaza have, as they bury their dead, and endure this brutal war, maybe we could know God in an even deeper way.
So we wait in faith, with the hopes of hearing the good news that the rest of Lena's family has been spared once again.
