These “Tent Massacre” Survivors Couldn’t Afford to Leave Rafah. The Next Israeli Attack Nearly Wiped Their Family Out.

Mohammad Jaber al-Absi arrived in Rafah in November thinking he would be safe.

Soon after Israel launched its retaliatory assault on the Gaza Strip on October 7, the 22-year-old al-Absi and his family were forced to flee from their home in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north and seek refuge, along with thousands of others, in the nearby Al-Fakhoura school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, which aids Palestinian refugees.

The Al-Fakhoura school soon came under attack. On November 4, an Israeli airstrike on the shelter killed at least 15 people, including two of al-Absi’s relatives, and injured dozens more. Al-Absi decided, along with his family, to move to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which had been designated a safe zone by the Israeli military.

The family would stay in Rafah for the next five months, initially at a warehouse in the city. With the ground invasion looming in late April, the al-Absis relocated to the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, with tens of thousands of other families, into a tent camp.

Then came the Israeli bombs. Al-Absi and his family would become survivors of what is known as the “tent massacre” on May 26.

Even in the massacre’s wake, however, they were unable to leave Tal al-Sultan — the cost of moving around Gaza was prohibitively high. In a matter of days, after another volley of Israeli airstrikes against the city, Mohammad Jaber al-Absi and his brother Abed would end up burying 15 members of their family, including their father and five children.

“Nowhere Safe in Gaza”

The sustained Israeli attack on Rafah — and the fates of families like the al-Absis — highlight the near impossibility of finding anywhere safe in Gaza.

In early June, after the Rafah strike, the pervasive danger in Gaza was again highlighted. Israel unleashed a midday assault on Nuseirat refugee camp and Deir al-Balah, part of a hostage rescue operation that killed hundreds of Palestinians and wounded countless more. The attack’s victims in Nuseirat had been, like many in Rafah, displaced multiple times.

The stories of survivors of the “tent massacre” illustrate the long odds faced by Palestinians in Gaza, who bankrupt themselves to follow orders to repeatedly relocate themselves to areas that the Israelis say won’t be attacked, only to be attacked.

Around 1.4 million internal refugees were packed in Rafah, normally a city of 230,000 on the evening of the tent massacre, which triggered a fire; killed at least 45 people, many of them children; and wounded more than 240 others. The same insecurity that brought down Israeli bombs on a tent city in a purported safe zone, however, would also continue to shadow the survivors of Tal al-Sultan.

“Those were scenes that will never be erased from my memory, and my kids’ memories.”

Some survivors, like Layla Samour and her family, who had been displaced from northern Gaza early in the war, would make their way out of Rafah, bringing with them what little they had left, along with the scars of the massacre.

Samour described seeing charred bodies in the massacre, torn-apart children, and the wounded crying for help in vain. “I saw people trying to pull the bodies of their loved ones from the fire while the smoke filled the air and made it difficult for us to breathe,” she told The Intercept in an interview. “Those were scenes that will never be erased from my memory, and my kids’ memories.”

Others, like the al-Absis, had moved and moved and been bombed out of place after place. This time, they would stay, and almost immediately experienced the acute dangers of the continued Israeli assault.

“There is nowhere safe in Gaza,” Tamara Alrifai, a spokesperson for UNRWA, told The Intercept.“Not even UNRWA shelters that are clearly marked, and whose GPS we share.”

According to Alrifai, over 180 UNRWA buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the Israeli military assault over the past eight months, killing over 450 Palestinians seeking shelter inside them and wounding nearly 1,500.

“All civilian infrastructure, including UN infrastructure, is protected under international humanitarian law,” said Alrifai, “and this has clearly been totally disregarded during this conflict.”

“Raining Shrapnel”

When Layla Samour fled her home in northern Gaza last fall, she was 37 years old and nearly nine months pregnant with her eighth child. In her state, with seven kids in tow, the journey south was daunting, but there was little left for her in the north: Her family home was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on October 14, a week into Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Eventually, the Samours settled into the Tal al-Sultan displacement camp, near an UNRWA logistics base. She gave birth at the end of October, in a tent.

In late April, shelling in the area picked up. On May 6, Israel began its ground invasion.

