- Title: American woman survived Israeli attacks refuses to leave Gaza
- Date: 13th March 2024
- Summary: American woman survived Israeli attacks refuses to leave Gaza SHOTLIST GAZA, PALESTINE (MARCH 13, 2024) (AAVN – ACCESS ALL) 1. SOUNDBITE (English) AMERICAN DEBORAH DARWEL SAYING: “My name is Deborah Droll, and I'm an American. My mom is American. My dad is American. My grandma is American. My grandfather is American. So I think I qualify as a real American. And yes, I choose to live in Gaza. But what I did not choose is for the Israelis to try and kill me. They tried to bomb my house yesterday evening after Isha. It was exactly 10 minutes after Isha. And I was eating iftar around Maghrib, and I had a visitor, Abdallah Al-Atrash. He normally eats with me. And after we ate and we heard the adhan, he decided to go downstairs to his house. And alhamdulillah, he did. Because five minutes later, I looked up and I saw the ceiling coming down on me. And I felt my body drop one whole flight of stairs. And not stairs, one whole, what do you call it, floor. I felt my body drop to the next floor. I live on the fourth floor. I felt my own body drop to the third floor. And then I was stuck. And I thought, you know, all kinds of things run through your mind. You think you're dead. You think you're alive. You don't know. You start to panic. And you can't breathe because the breathing is very shallow. And I thought I would die just because I couldn't breathe. And I couldn't move. I had cement in front of me, cement behind me, cement on me, on top here. And the cement caused me to have a lot of severe pain. Even when I started, I could move one thing. I could move my hand. And I would say, arshadu an la ilaha illallah, arshadu wa muhammadin wa rasulullah. And then I would try to get some breath. And then I would say, inna hana, inna hana, so somebody could try and hear me. So I went back and forth with this for maybe one hour, one entire hour. And I was giving up. I thought I was going to die. Then they heard me. Someone heard me. And the people came. And they started some big cement. They moved. And some they broke with a hammer, with a shakush hammer. And they were able to get the cement from here down, off. But they couldn't get it from here up. And I could not set up. I could not move the cement, the cement. So they pulled me out. They pulled my legs. And then they told me, there's no stairs, ishdaj. So they wrapped me like a mummy. And they made me go down like this, three flights of stairs. My message for the Palestinians here, stay strong. Don't run. This is your best place. If you're going to die, it's better to die a martyr than to die outside in your own house. You don't have to be belonging to any sect or any group. You don't have to belong to, to know what's right. And what's right is that everyone should be treated equally. Palestinians, Americans, Lebanese, Australians, everyone should be treated equally. And that's why I'm still here. Taking everybody off of the, out of the country and putting them in this small, open-air scission. People need to understand that Palestine was here and the Nakba, the people are forgetting, makes Palestine like this. And it's not fair. This is why I think someone should ask me, why do you live here? I want to be one to say, hey, this is not right. But what I do believe is that you should be able to stand up and say, we're all people. You are not better than Palestinians. Americans are not better than Palestinians. So to get this across, this is why I live here. And I want to make a difference.” AAVN SCRIPT: Deborah Darwel, an American woman who survived the Israeli bombing of her apartment in Gaza, Deir al-Balah, stated that she would never leave Gaza on Wednesday (March 13). Palestinian Civil Defense teams rescued American Darwel, whose home in the town of Deir al-Balah was destroyed by the Israeli army's bombing last night. The woman rescued from the rubble receives treatment at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Darwel stated “'Israel bombed my house, I was trapped, struggling to breathe, and couldn't see.' She recounted how large debris fell on her back and legs due to Israel's bombing of her house, causing her to scream in great pain. Darwel expressed feeling like the only foreigner in Gaza at the moment, stating, “I will never leave Gaza because if Israel wants to take all of Gaza or all of Palestine, they want everyone to leave. I stayed because I didn't want them to take Palestine.'" "As an American living in Gaza, I believe all Arabs and the world should be here to help. All Americans should support Gaza. Everything happening here is injustice and should be stopped immediately," she added. In the first two months of Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip, the United States evacuated hundreds of its citizens through the Rafah Border Crossing at the Egypt-Gaza border. American citizens were either working in various international organizations and aid agencies in Gaza or were married to Palestinians and living with them in the Gaza Strip." Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people. The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine. In comparison, 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN. Israel is accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
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