The last time we featured Isam Hamad on Unsettled was a few days after the October 7th attacks, when Israel had just begun its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. At the time, Isam and his family — including his 93-year old father and a son with cerebral palsy — were still in their home in Gaza City. But a few days later, they were forced to evacuate south to the city of Rafah, near the Egyptian border.
Before this war, the population of Rafah was about 250,000. Now, it’s over a million, with many families living in tents and some on the streets. Isam lives in a three-story house with 46 other people. Recently, he was able to get a family reunification visa from Ireland, because one of his children was born there. But he’s still waiting for approval to leave.
In this episode, producer Ilana Levinson talks to Isam Hamad about leaving his home, living in Rafah, and the difficult choices ahead.
Unsettled is produced by Emily Bell, Max Freedman, and Ilana Levinson, with support from Asaf Calderon. Music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions.
TRANSCRIPT
[RING]
Isam: Hello.
On Wednesday January 10th, I called Isam Hamad, who is currently living in a small apartment building with 46 other people – family members and coworkers – in the city of Rafah, in the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip.
Ilana: Hi, Isam?
Isam: Hi Ilana, how are you?
If you’re a regular listener of Unsettled you may have heard Isam’s voice before. Isam manages a medical equipment company in Gaza, and I first spoke to him in 2018 about the Great March of Return, which brought thousands of nonviolent activists to the Gaza border fence for weekly protests that lasted over a year. Isam was one of the organizers.
I talked again with Isam just a few days after Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel. You can find that episode by looking for Isam's name in the Unsettled feed. At the time, Isam was still in his home in Gaza City, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. But not long after we spoke, he was forced to evacuate.
[MUSIC]
So with his wife, children, and grandchildren, Isam moved south - to his cousin’s house in Rafah.
Before the 2023 war, the population of Rafah was about 250,000. Now, it’s over a million. Gaza was already one of the most densely populated places on earth. Now, half of its population is crammed into one city, with many families living in tents, and some on the streets.
For the past several months, I’ve been in touch with Isam by WhatsApp. He’s sent me scattered voice notes here and there, when he’s able to. Here’s one from December 2nd:
Isam: I am here for the seventh week in the southern part of Gaza. Unfortunately, it seems to be getting very hard here. Lots of killing and shelling as we saw exactly in the north of, in Gaza City and the north of Gaza Governorate. We are here, okay. Hoping to cope, fighting for water, fighting for food, and now fighting to fuel also, to make food. Scenes are horrible, scenes are horrible, scenes are horrible.
Recently, Isam told me that he was able to get a visa from Ireland for his family, because one of his sons was born there. But he’s still waiting for approval to leave.
On January 10th, I was able to connect directly with Isam on the phone, to hear more about his life in Rafah. The internet was spotty, so it’s hard to hear sometimes. You’ll find a transcript on our website to follow along if you need it.
Here’s our conversation:
Ilana: Where am I catching you? Where are you right now?
Isam: I'm just about maybe a thousand meters from the Egyptian border, where I stay. At the rooftop of a three story building in Rafah. I'm using now Vodafone Egypt to speak with you. I have no internet now. I had to go to the roof.
Ilana: I think the last time we talked directly on the phone, you were in your house in the north, and you were saying that it would be really hard to leave. So I'm wondering how, how did you make it happen that you moved your family?
Isam: Let me explain to you. I have a child, or a boy, a 27 years old boy who was born in Ireland and he has cerebral palsy. So he cannot walk and he cannot talk. And also I have a father who is 93 years old, he walks on a stepper walker, very slowly. Two nights after I wrote that, uh, on Facebook that it's very hard for me to leave, we were faced at the middle of the night, about two o'clock in the morning, with somewhere around 100 to 150 rockets from F16 fighters. And it was a terrible night. Buildings being hit by rockets and people dying with no reasons. They are our neighbors. We know very well that they are civilians. They have nothing to do with what's going on. So it was, it started to be terrifying, which means that they are sending rockets on the top of the buildings, killing people, sending messages that you have to leave the area. So I took the decision to move, before I have to move with a short notice.
Isam: We took our stuff, what we could. We thought it’s going to be a week, at most three weeks, so we even didn't take our winter clothes. We only had our summer clothes on and we moved. I can tell you also I left the solar panels, the solar system working and the fridge and the ceiling fans on. We thought we were just leaving for a few days and then coming back.
Isam: It was a very hard journey because, uh, after that also we have started to seeing that, uh, the convoys leaving from Gaza being hit by rockets. And we witnessed people dying. You know, there are no words to explain what was going on. You just wouldn't understand what's the story.