The White House, which had repeatedly cautioned Israel against invading Rafah without a “plan to protect civilians,” nevertheless signed off on a new $1 billion arms sale to Israel on May 14, a little over a week into the offensive. The attack came in for worldwide condemnation, and the International Court of Justice issued new provisional measures ordering Israel to immediately end military operations in Rafah.

Yet two days later, on the evening of May 26, Israeli airstrikes slammed into the tent camp in Tal al-Sultan. The bombs used in the Israeli attack were U.S.-made, according to investigations by multiple news outlets.

“I screamed as I never did before,” Samour told The Intercept. “The first thing I felt was the shock of the explosion, as if the ground was shaking beneath us. I rushed to my children and hugged them close, fearing that the missile would fall on our heads. I found safety in dying together. It was raining shrapnel.”

“I was devastated that I could not bring my kids back inside my belly.”

Samour heard the screams of children and women around her as tents were set ablaze. “The flames were surrounding us, it was beyond my worst nightmares,” she said, describing her desperate attempts to protect her children. “I was devastated that I could not bring my kids back inside my belly.”

She says she tried to help extinguish the blaze, but the dense smoke and intense heat made it nearly impossible. Every time she tried to approach an area to put out the flames, a wave of fire and smoke pushed her back.

“I carried a child in my arms and held the hand of another, while the rest followed me, praying to find a safe place,” she said. “We ran amid the fire and smoke, trying to avoid the casualties and shrapnel.”

Samour spent a harrowing night in the streets with her children. The next morning, she decided to leave the area, but the fuel shortage had made transportation costs prohibitively expensive. Then she had a stroke of luck: After two days, Samour was finally able to secure a staggering $550 through an acquaintance to be able to move to Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city.

Yet Khan Younis did not offer safety either. Israeli troops withdrew from the city in April following a weekslong ground offensive, leaving the city in ruins. An estimated 55 percent of the structures in the Khan Younis area — around 45,000 buildings — and much of the city infrastructure has been destroyed, with dire shortages of food, clean water, medical supplies, and health care services, according to the World Food Program.

Samour would have opted to relocate somewhere else, but the money she got was only enough to travel to Khan Younis, a mere 10 to 15 kilometers away from Rafah. Traveling any further north would cost even more.

Two Days Later

When they first arrived in Rafah in November, Mohammad Jaber al-Absi and his family settled in a warehouse, where they lived for five months. Israeli attacks came in waves: airstrikes, artillery shells, and finally ground troops. The eldest of his siblings at just 22, al-Absi strove desperately to provide for the others.

By late April, Israel was gearing up for its full-scale ground assault on Rafah. As the shelling increased in advance of the attack, al-Absi moved with his family yet again, this time to the Tal al-Sultan tent camp near the UNRWA logistics base. Several days later, on May 6, Israel launched its ground offensive.

They were still in the camp when the bombs came down on May 26.

Survivors of that “tent massacre,” al-Absi and his family were unable to flee the area. The cost of transportation, which had risen to hundreds of dollars just to travel a few kilometers, was unaffordable, al-Absi told The Intercept.

“The only safe place is where my family is now. They were killed for the sake of safety. I envy them.”

Unable to leave, and believing the international outcry following the May 26 airstrike meant the area would be spared another attack, the family moved to another displacement camp some 150 meters away.

Just two days later, however, on May 28, an Israeli strike slammed into the camp, killing dozens. Al-Absi, who had left the area that day with his brother Abed to look for food and supplies, returned to find his family massacred. He tried to revive his father, who lay on the ground with a fatal head injury, but it was too late. The bloodied bodies of his siblings and other relatives were strewn nearby. None survived. In all, 15 of his relatives were killed, including five children.

“I felt helpless watching my family dying and not able to help them,” Al-Absi told The Intercept. “It is a nightmare that I will never wake up from.”

The al-Absi brothers buried their family members with the help of some friends.

In a final desperate bid, they moved to al-Muwasi, a nearby desolate plot of land on the coast. As it once had for Rafah, Israel designated al-Muwasi a humanitarian area for evacuees and, like Rafah, it has been hit with airstrikes and shelling.

“The only safe place is where my family is now,” Al-Absi said. “They were killed for the sake of safety. I envy them.”