On a Wednesday in early April, Maryam decided not to send her three sons to school. Evacuated to France with her husband in November 2023, this Palestinian woman from Gaza needed to spend her day cleaning the apartment they’d got the day before, in a town in south-west France. “On Wednesdays, the boys only have school in the morning. It takes me a total of four hours by bus to get them to and from school. So, I asked their teacher to allow them to be absent today,” said the 42-year-old woman, choosing to use a pseudonym, like other Palestinians from Gaza quoted in this article.
Maryam’s three sons, triplets aged just over 6, were in their pajamas playing an online karate game on their tablet while their mother opened boxes. Sami, her French-Palestinian husband, chain-smoked cigarettes, while a technician installed the internet and plugged in the TV. “If Gulli is on, we’ll be fine,” said Sami, 55. “Since their arrival in France, the children have got into the habit of watching cartoons on the channel.”
Tuesday night was the family’s first night in this apartment, on the fourth floor of a residential building. Previously, for almost five months, Sami and his family had been housed in an aparthotel far from the city center. Sami, who had both legs amputated at the knee due to a rare genetic disease, and who has been walking with prostheses for years, suffered a lot in this former home. “To accompany the children, I had to walk uphill for about 10 minutes to the bus stop. And when it rained, the ground became slippery and it was even harder for me. What’s more, my prostheses are damaged,” he explained. To get them replaced, Sami is waiting for the arrival of his French health insurance card and inclusion mobility card, granted to disabled or elderly people who are losing their independence.
This son of peasants expropriated from their farm near Ashkelon (north of the Gaza Strip) when Israel was created in 1948, Sami spoke to Le Monde of his experience shortly after his evacuation from Gaza. He began his studies in France in 1987 and earned his post-graduate diploma at the Sorbonne. After various humanitarian missions in Africa, Jordan and Yemen, Sami returned to live and work in the Gaza Strip in 2010 to work for an NGO.
When war broke out on October 7, 2023, with the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli response, Sami’s family, like many others, fled to the south of the Gaza Strip, to Khan Yunis, then to Rafah, before being evacuated to Egypt and flying to France. Sami proposed to settle with his family in the south-west, to be close to a nephew and a few friends. He continues to supervise the activities of his NGO in Gaza, from a distance.
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