Reema's Story: Palestine and Israel

By Youthreach student Reema AbuOwda

I’m going to talk about the city that I was born in, which is Gaza. In the last war, which started on 9th May and finished on 13th May, as usual we lost a great number of prominent leaders. One of them was my childhood friend’s dad and the Israeli people wanted to kill him 26 years ago in every war that went on in Palestine. Especially in Gaza they were trying to kill him because he did a lot of things to protect Palestine, such as training a lot of young adults and teaching adults how to protect their country by using small and big things for example stones, guns, and bombs.

My other friend lost her whole family despite them actually being civilians. The Israelis just bombed her house for no reason, they all stayed under the rubble after they bombed it and she was wishing that all of her family were okay but the truth is that they were killed! In every war they kill children, old people and women for no reason and it’s just because they want to hurt us. They always do it, even if these kinds of people don’t do anything for them.

Lots of Gazan people have lost their houses and that started in the first war that happened between Palestine and Israel. Because of our economic situation, they can’t buy new houses easily so most of them have to wait for volunteers from outside of Palestine to rebuild their house or get them another small and cheap one, and as well as that the number of people who are in this situation are increasing every war! It’s just hurting me to see people of my country are suffering and I can’t do anything to them other than praying and wishing them the best.

As I’m someone who was born in Gaza I’m not allowed to go and visit the West Bank, can you imagine! As it is still in Palestine so I should be able to go there easily as it’s my country but because of the Israelis they won’t let me in there and this is for no reason as usual. All they want is to deprive the Palestinians of freedom, as we should have the ability to go everywhere not just our country but because of them that is our biggest dream, we don’t want to go anywhere just let us have the ability to go up anywhere in Palestine.

In front of the camera and the media they just pretend that they are victims and they didn’t do anything to us while in fact they are killing us! I just feel disgusted by these people and how they can do that to other humans and I’m really sad for my people to live like that as I was one of them and I know how it feels in war: you don’t think that it will ever end and you are alive you always think that this is the last minute in your life, and when it’s over you wouldn’t be happy for yourself that you are still alive because you knew that you lost at least two of your friends or their families and the other ones lost their houses so you can’t get over it!

Every war takes some of our mental health and I really mean it when I say it, no one can get back to normal after that. Can’t even know how dare they come over to Palestine and then try to take the land for themselves by killing the children, women, old people and young adults like they want us to give up but on the other hand it increases our determination.