Rafah… the Devastated City

By Hadeel Ahmed Odeh

The world learned of Rafah only when it burst with blood and destruction, when its people overflowed with pain and exhaustion. You knew it through the massacre, not through the life that once pulsed within it.

To bring the picture closer: on May 26, 2024, the Baraksat area burned. The bodies of displaced people were charred, and the heads of little children rolled on the ground. That day, the expression “Baraksat Massacre” spread, the hashtag “All Eyes on Rafah” ignited, and a caricature circulated of a burned child, his head severed, with a flower sprouting from his neck. An unforgettable image. But did it stay in your memory? Do you still remember Rafah today?

In the same week, on May 28, the occupation ambushed the people of Rafah with a night that resembled hell. The city had never known a night harsher than that one.

Explosions did not stop, shells rained down randomly, striking nearly every building taller than five stories. Sleep abandoned our eyes, and fear turned into a suffocating air. We did not want to know what was happening, even though everything was painfully clear.

“Israel” had been threatening a ground invasion, and it had already begun in the east. As for us in the west, we never imagined it would reach us so quickly and without even an evacuation notice.

Appeals poured in from trapped families, and the news multiplied as fast as the number of areas under attack. At dawn the gunfire eased. We understood the message. The time had come to part. The time to flee.

With the first light, the exodus began. I do not know how people managed to gather what little they could carry, leave their homes and city, and head toward the tents. Our street turned into a main road of escape. My eyes filled with the sight of carts loaded with families, and my heart clenched a thousand times.

I did not want to leave. I did not want to abandon my home. A vague certainty inside me whispered that if I left, I would never return, and if I did return, I would not find it. Yet staying alone in a deserted city was terrifying. Today I have nothing but a tent, a symbol of one thing only, that I am displaced.

A year and a half after our departure, I still search for one answer: Where were your eyes? And I ask this directly to those who call themselves the “international community”.

Some might say that what happened has happened, and recalling the past changes nothing. But the past has not ended.

During the January 2025 truce, some people of Rafah returned to limited areas. I did not return. The fear of seeing my house reduced to rubble paralyzed my steps. Only a month later, the occupation violated the agreement. It attacked at night and killed paramedics who were responding to calls for help. They went out of pure humanitarian duty, but the occupation murdered them, buried them in a pit, and burned their vehicle.

I will never forget the father who was calling his son to make sure he had escaped the city. On his way he saw a body lying face down with a phone ringing beside it. He approached to answer and reassure the caller, only to discover that the body was his son. Nor will I forget the father and his two sons who were killed together.

All this happened during Ramadan. On that day, where were your eyes? Why did the world not revive the hashtag “All Eyes on Baraksat” so that 300 thousand people would not cling to a false hope?

Some may also say your eyes were fixed on a moment you thought had passed. That the international community was sunk in inertia, offering no solution, not even basic guidance to prevent the repetition of what Rafah endured.

So let us look at the present.

Two weeks have passed since the ceasefire, and there is no official mention of Rafah. Speeches vaguely state that “the return will be in the second phase”, with no timeline. Three hundred thousand displaced people wait to return to a city almost entirely wiped out by a literal scorched earth policy. Statistics indicate that 95 percent of Rafah is destroyed. Yet its people still want to return. Meanwhile, the world repeats “Gaza is liberated”, and no one asks about Rafah.

In the Gaza Strip today lies a whole city that remains a dangerous zone. A city called Rafah. Its residents live on rumors. One says reconstruction will begin soon. Another claims the border will open for return, then comes the denial. Another claims the land will no longer belong to its owners and that people will be given apartments instead of their ancestral land.

But one truth remains unchanged. The people of Rafah want to rebuild Rafah with their own hands. They are the owners of the land. They paid the price. No plan crafted in secret will be imposed on them. Any reconstruction project that does not pass through the people of Rafah is doomed to fail.

While these rumors swirl morning and evening, as I ride on the back of the donkey between the tents, a fierce longing overwhelms me to go to Rafah. To see its destruction. To stand there and say: They see it as precious and refuse to give it up, and we see it as even more precious and will never abandon it. But it is still dangerous, and I choose life.

I write today to tell the so-called international community that Rafah is the last thread that tests the truth of your claim that the law applies to all human beings. Find a solution that preserves this thread, so that the “dignity of your laws” survives, and so that, for the first time, these laws are applied to Palestinians in deed, not only in statements.

Hadeel Ahmed Odeh is an emerging Palestinian writer from the Gaza Strip. Her work centers on resistance literature, seeking to translate the wounds of her people into texts that speak in the voice of land and humanity.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not represent the views of Nisaba Media.