Isam: I've never seen something like this. You want people to leave, then you send a rocket, a one-ton, 100,000 kilograms rocket, F16 fighter on top of a building, five, six story building, killing 40, 50, and then you're just telling the neighbors, you have to leave. There is nothing, nothing in books that can explain what's going on. How can this be done? Nothing.
Ilana: It sounds like you're seeing this carnage up close. It sounds like you've seen it, like, with your own eyes.
Isam: We all see the videos coming from all around Gaza Strip. We have seen bombing of hospitals. Everybody saw it with his own eyes. We have seen people killed in the streets here or there. Yesterday, just last night, they bombed a flat here in Rafah, about another kilometer from me to the center of Tel al-Sultan. Somewhere around maybe it’s quarter to two in the morning. People sleeping in their flat, and then you just send a rocket into the window and killing 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, as simple as that. This is how the number was topping, I think now 23,000. 23,000 people dead.
[MUSIC]
Isam: Most of the people from all over Gaza Strip are now in Rafah. And I can see Rafah now, uh, scenes that I've not seen in Cairo. Where Cairo is very populated and very busy, but Rafah now is something else. Something else. Infrastructure cannot take all this. Even speaking on the phone, very difficultly, uh, can, can ring somebody over the cellular because it's busy all the time. It has been designed to take so, so many number of calls and now it's, uh, maybe triple or, or more number of calls and all concentrated in a very, very small area.
Ilana: So you said that the infrastructure can't handle it. What does that look like?
Isam: No, it can't. It looks like sewage in the streets all the time. Sewage in the street and people all the time with diarrhea and fever and problem. Rafah is now, or I think Gaza Strip is now, all of it is not a suitable place for people to live in. It's not suitable. No electricity, of course. No water. We have to fight in order to get the water every eight days. Once every eight days, we have to go to rent a generator, gas generator, and then it's a true story that we have to spend hours in order to raise the water into the two tanks we have and then switch all the water off, and then we use bottles so that this sum of water, this quantity of water can live with us for eight days until it comes again after eight days. Main sources of ration are not available. For example, no chicken, no meat. Only living on cans. People sell it in order to live.
Isam: You know, we have spoken, Ilana, before about the refugees in 1948. Now I can see what has happened at these days by myself, I can live it now. I'm living it. I even was talking with my father about it. This is his second journey for, as a refugee.
Isam's father, Hilmi, was 18 years old when he was forced to evacuate from his village, Sarafand al-Amar. Sarafand no longer exists - it's Palestinian residents were depopulated during the 1948 war.
In 2019, Unsettled interviewed both Isam and Hilmi about their family’s story. Here’s Hilmi in that episode:
Hilmi: It was a good and busy village. We had orange orchards. We had land to cultivate oranges and cultivate vegetables. The Israelis occupied it by force on the 20th of May. They bombed the village.
You can hear more from Hilmi about Sarafand and his life after he was expelled and fled to Gaza in our episode called, “Refugees.” We’ll link it in the show notes. Today, Hilmi is 93 years old.
Ilana: Is he comparing what's happening now to the Nakba, to 1948?
Isam: Yes, he was. He, he, he, I was talking with him a few days ago and he said, what has happened in 1948 is, uh, a little, to what is happening now to the people. He’s saying that this time is much, much worse and much bigger and much harder. It's now 93 days and still not ending. And if it ends… I myself, I have, you know, from being a well-off person with two flats and one villa, and then after 93 days – nothing, absolutely nothing. My flat in, uh, Saftawi area was burned to the ground, burned to ground. I've seen pictures to it. Very unfortunate. I have a flat also in the city center. The whole building, 10 story building, was bombed by a rocket.
Isam: And, uh, my, my villa, which I left when I came here to Rafah, I have no information about it. The building is in, in a military zone that I can, I know nothing about. Probably when things end, I will not find it. If it is a military zone, then fighting is in the area. If there is fighting in the area – we have seen pictures when the Israelis left the place, how they left it. I have seen it in 2008 in Shejaiyah, I've seen it in 2012, 2014, 2021, and I, I can expect it easily now in 2023, especially, this is the hardest of them all.
Ilana: Can you describe where you're living now? How did you find this place? And what are the conditions there?
Isam: It's a three story building. Two of them are finished and one of them is not. The bottom story is about 70 meter place, one room and one bathroom. Or toilet, let's say. It’s not a bathroom, it's a toilet. And we are 12 men. In the middle, there is a 200 square meter flat. That's [where] we have all the women. And in the last one, we have the family of the owner of the place, who is my cousin.
