Palestinian Poet On Life in Gaza Amid Israel’s Retaliation

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Gaza’s main electric plant has shut down. And now, the Ministry of Health there is saying hospitals on generators will run out of fuel by Thursday. These facilities are already overwhelmed as Israel continues to hammer Gaza with retaliatory strikes against Hamas positions. But so many others are getting killed as well, according to the ministries there, more than 1,100 people have been killed, according to the Ministry of Health, and that includes four paramedics whose ambulance was reportedly bombed. There are some of our colleagues as well. I’m joined by Mosab Abu Toha, who is a Palestinian poet and writer, and from 2019 to 2020, he was the visiting poet in — and librarian in residence at Harvard. In an opinion post for “The Washington Post,” he writes, in Gaza, no one can believe their eyes. So, Mosab Abu Toha, welcome. What is it that you cannot believe — did the light just go off? Tell me what you’re experiencing in Gaza right now.

MOSAB ABU TOHA, PALESTINIAN POET: For the light that’s coming to us from the explosions of bombs that is dropped — that are dropped by Israel from time to time. And we are running out of water, running out of electricity. We are running out of medicine. And we are full of fear of what has happened and what’s going to happen.

AMANPOUR: Have you — you know, you’ve obviously lived through many rounds of this. How does this compare with previous times that there have been these airstrikes and other, you know, military operations inside Gaza?

TOHA: Well, I think Israel is focusing on some areas from time to time. Just yesterday, they started bombing an area that’s just a few kilometers away from me. About 20 people were killed. So, they kept bombing that area for about two hours. And just earlier yesterday, they also bombed every male (ph) neighborhood, which is considered as the richest and more most secure areas in the Gaza Strip. But now, I look at the pictures on Facebook and different media, and I cannot recognize whether this building was a hospital, whether it was a clinic, whether it was a tower, or maybe a pharmacy, or a kindergarten even. They changed the landscape by continuing to bomb a place for hours, nonstop. And also, by pulling down houses on tops of the people inside of them. Now, by just a few hours ago, the minister of the interior (INAUDIBLE) published a statement that says that about 23 families, 23 whole families were wiped out from history. And we don’t know who’s next. Because in my house now, I have about four families. I have my family, my brother’s family and two sisters of mine who moved — who had to move to our place because the house was critically damaged by a neighboring bomb. We have 10 children inside the house.

AMANPOUR: Can I ask you something?

TOHA: The oldest is eight years old.

AMANPOUR: Mosab —

TOHA: Yes.

AMANPOUR: — you said in the article you wrote for “The Washington Post,” the images of the dozens of Israeli casualties and prisoners haunt me. How did the militants cross such a closely monitored border? How could they kill all these soldiers and take so many others as prisoners? You can only assume that Israel will kill hundreds, even thousands of civilians in Gaza. I’ve never felt so terrified. So, you knew that when Hamas — you know, you knew what was going to happen after this unprecedented attack inside Israel?

TOHA: Of course. Yes. I mean, I know as a Gazan more than anyone else at Gaza, because Israel has been mad at us, has been bombing us and killing hundreds and hundreds without any militants from Hamas from the Gaza Strip, infiltrating and invading the neighboring Israeli towns and cities. And now, with this kind of invasion, land invasion by the Gaza militants — and I could imagine that if they killed 1,000 or 2,000 in May 2021, they would kill maybe 10 times more than that. I would expect that, because Israel killed us without Hamas going into Israeli cities and prisoners, especially soldiers. I mean, this is very — this was, of course, very humiliating for Israel.

AMANPOUR: All right. Mosab —

TOHA: And this terrifies us because Israel —

AMANPOUR: Yes, yes. I heard what you said, it terrifies you. Thank you very much for being with us