Gaza-Based Photojournalist Provides Harrowing Update on Quest to Get His Family to Safety
Photo by Fadel Mghari.
“You do not know who is left and who has died,” says Fadel Mghari, a Gaza-based photojournalist with whom I have kept in contact since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.
“The feeling is the worst and it stays with you all day and night,” he said in messages sent over the weekend. “When you hear the sound of bombing you feel that there are others living this pain, and you think ‘is this how my turn will come?’”
Mghari and his family are currently sheltering in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Since the start of the war, he has captured with his camera heart-wrenching scenes of mothers mourning their dead children, babies covered in gray ash in barely operating hospitals, displaced families traveling for safety by foot, and endless mounds of rubble.
Two months ago, Mghari’s camera was destroyed in a bombing. He shared with Mediaite some of the last photos he took at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Some are graphic.
Photo by Fadel Mghari.
Photo by Fadel Mghari.
Photo by Fadel Mghari.
Photo by Fadel Mghari.
Mghari said it’s a daily struggle to survive. He said his greatest fear is not death, but being trapped under the rubble: “The worst feeling that we fear more than death itself is what if the house was bombed and we were stuck under the rubble injured and we feel suffocated?”
The first ten weeks of the war in Gaza were the most dangerous in history for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The rights group says at least 95 members of the media have been killed in the war so far.
Mghari and his family are now seeking to escape his war-torn homeland through Egypt. The journey is a costly one. Refugees must pay $7,000 in U.S. dollars to Egyptian travel company Hala in order to pass through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
That’s $7,000 per family member. “I have collected a quarter of this amount,” Mghari said. “What about when your family has ten members?”
According to NPR, Hala Consulting and Tourism is the only company that handles and approves the migration of Palestinians into Egypt. The company, which reportedly has ties to Egypt’s security services, is raking in millions to process those refugees lucky enough to raise the levy, NPR reported.
Mghari, like many other Palestinians desperate to flee Gaza, has turned to crowdsource funding. His family has set up a GoFundMe page to raise the money required to leave.
While Mghari works to get his family out safely, he’s struggling to keep them safe and healthy. He says he was almost killed after eating spoiled food provided through humanitarian aid.
“Egyptian canned goods of very poor quality caused me a severe gastrointestinal illness that almost killed me, and not only me, my mother and my sisters as well.” he said. “The drinking water is also not suitable for drinking.”
Even if the bombing stops, Mghari has little hope for the future of Gaza. “Everything is destroyed; water and sewage lines, hospitals, no electricity,” he said. “You will not find a place to work to continue your life because everything has been simply erased.”
“You can say I am exaggerating,” he added. “Try to live here for two days. You will be able to see for yourself. Can you bear the daily scene of destruction? Graves in the middle of the streets? Bodies buried in schools? Universities, mosques, cafes, and stadiums are destroyed. Everything has become ashes. Beautiful Gaza has become a swamp of horror of ashes and rubble.”
