By Alice Cuddy BBC News, Jerusalem
The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.
It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.
He’d been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.
He’d heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. “You need to escape,” somebody in the street shouted, “because they will bomb the towers”.
You’re either incredibly ignorant or deliberately trying to incite hatred.
Go south??
You mean to this refugee camp that Israel told them to go to, that they then bombed anyway?
Well… yes.
North = you’ll get bombed.
South = you’ll get bombed maybe.
East = you’ll get shot.
West = you’ll get shot and drown.
It’s a shitty situation, but I’d pick South. 🤷
I’m not sure your argument is fair. “Maybe” is anywhere. Two nights ago half the casualties came from the South.
I understand why many people chose to stay home and die together with their families rather than be dragged around forever and then die anyway.
From what it looks like, North, East and West, are more of a “for sure” than a “maybe”.
I also understand why people choose to die at home, it’s somewhat harder to understand why anyone with a chance to live would willingly stay in the area, since all of Gaza has been reeking of “death camp” for well over a decade.