For more than a year and a half, Fatima Kolab has been fighting to repatriate her grandchildren of the Gaza Strip, where Israel has led a murderous offensive with the aim of destroying Hamas.
Three of his grandchildren aged 17 to 26 and his daughter -in -law currently in Khan Younès in the south of the enclave “are preparing to be evacuated for the seventh time.” His fourth grandson is “blocked” in the West Bank after being sent there for an operation due to thyroid cancer.
“They are in the red zone” that the Israeli army has decided to “destroy,” explains the former French professor of Algerian origin in BFMTV. “They are forced to leave.”
“They prepare” their business “to leave, they have nothing, there are no clothes or shoes, nothing,” said grandmother domiciled at Esssonne, who received a call from her family the previous day.
“They don’t even have a tent to protect themselves (…) They only have their sleep mat and some pots to cook things,” she says.
“They wake up in the morning, they tell themselves ‘fortunately, we are alive.'”
According to Fatima Kollab, hunger eats them. “At first, they had preserves, they were given a small rice, lentils, etc. but since May 2, there is nothing left, so their actions were completely finished, they only have glasses,” said the one left by Gaza in 2007 when his police son died in the exercise of his functions.
“The youngest only has the skin in the bones, there are the eyes that stand out,” warns that they have “all” tens of kilos.
Not to mention the “fear” in which they have lived “continuously” since October 7. “They wake up in the morning, they say each other ‘fortunately, we are alive.’ “It’s horrible.”
“This is what kills me, I tried by all means”
Fatima Kolab explains to BFMTV that the procedures to repatriate her family have begun after October 7 and the beginning of the Israeli offensive. In November 2023, he claims to have written “to the crisis cell, the Ministry and the President” of the Republic. Emmanuel Macron “replied at the beginning, asked me to give the names of the people. Now he does not answer me,” deplores.
With the help of a lawyer, he turned to justice. But on May 5, the State Council rejected the issuance of travel documents, confirming the decision of the Administrative Court of Nantes. He decided to appeal this decision before the European Court of Human Rights.
“This is what kills me, I tried by all the media,” she deplores this grandmother who says she lived bombings in Gaza in 2014 and 2021 when she returned for a few months.
“They say they are not my direct children, that it is not my right, but their father died, his two grandparents died, they only have their mother and me,” said the former teacher who stressed having seen them, having seen them grow and having lived with them.
She wonders: “They have the right to die there just because I don’t have a direct relationship with them?” “I would like to ask the authorities,” Fatima Kolab said.
Source: BFM TV
