‘All I think about is Gaza’

Away from home in Gaza, Palestinian pilgrim Mohammed Shehade said the rare chance he was given to perform hajj is overshadowed by fears for his family trapped in the war-battered territory.

The 38-year-old engineer had been granted a permit to leave as he sought life-saving cancer treatment in Egypt, but Israeli authorities barred his family from accompanying him.

He said his departure from the Gaza Strip in February presented him with “the opportunity of a lifetime” to apply for the annual Muslim pilgrimage, which begins on Wednesday.

But even as he visited the holy sites in the Saudi city of Makkah, his heart was heavy with thoughts of his wife and four children stuck in Gaza under relentless bombardment.

“This is life’s greatest suffering, to be far away from your family,” Shehade told AFP on a roadside leading to Makkah’s Grand Mosque.

He is among hundreds of Gazans set to perform Islam’s holiest rites alongside more than a million worshippers from across the globe.

As pilgrims robed in white filed by, Shehade said he had been praying day and night for the Gaza war to end and to be reunited with his family.

“You could be in the best place in the world but if you are away from your family, you will never be happy,” he said.

Leaving Gaza has become practically impossible for most inhabitants, but some like Shehade have been evacuated on medical grounds.

“Here I am preparing to perform hajj but there are things I can’t speak about. If I do I will cry,” he said as tears began to form in his eyes.

Shehade left Gaza during a truce, but Israel has since renewed its intense bombing campaign and blocked aid deliveries, with the United Nations warning of widespread famine.

“When I left I was caught between two fires,” Shehade said of the choice to travel for an essential surgery and leave his family behind.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said yesterday that at least 4,149 people have been killed in the territory since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war’s overall deaths toll to 54,418, mostly civilians.