Pause brings relief to loved ones in Gaza

The next four days of temporary ceasefire in Gaza will deliver a much-needed respite for those Australian Palestinians with loved ones there.

An Australian consular official assists Australians who were able to leave Gaza and enter Egypt at Rafah at the beginning of November. Picture: DFAT via NCA NewsWire

The next four days of temporary ceasefire in Gaza will deliver a much-needed respite for those Australian Palestinians with loved ones there.

For the past seven weeks, since Israel launched its assault on Hamas after its murderous rampage of October 7, Australian Palestinians with family members in Gaza have lived from day to day in the hope that their phone does not ring, for fear that it will be bad news.

For Sameer Ellagta, a phone call from Gaza a few weeks ago brought him the worst possible news. His first cousin Raeda ­Ellagta and three of her five young children were killed when an Israeli air strike hit the apartment in which they had made a makeshift shelter in the city of Rafah on the border with Egypt.

Raeda’s two other children,­ believed to be 12 and 14, survived only because they had left the house to try to buy bread for the family.

His story is an example of how much pain Australians who have relatives in Gaza are feeling alongside Australian Jews who lost friends or family in the Hamas massacre of October 7.

Ellagta, a Brisbane-based Palestinian refugee who came to Australia from Saudi Arabia 15 years ago, is relieved about the brief pause in hostilities as Hamas releases about 50 Israeli hostages.

But he knows that the respite is only temporary. “It is not enough and will not make my family safe, it is a drop in the ocean of what Palestinians need in Gaza now,” he says.

The news of Raeda’s death was even more traumatic because he says his cousin had moved with her family from northern Gaza to the south to be safe from the heart of the battle in northern Gaza.

The threat to the safety of citizens in southern Gaza is growing as Israel plans a ground offensive in the southern half of the strip where the UN estimates up to 1.5 million people have moved to escape the fighting in the north.

Sameer Ellagta, a Brisbane-based Palestinian refugee.

Ellagta, 43, says he doesn’t want to talk about politics and about who is right or wrong in this war. All he says he wants is for the killing in Gaza to stop.

“Let’s stop killing the children and then we can talk about who is responsible,” he says. “These people have lost everything, their jobs, their homes, their future. For me right now humanitarian issues are more important than politics or religion.”

Another Brisbane-based Australian Palestinian, Omar Ashour, says he has many first cousins in Gaza and while some members of his extended family have been killed in the war, his more immediate family has so far survived.

“Most of my family who were living in the north are now living in the south, crowded into small apartments,” he says.

“They moved south to get away from the fighting in the north. Their main concern, apart from their safety, is to find clean water, food and fuel. That is what they ­really want, apart from not getting killed.”

He says he contacts his family via intermittent communications because power and the internet are often not working, saying they have little concept of the big picture of what is happening in the war and what might happen.

“There is no visibility on the ­future for them, and they don’t have time or to think about it at this stage.”

Ashour, an Egyptian-born Palestinian who has been in Australia for 13 years, says he worries about what will become of destroyed Gaza when the fighting is over and the attention of the world moves on.

“I understand that people are postponing the question of what comes next, but that question is going to come and it’s going to hit hard,” he says. “The problem is that when the war stops, it’s not going to be news anymore. And these people will be left to figure out how to live in a horrific situation that they have no control over.”

Ashour wants the Australian government to speak out more strongly about the high civilian death rate which the Hamas-controlled health authority says has risen above 12,000.

“The Australian government’s approach has been disappointing, especially coming from a Labor government,” he says. “I don’t hold out much hope that the Australian government will stand up for what is right in this world.”