Gaza Under Siege: A Morning On Abed Rabbo Street

East Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip bore the brunt of Israel’s latest military incursion into Gaza. The incursion, which was launched in the early hours of Thursday February 28, lasted four days and nights.

In that time, Israeli troops killed 108 Palestinians, including 54 unarmed civilians, 26 of whom were children. The Palestinians who live in and around Abed Rabbo Street in east Jabaliya suffered intense air strikes by F16 planes and helicopters, tank shelling, snipers, and having their houses invaded and vandalized by Israeli soldiers, who tied adults up with ropes, or locked whole families into single rooms in order to use their homes as sniper towers to target local Palestinian fighters.

Sixteen-year-old Jaqueline Abu Shebak and her 14-year-old brother, Iyad both lived on Abed Rabbo Street with their mother and three other young brothers and sisters. The children's uncle, Hatem Hosni Abu Shebak, who lives next door, found the bodies of Jaqueline and Iyad in the early hours of Saturday March 1st, when he rushed upstairs after hearing intense shooting and then screaming.

“I hear shooting and Iyad was screaming. As I ran upstairs the shooting continued, and both children were on the living room floor,“ he says, as we sit in the blood-stained living room where Jaqueline died and Iyad was critically injured. “I tried to revive them, but Jaqueline was dead, and even though Iyad was alive and making sounds, we could not save him. We had to wait for an ambulance because my car had been shelled by an Israeli tank." Hattim Abu Shebak shows us the mirrors and windows shattered by bullets, the bullet holes in the walls, and the children’s blood on the furniture.