Like many 24-year-olds, Indonesian Fikri Rofiul Haq says that he spends his days excited about “content material creation.”
He imagines the participating images he’ll take and submit on-line, and the brief movies he’ll movie. He thinks about how he’ll communicate on to the digital camera as if he’s doing a stay TV report, and edit the footage along with background scenes of the tales he needs to inform.
When he lies in mattress at evening, he thinks about which of his tales can have essentially the most affect, and which is able to get essentially the most engagement.
However Haq is not any social media influencer, at the least not within the conventional sense.
As an alternative, he’s a humanitarian volunteer with an Indonesian charity, the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C), and relies in Khan Younis in South Gaza.
Because the begin of the conflict between Israel and Hamas on October 7, Haq’s life has reworked dramatically, and he has change into one thing of an uneasy reporter of his personal story, documenting the atrocities of the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in opposition to a backdrop of terror.
“I take into consideration content material continually and summoning up the braveness to make it takes time,” Haq says from the federal government college the place he’s sheltering, together with 1,200 displaced residents in Khan Younis.
“Particularly when drones and fighter jets fly by.”
When Haq isn’t making content material, which MER-C posts on its myriad social media channels, he tries to get pleasure from uncommon moments of quiet and spend time on hobbies like memorizing the Quran.
“I additionally speak with the households right here, particularly the babies,” he says. “There are kids of all ages and there are such a lot of of them. Typically they’re those who give me power.”
“After we hear the sounds of bombs and gunshots, they all the time say ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid’,” he provides. “They’re so robust and highly effective. They’re extraordinary.”
Journey to Gaza
Haq’s journey to Gaza started innocuously sufficient.
Together with two different MER-C volunteers, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Islamic College of Gaza the place he was finding out faith and schooling earlier than the conflict broke out, whereas additionally serving to MER-C with humanitarian initiatives within the Gaza Strip.
When the conflict erupted, Haq, together with 22-year-old Farid Zanzabil Al Ayubi and 30-year-old Reza Aldilla Kurniawan, turned their consideration to working as MER-C volunteers full time.
MER-C, which was established in 1999, has supplied humanitarian assist in international locations all around the world, together with Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, the Philippines, and Thailand, along with having workplaces throughout Indonesia.
In 2011, MER-C collected donations from Indonesian residents and humanitarian organizations to construct the Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahia, North Gaza, and the hospital was formally inaugurated in 2016 by Indonesia’s then-Vice President Jusuf Kalla as a present to Palestine from the Indonesian folks.
Indonesia has lengthy had a detailed relationship with Palestine, which was one of many first international locations to acknowledge Indonesian independence from the Dutch again in 1945, and the vast majority of Indonesians assist the Palestinian trigger. There aren’t any formal diplomatic ties between Israel and Indonesia, and no Israeli embassy within the nation, though the primary Palestinian embassy in Jakarta opened in 1990.
Because the begin of the conflict, there have been widespread rallies and demonstrations throughout Indonesia, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, in addition to calls to boycott merchandise and companies with perceived Israeli ties akin to Starbucks and McDonald’s.
When the conflict broke out, Haq, Al Ayubi, and Kurniawan have been primarily based on the Indonesia Hospital, the place they’d shelter within the basement when the bombs began to drop and the tanks moved nearer.
Lastly, the state of affairs got here to a head on November 20, when Israeli troops stormed the hospital and ordered all sufferers, medical workers, and displaced households sheltering there to evacuate to the south of the Gaza Strip.
Haq communicates with The Diplomat, and the remainder of the world outdoors Gaza, by sending voice notes by way of WhatsApp explaining his state of affairs.
Typically, he sends textual content messages as a substitute, with updates from the bottom or disparate ideas on numerous matters.
He misses strawberries, he says, as a result of it must be strawberry season now within the Gaza Strip. He additionally misses the rain as a result of the winter season has been chaotic this 12 months and the climate has been “random.” He’s consuming native meals like hummus, a phrase he struggles to pronounce, then provides with amusing that he’s additionally consuming French fries. He talks about sooner or later going to England, as a result of he has heard that the UK has mosques and a rising Muslim inhabitants.
