I've Lost 160 Members of My Extended Family in Gaza. But I've Not Lost Hope - Opinion - Haaretz.com
I write these words from the deepest pain a human being can endure. Over the past year, I've lost 160 members of my extended family - men, women and children. All of them were civilians. All of them were unarmed. They were killed in airstrikes and shootings during the war in Gaza. Within minutes, entire generations of the Helou family were wiped out: Aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews - all killed in their homes.
Their bodies were found in the rubble - sometimes still holding each other, sometimes scattered. Some weren't identified for days. Our family, once united around one table on holidays, has become a list of names among the dead. 160 family members. 160 lives. 160 futures that will never be.
My grief is bottomless. Sometimes it feels hard just to breathe. But even from that place - the place where everything feels lost - I choose to rise and say: We must not give up. We must not surrender to hatred, to loss, to revenge. Now more than ever, I call on both peoples, Israeli and Palestinian, to choose a different path. A path not of blood, but of life. Not of vengeance, but of hope.
I am a Palestinian from Jericho. Though I was born there, my roots run deep in Gaza and Be'er Sheva. My grandparents were born in Gaza and moved to Be'er Sheva in the early 20th century to grow their businesses. My parents were born and raised in Be'er Sheva as well. During the 1948 war, they tried to return to Gaza but instead fled to Jericho, hoping its proximity to the Jordanian border would provide an escape route if things got worse. In 1967, they had to flee again, this time to Jordan, where they witnessed more violence and more death.
I grew up hearing these stories of fear, of flight, of people killed before their eyes. I was filled with anger. I wanted revenge. By age ten, during Israel's 1982 war in Lebanon, I was dragging tires into the street for demonstrations. I believed I had to fight. At fifteen, I joined the local Hamas movement. I threw stones. I sewed Palestinian flags, illegal at the time, knowing it could land me in prison. And it did. In 1992, I was sentenced to seven months in Israeli military prison as a political detainee.
But prison also brought something else: an unexpected encounter with people who held different visions of the future. During my sentence, the Oslo peace process began. When my parents visited me, they told me about a new peace agreement with Israel, about two states, and that flying the Palestinian flag was now legal. It planted a small seed of something I hadn't allowed myself to consider: possibility.
After my release, I focused on rebuilding my community. I helped launch a youth group in Jericho. We volunteered at schools, hospitals and nursing homes. I took a first aid course and became an ambulance volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Smoke rises from Gaza after an air strike, as seen from the Israeli side of the borderCredit: Amir Cohen / Reuters
During clashes in East Jerusalem in 1996, I provided medical assistance to wounded Palestinians. One day, I ran to help an unconscious man and discovered it was my close friend Firas. As I carried him toward the ambulance, I was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier. I collapsed. On the way to the hospital, I heard the doctor tell the medic to stop resuscitating the other injured man in the ambulance, my friend. He had died.
When I returned to Jericho, I asked about Firas. My brother took me to the cemetery. There were four graves: one for Firas, a 21-year-old law student; one for a 17-year-old boy; one for a Palestinian police officer. I asked about the fourth grave. "That one was for you," my brother said. "We thought you would die." I survived, but the bullet is still lodged near my spine today.
Years later, in 2004, a friend invited me to a workshop with Israelis. I was furious. "How can you ask me to meet with the enemy?" I shouted. "With those who killed my people, stole my land, made me a refugee, imprisoned me?" I went, but I swore I wouldn't speak. On the first day, I stayed silent. On the second, I started talking. On the third, I shared a coffee with them. By the fourth, I was asking in disbelief: "Are you really Jewish? Are you really Israeli?" Until then, I had only met Jews as soldiers. I had never spoken to civilians and had never discussed rights, futures, or peace.
I kept attending workshops, eventually traveling to Germany for a seminar with Israelis and Palestinians. In 2006, I was invited to meet Combatants for Peace in Jericho. I wasn't ready. But I kept learning, kept asking, kept meeting. In 2013, they asked me to speak at the Joint Memorial Day Ceremony. I said yes. Since then, I've been a committed member, engaged in nonviolent resistance and peaceful protest against the occupation.
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk in a makeshift tent camp in Gaza CityCredit: Jehad Alshrafi, AP
By the time I was thirty, I had married Hiba, who is also originally from Gaza. For many years, we have not been able to visit her family. For over eight years before the war started, our four children did not get permits to visit their grandparents in Gaza. And since October 7, we've lost over 160 relatives in Gaza. But I know that international cooperation and nonviolence are the only ways to end the occupation and achieve peace.
Because of all I've experienced, I know: the extremists on both sides want us to hate, to fear, to lose hope. They want us to believe that there is no alternative to war, that one people can only survive by destroying the other. I refuse to accept that. I refuse to let this narrative win.
Peace is not weakness. It is the strength to choose the harder path, to listen to the pain of the other, to recognize their suffering and to build bridges over rivers of blood. It is the courage to stand against those who profit from endless war and to say: enough.
In Israel, I often hear, "There's no partner for peace." But that's not true. We are here: Palestinians who believe in equality, coexistence and justice for both peoples. We are few, but we are determined. Determined to live, not die. To build, not destroy. Even after losing everything.
I choose to dedicate my life to peace and to a nonviolent struggle against injustice, occupation and extremism, both ours and yours. This is the only path that remains: a shared future, built on mutual recognition and the belief that peace is still possible.
I have lost my loved ones, but not my hope. Peace is not a slogan. It is the only way to live.
Ahmed Helou, a resident of Jericho, is an activist with Combatants for Peace, which will hold the annual Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Day Ceremony on April 29, in partnership with the Parents Circle – Families Forum.