“All five of my brothers are gone. They didn’t leave me any brothers. … All of them!..” A wailing woman screamed outside what was left of her home in Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp. Seven whole families including 68 persons who were seeking refuge in the camp were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the eve of Christmas.
Harrowing visuals from the besieged territory showed Palestinians searching through the rubble with their bare hands to find their loved ones, or what was left of them. On Friday, they were told by the Israeli military to move here. That this refugee camp was a safe space. And now it is the site of death and devastation. “There is no safe space in Gaza,” camp resident Abu Rami Abu al-Ais told AFP.
Al-Maghazi camp is one of the several refugee camps in Gaza and was established in 1949, according to the UN, to shelter refugees who fled hostilities at the time of Israel's creation the year before.
Since 7 October, up to 1.9 million people (or over 85 per cent of the population) have been displaced across the Gaza Strip. The total number of registered Palestinian refugees grew from 750,000 in 1950 to around five million in 2013, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA).
But who is a refugee? The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as a person outside their own country of citizenship or permanent residence who, because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in social groups, fear persecution, cannot avail themselves of the protection of their own country or cannot return there for fear of persecution.
Despite this definition, death of all refugees has never been equal. When 600 faceless refugees and migrants were packed atop a fishing boat in Greece, in the hope to find a better life, the world’s eyes turned towards the news of the Titan that was carrying five billionaires down to the deep sea to see the wreckage of the Titanic.
Thousands of refugees have died since 2014 while attempting to flee the war in Syria. More than six million Afghans have been driven out of their homes due to 40 years of conflict.
Many other boats carrying refugees and migrants might have sunk. Many crossing lands of war-torn regions of Ukraine might have died. The question that should be asked is if the value of these human lives would ever live up to the concept of ‘protecting borders’ of our countries.
At Outlook, we believe in journalism of peace and not journalism of war. For us, it is our duty to cover the human crisis everywhere.