Earlier than the conflict, he says, the three MER-C volunteers have been finding out at college and dealing, however in addition they hoped to search out companions and get married.
Once more, he laughs as he says this.
Discuss of Evacuation
As soon as Haq, Al Ayubi, and Kurniawan evacuated to the federal government college in Khan Younis, Haq says they’d a critical dialog concerning the future.
That they had beforehand been supplied the chance to be evacuated from Gaza by the Indonesian Overseas Ministry initially of the battle, however had turned it down.
This time, Haq says, they thought-about it extra deeply and every man decided. Al Ayubi determined to depart Gaza, whereas Haq and Kurniawan elected to remain.
Talking in a televised deal with late within the night on December 9, Indonesia’s overseas minister, Retno Marsudi, formally introduced that Al Ayubi had been efficiently evacuated by way of the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, after a “lengthy and complicated” operation by an Indonesian evacuation workforce.
Haq tells The Diplomat that he determined to remain behind in Khan Younis as he felt that he nonetheless had necessary work to do in Gaza.
“The selection to evacuate got here right down to our particular person voices. We didn’t attempt to change one another’s minds,” he says. “Our mission remains to be to assist the folks right here and to maintain working the MER-C humanitarian applications.”
“I really feel scared in fact, I’m actually not that courageous. I simply depart all the things as much as God.”
Haq additionally says, nevertheless, that saying goodbye to Al Ayubi had been tougher than he had anticipated.
“I simply advised him, ‘Take care on the highway and I hope you get again to Indonesia rapidly, ship my regards to everybody there’,” he says.
“It was actually unhappy, however I’m the form of one that can’t shed tears in public. In case you watch movies of me speaking to the digital camera or to the media, I by no means look unhappy or like I’m crying.”
Haq says that the tears solely fall when he’s alone, significantly when he remembers a few of the tougher moments he has witnessed in Gaza.
“What makes me unhappy is usually remembering the moments when youngsters misplaced their moms, or moms misplaced their youngsters. Or when households needed to accumulate the items of their family members who had been bombed utilizing cardboard containers or sacks. Typically I don’t even have the power to doc it. Or I’ll make a video however I can’t deliver myself to look at it.”
Hometown Blues
Haq is initially from Cileungsi in Bogor in West Java, and tells The Diplomat that his household has been supportive of his determination to remain in Gaza, though his mom and youthful siblings want he would come again to Indonesia.
When Haq thinks about his hometown, he remembers the climate and the way it generally felt so stiflingly sizzling that he may not stand it.
He prefers chilly climate and, now that it’s winter within the Gaza Strip, he has been spending his time making an attempt to supply jackets and blankets for the kids on the college.
“Earlier than the conflict, my favourite interest was swimming,” he stated. “I might swim throughout each seasons within the Gaza Strip, summer time and winter. Even in January or February, I might go swimming within the sea, whereas my pals simply sat on the seaside and had a picnic.”
The rains have lastly come to the Gaza Strip this 12 months after months of absence, though this has additionally meant that Haq has needed to pivot his content material creation to seize the altering of the seasons.
“I’ve been interviewed a number of occasions concerning the ailments which might be affecting folks now that it’s winter. I simply affirm and add details about how illness is now plaguing the Gaza Strip,” he stated.
Along with illness, chilly climate and dwindling meals provides, assaults by Israeli forces proceed day by day.
Not like the Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahia, there is no such thing as a basement on the authorities college Haq is sheltering in, and he has little selection however to remain in his room when he hears the sound of bombings.
“For the previous three days, we now have been in a position to hear the bottom assaults from the varsity,” he says.
Beforehand, Israeli forces had ordered residents to evacuate from the north of the Gaza Strip to the south, solely to launch bomb assaults and floor offensives within the locations residents had been directed to evacuate to.
On the bottom in Khan Younis, Haq, ever eager to supply updates on the most recent developments, says that the Israeli forces appear to be shifting by way of the town underneath the quilt of darkness.
“The sounds of the assaults reverberate from sundown till daybreak,” he says.
“The sound of gunfire and metal tanks looks like it’s getting nearer day by day.”