Ilana: It sounds like it would be really hard to live with that many people. I mean, even just socially.
Isam: So, let, let, let me tell you the hardest of it is when you have 12 people queuing for a toilet. No, it's, it's all, it's, all of it is hard. You have mattresses on the floor. Everybody is sleeping like a prison. We are all in one single room. And the toughest of it is not, it's for, this is for a length of time that's unknown. We have been waiting for things to finish and we go back to our homes. But things have got more complicated, much more complicated.
Isam: As reports from the media saying that more than 200,000 units have been demolished or destroyed, then you have at least if we have an average of 5 people in a family. So we are talking about a million people left homeless. How these people are going to leave to go back to their places? Where are they going to live? So they are going back to tents again. So what about vertical buildings, which was housing, for example, 30 or 40 families? You are going to put tents, so the whole area of the building will house only eight or nine families. The rest, where they are going to go? So the whole Gaza is all going to be converted to a horizontal place which is very populated and very dense again.
Isam: How many years it's going to take until we go back just before to the 6th of October? How many years? How many years it will take to restore electric supply? How many years it's going to take to infrastructure, sewage and water pipes, telephone lines? Gaza is finished. There is no more Gaza for another 10 years.
[MUSIC]
Ilana: So, I, I want to ask you about escaping. Um, because that seems like something you're trying to do, right? You said that you got a visa from Ireland. How did that happen?
Isam: Let me tell you, it's not a matter of escaping. It's a matter of trying to secure the rest of your life. How that happened? I have an Irish boy who was born in Dublin in 1997. So this boy who was born in Ireland is an Irish citizen. So I contacted the Irish government when I saw that people who have nationalities can be evacuated to go to other countries. I spoke to the Department of Foreign Affairs and they offered me a family reunion visa for me, my wife, and two of my children who are under 18.
Isam: So I applied for the reunion visa and everything was okay until they said that you have to wait until the names are cleared by the Israelis. They didn't say the Israelis, they said “the relevant authorities.” And then I have been waiting for this clearance for 45 days. By the way, the Irish child was cleared, and the youngest one, who was 13, was cleared. But me, my wife, and the child who was 17 and a half was not cleared. So we have not been able to leave until now. But this is not because of me. Everybody else is the same. The process seems to be very slow. Honestly, I don't know why they do this.
Isam: My cousin is also the same. He has a girl with an American citizenship. He applied because after I applied, I told him you can apply. He applied to the Americans, his daughter was cleared, his wife was cleared, he wasn't cleared, and his boy wasn't cleared, so he cannot leave.
Isam: I spoke to the Irish government, I sent them a letter, explaining that at least with my case as a, I have a disabled boy who, who shouldn't suffer. If I am suffering now, okay, but he shouldn't suffer. But I see it very difficult for anybody to intervene with this. I think that the Israelis are tightening things and making it difficult. I don't know why, but this is what they are doing.
Isam: As I explained to you before, probably Gaza, to return back to its normal life as it was 6th October, it will take years. So at least I can secure the children in schools. I have two children in school, one in the 8th class and one in the 12th grade. So the boy was supposed to finish his 12th and go to university next year. So we lost the whole scholastic year. Now he's not studying. And I also have one who has finished first year and he's in second year in the university. Where, after this whole devastation, where am I going to find a place where my child can finish his university, or my other children can continue school and finish their schools and go to university? Choices that a person has to make. This is it, Ilana.
Ilana: What does it feel like for you to think about leaving Gaza?
Isam: Well, uh, it's terrible. You know? You know, I'm not just a normal person in Gaza. You know, Ilana, I am well known public figure. So it's not easy with this, uh, social life that I have in Gaza, being a managing director and regional manager of a medical equipment, the biggest medical equipment company, and also the treasurer of the civic campaign to save cancer children and cancer patients, and also as a nominee for legislative council – as a political figure, let's say – and as a writer, Gaza is my life. Gaza is me. So just thinking to leave Gaza is not an easy task or an easy choice.
Isam: But let me ask you a question. I have two flats and one villa, one house. The flats I already lost. Now, the house I will know its fate at the end of the war. Let's suppose the house is there and I can go and live in the house. But if the house is not there, the simple question: where am I going to live? In a tent? If you are given this choice, will you take it?
