Irish-Palestinian man Ibrahim Alagha shares the heartbreaking moment he had with his son after fleeing Gaza.
The Blanchardstown native came to Ireland in 2008 after the Gaza War. His brothers were born in Ireland, so he went with them when they were being evacuated as he was underage.
Ibrahim, his wife, Hamida, and their three children, Sami, Omar and Eileen, were visiting Gaza on an extended break since June, when Israel began their blockade of the area.
Read more: Dublin dad sends message to daughter held hostage in Gaza after he thought she was killed
They were trapped there for more than 40 days of war, before being able to pass through the Rafah Crossing where they were met by an Irish diplomat.
The diplomat gave them food and water after they had been “starving” and rationing water for weeks.
In his first interview since returning home to Dublin, he told Virgin Media News: “There was this moment that touched my heart.
“When we crossed from the Palestinian side to the Egyptian side, we met the staff from the Irish Embassy. The first thing they did was they gave us water and food. I gave my son water to drink.
“He drank it and he asked me 'am I allowed to drink more?' because there were rules in the house, he was not allowed to drink more than a small bit. He asked me could he drink more, I said 'of course, drink as much as you want'. That moment. Oh my god.”
Ibrahim explained that his eight-year-old son Sami has been “the most affected” by the war.
“We call it 'scare shocks',” he shared. “Some nights he was crying, he had a lot of nightmares... Usually, when there are a lot of bombings, we open the window a little bit so it doesn't break the windows.
“He saw that and got really scared of windows. He will always stay away from windows. Always.
“There was a story about a house that was beside an air-strike target. The main door was jammed. There was a fire and they couldn't get out of the house. He was obsessed with keeping the door open. If we closed the door, he'd say 'no! no!'”
There were many nights that Ibrahim didn’t think his family would survive in Khan Yunis - a city in the Gaza Strip.
“A lot of nights, especially the days when communications were cut off and Khan Younis were heavily targeted, honestly I was thinking I would never make it to the next day,” he recalled.
“There's some prayers that we say, I used to say them every single night. I used to get all my family hugging each other and staying together. The feeling was that we either die together or live together. That was very important to me. I wanted all of us to be together.”
He shared his gratitude to those who supported his family in escaping Gaza, saying: “This is a week I'm never going to forget in my life.”
He added: “It's really nice to feel the love of people towards you. People that we never knew, even if we met on the street, we might not know each other. But knowing that people care. That's a really nice feeling. I really wish I could thank every one of them.
“I think without their support, we maybe wouldn't have seen this day happening... There was a lot of pressure, and I felt that, from all sides about us people in Gaza. I think it pushed the Government to put all its weight in to try and do that. Thank God it did.”
Ibrahim and his family want to return to “normal life as fast as possible” since landing in Dublin.
“Next week, My son Sami and I... he'll be in school and I'll be at work just doing the normal things,” he said.
“He's excited to be back and can't wait to go to school. We got a couple of messages from the school and I showed them to him. He was really happy looking at the pictures of his friends. He'll be really happy to go back to school on Monday or Tuesday.”
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