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Fleeing strikes, unable to see or hear them
Heba Abu Jazar Sama was working on her laptop when she said her house in Gaza started to shake.
“I am deaf, I cannot hear, but I feel the tremors and vibrations. I was tapping on my laptop, and out of fatigue, I closed my eyes for a few moments, and the house was being bombed,” Sama, 29, said in messages relayed to CNN by Walid Mahmoud Nazzal, the coordinator of the Palestinian Union of the Deaf, based in Ramallah.
“My father and mother started screaming, thinking that I had been killed,” Sama added. “When the dust cleared and they found me and my sister (who is also deaf), we started crying a lot. Had I not moved for a few moments, the stones would have fallen on my head.”
Heba Abu Jazar Sama, 29, uses sign language to describe how her home was destroyed in a video sent to CNN by Walid Mahmoud Nazzal, coordinator of the Palestinian Union of the Deaf, on November 3.
Heba Abu Jazar Sama
Deaf people must rely on their other senses to escape the relentless barrage of IDF strikes, which have hit hospitals, ambulances, refugee camps, UN schools and makeshift shelters. People with disabilities need more time to evacuate even if advance warning were given, Emina Ćerimović, a senior researcher on disability rights at international rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW), told CNN.
CNN reported in early October that the IDF appeared to have abandoned its “roof knocking” policy, with multiple people in Gaza saying they were given no advance warning before their homes were bombed. When asked whether the military had stopped the practice – which entails dropping a small, non-explosive munition on the roof before a larger strike is executed, thereby minimizing casualties by allowing for evacuation – an IDF
spokesperson suggested it would no longer be the norm. The absence of such warnings may be contributing to the huge scale of civilian deaths in Gaza.
The IDF has repeatedly called on civilians to move south of Wadi Gaza, a waterway bisecting the center of the strip, as it intensifies its assault on Gaza City and the north of the territory.
After Sama’s home was bombed, she and her family were displaced to a shelter.
“There was no hope, no water, no electricity, no internet, and no blankets to cover us from the cold at night. We were suffocated and very tired,” she said about the conditions in the shelter.
Unlike their homes, shelters are not suited to the accessibility needs of people with disabilities. Civilians live in cramped conditions without privacy and have limited access to hygiene products, aid workers told CNN. Toilets are not always located on each floor, impeding access for people who cannot climb stairs. Some are forced to crawl on the ground in order to reach the line for the bathroom.
Up to 70 people could be sheltered in one room, with some forced to stay on the stairs, said Jamal Al Rozzi, executive director of the National Society for Rehabilitation, who used to live in Gaza City and fled south for his children’s safety. Children with disabilities who might lack the ability to chew could go hungry, because there are not enough staff members available to blend their food, he said.