Isam: It's not an easy thing to say, look, okay, I will go and stay in a tent until I rebuild my house, when the, uh – when what? When what? I spent my, my whole life to save $210,000 in order to buy the land and build the house. Am I going to do that again? From what, from two or three years in, in work? That's not possible. To be quite honest with you, Ilana, I put my savings in the flats and the real estate. And after 27 years of working in a senior job, I'm left with nothing now. After 93 days from the war, I am left with absolutely nothing at all. Nothing. I've lost everything. That's not only me. Everybody has lost everything. Everything.
Isam: I'm not, I'm not being given a choice to stay or to leave. I'm just leaving for a short period of time, two, three, four years, and then going back to Gaza. Or at least secure for my children in there and come back to my work. Because my work after the war will be, we will have a lot of work, as we will go in a phase of rebuilding and re-equipping the hospitals, so. There will be lots of work.
Ilana: I see. So you're saying that you would try and come back as soon as possible. Do I have that right?
Isam: Yeah, yeah sure. I will come back to my job. I am a regional manager of a big company. I will come back to my work if my work stays. But if the situation in Gaza went beyond being able to, to restore our works, then I will rethink it again. The situation will tell me what's the story.
Ilana: This is a hard question, and I'm sorry to have to ask it, but: you were talking about your dad, Hilmi, who was saying that this is worse than the Nakba, and what we know about the Nakba in 1948 is that people who escaped or who left, who were forced to leave their homes, and went to places like Gaza, were not allowed back. You know, you're talking about your plans to come back, and I'm wondering if you think about…
Isam: Let, let me explain to you. Well, at the beginning, in the first month, in the first month, I was actually very frightened that we will be kicked to Egypt. But now, no. I'm really quite satisfied that they have not been able to do that. And we will go back to our homes.
[MUSIC]
Ilana: Do you know anyone who has been approved to leave? Who's gotten a visa or some kind of admission to another country for refuge?
Isam: Uh, not for refuge. Well, you can call it whatever you want, but this is the situation. Whoever has a first degree relative from any country, Western countries, can recall his first degree relatives. And every day, in the middle of the night, around one o'clock at night, they issue a list of people who are allowed to leave in the same day. They call it a very short notice. Look, I have no internet. I have to wake up every night, every night, every night since the time I made my application, and go to the rooftop and turn on the Vodafone Egypt, get the internet, check the list, and then go back to sleep. Every day I do this. From, let's say from the 20th or the 21st of December until now, only three days lists have been issued with the people to leave who has, they call it, foreign passports.
Isam: But now yesterday, there was a list today. There was a list. So I'm hoping that after the holidays, things are going to be quicker than before. And let's hope that the names appear and I can leave.
Ilana: Do you know what happens if they, if you were to check that list and you were on it? Do you know what would happen next?
Isam: Yes. I went today to the border trying to leave because I have two names already approved, but they refused. Today. Today, Wednesday, I went, but they refused. They said everybody has to be on the list.
Isam: So if the names appeared on the list, our bags are packed. So I will just go to the border and leave. I will go to Egypt, register my son in the university, and leave with the others to Ireland. Yes, I know very well what I'm going to do.
Ilana: So you just get on a plane and you go to Ireland, and then – do you have some money to find a flat in Ireland, like, how do you make your new life in Ireland, do you know? Or will the situation tell you, like you said?
Isam: Yes. I, I don't know now, I have no answer to that, but I have friends in Ireland who I know since a long time. I know friends from the time I was there also. As I understood that, my boy who has cerebral palsy will be assisted by the government. We will, we will manage. We will manage. We will manage.
At the time of episode release, Isam is still waiting to hear about his family’s approval to leave. His father, Hilmi, will not be moving.
On Monday, January 22nd, the Associated Press reported that thousands more Palestinians were fleeing to Rafah from another southern city, Khan Younis, as Israel intensifies its ground operations there.
Meanwhile, the UN says that 400,000 people in Gaza are starving.
In this moment of fear, grief, and uncertainty, we want to offer you the opportunity to tell your story. Whether you want to talk about a loved one you’ve lost, your fears about what will happen next, or your anger at those in power – call us and leave a voicemail at 347-878-1359 and we’ll include some of your messages as we report on the impact of these events. Again, that’s 347-878-1359.
Unsettled is produced by Max Freedman and Emily Bell, and me, Ilana Levinson, with support from Asaf Calderon. Music in this episode is from Blue Dot Sessions. For more from Unsettled, follow us on Instagram at unsettled underscore pod, and make sure you subscribe, so you don’t miss the next episode.