Opinion

‘Gaza is my being, my existence, my identity. The world cannot fail us now’

Worldview: Palestinian ambassador to France Hala Abou Hassira says Israel has killed more than 100 members of her family

Ambassador Hala Abou Hassira: 'My mother is afraid the Israelis will kill her and my father if I keep giving interviews.'
Ambassador Hala Abou Hassira: 'My mother is afraid the Israelis will kill her and my father if I keep giving interviews.'
Lara Marlowe's picture
Lara Marlowe
Sat Mar 09 2024 - 05:00

Four-fifths of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip are refugees from the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 or their descendants. The Abou Hassiras, however, are one of Gaza’s oldest families, present in the enclave for centuries. “There’s a neighbourhood in Gaza City called Abou Hassira and an Abou Hassira Street,” says Hala Abou Hassira, Palestinian ambassador to Paris.

Abou Hassira (47) has happy memories of playing on the beach and around fishing boats in the port as a child. She studied English literature and European Civilisation at Al Azhar University, recently destroyed by Israel. “Gaza is my being, my existence, my identity,” she says. “I was 11 when the first intifada [uprising] started in 1987. I understood that there were soldiers on my land, arresting my uncles, my cousins, [and] myself at age 13 for throwing stones in a demonstration, like everyone else at the time.”

When Hamas sparked the present war by attacking Israel last October 7th, many members of the Abou Hassira family gathered in one building in Gaza City. It was bombed on the night of October 24th-25th. “Sixty of my cousins, their spouses, children and grandchildren were killed. The number of my relatives killed by Israel has since grown to over 100,” says Abou Hassira.

A UN report has found that an average of 97 aid trucks a day passed into Gaza in February, well short of the 500-a-day target. Video: Reuters

On December 21st, her 80-year-old uncle, Akram, who was blinded by diabetes, and his invalid wife were ordered by Israeli troops to leave their house in Yarmouk Street. The elderly couple “were shot dead in the doorway of their house”, says Abou Hassira. “The Israelis took their son, Mahmoud, who was caring for his parents. He is not Hamas. They were not Hamas. They were not politicised. Uncle Akram and his sons were all renowned doctors.”

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Some of Abou Hassira’s cousins survived the “flour massacre” at the Nabulsi roundabout in Gaza City, where 118 Palestinians were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on desperate, hungry people on February 29th. Israel claims most of the victims were caught in a stampede or run over by the aid trucks. Israel had organised the convoy and promised to provide security for it. A local journalist told CNN that the panic which led to the deaths started only when Israeli troops opened fire.

“My cousins in the north are starving,” she says. “They give animal feed to their children. Other family members are living in schools, hospitals, tents and in the street. My parents are in a tent in Rafah. They are so scared and I am scared for them.”

Abou Hassira says she is moved by the groundswell of sympathy worldwide, especially by the stand of the Irish Government and people. A mural in a nationalist area of Belfast. Photograph: Diarmaid Fleming
Abou Hassira says she is moved by the groundswell of sympathy worldwide, especially by the stand of the Irish Government and people. A mural in a nationalist area of Belfast. Photograph: Diarmaid Fleming

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to stage a ground invasion of Rafah, where 1.8 million Palestinians are packed into an area inhabited formerly by 250,000 people. “My mother is afraid the Israelis will kill her and my father if I keep giving interviews. I tell her, ‘Mama, they are targeting everyone, whether I speak or not. It’s not because I speak out that they will target you specifically. They will target you because you are Palestinians.’”

Does Abou Hassira condone Hamas’s October 7th attack, in which Israel said 1,200 people were killed? “I would turn the question around by asking, ‘Does the world approve of 76 years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, of 57 years of military occupation?’ Without justifying the crimes that took place on October 7th, it was an inevitable result of the whole political and historic context.”

Members of Netanyahu’s government want to drive Gazan Palestinians into Egypt and West Bank Palestinians into Jordan. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, railed against Arab members of the Knesset who heckled him in 2021, saying, “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw you out in 1948”.

When I spoke to Abou Hassira, the outcome of negotiations in Cairo on a hostage exchange and ceasefire was uncertain. “We must have a ceasefire now, before it is too late, before 2.3 million people perish before our eyes,” she says. “What happened on October 7th does not justify the genocide taking place today in the Gaza Strip ... The western countries who supported Netanyahu created a monster and they are telling us now, ‘We cannot control him. He’s not listening to us.’ Why would he listen when he continues to be rewarded? His survival is assured by the countries who give him weapons to kill Palestinians.”

The US and 15 other countries who cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) based on unproven Israeli allegations that a dozen Unrwa employees participated in the October 7th attacks “should be ashamed”, she says. Unrwa is the UN agency which provides social services to Palestinians and its paralysis threatens the lives of four million souls in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, in addition to 2.3 million in Gaza.

Abou Hassira says she is moved by the groundswell of sympathy from private citizens worldwide and especially by the stand of the Irish Government and people. “They tell us, ‘You are not alone.’ You cannot imagine how much strength this gives us.”

She notes that the state of Palestine is an observer member of the UN and recognises the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. “We believe in international law, although it is not applied to all countries. What is happening today is the test of the credibility of international law. If the world fails us now, I believe strongly that the whole international system of humanitarian law will collapse.”

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