For more than seven months, Israel has been bombing civilians in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 33,000 (Picture: AFP / Getty)
Bombs rip through the sky. Buildings where civilians shelter turn into rubble, burying them inside. The stench of death and the dust of pulverised concrete fill the air.
This is the hell engulfing the Palestinian city of Rafah, southwest of Gaza and bordering Egypt. But in another world, it could be taking place in Brighton.
There are no airstrikes on the seaside resort in East Sussex, about 50 miles south of London, but in a hypothetical scenario, what if the same kind of war came to Britain’s door?
Rafah and Brighton may be some 2,209 miles apart, but the two cities are not too dissimilar.
Both are located near the coast. Rafah is a city in the southern Gaza Strip, near the Mediterranean Sea. Then, there is Brighton, overlooking the English Channel.
Tourists flock to Brighton all summer for its pebble stone beach and picturesque pier. Before Israel’s war on Gaza, Rafah had welcomed a fair share of visitors to its shores for the view, too.
Maps showing the size of Brighton and comparatively, the size of the Rafah (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
And both have great historical significance. Brighton – dating back to the ancient Roman era – and Rafah, with archaeological treasures that can be traced back thousands of years.
Brighton, one of the two main areas of the city of Brighton and Hove, is 32 square miles, while the Palestinian enclave is just slightly smaller, at 25 square miles.
Until seven months ago, Brighton and Hove and Rafah had similar populations – around 250,000.
But since Israel began its onslaught on the territory after the Hamas attacks of 7 October, more than one million displaced people have crammed into Rafah to escape the terror, making it one of the most densely populated places on Earth.
What would an assault on Brighton look like?
Haim Bresheeth-Žabner, a Jewish Israeli academic, comes from a family of Holocaust survivors.
Originally from a town named Ostrowiec Kieliecky, in southern Poland, every member of his extended family was transported to Treblinka and killed in the death camp by the end of 1943.
Telling the story of how his parents survived World War II, the SOAS Professor of Film Studies said: ‘My parents continued as slave labour in the Ghetto and during June 1944, the SS (Hitler’s notorious elite Nazi guards) cleared the ghetto and dispatched all survivors to Auschwitz.
Palestinians observe the destruction caused by the attacks of Israeli army on tents of displaced people (Picture: Getty)
Palestinians who fled Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip ride with their belongings in the back of a truck, as they arrive to take shelter in Deir el-Balah in the central part of the Palestinian territory on May 12, 2024 (Picture: AFP)
‘My parents worked there until January 1945, when the Nazis closed Auschwitz as the Soviet Army came near.’
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Prof Bresheeth-Žabner was himself born in a refugee camp near Rome in 1946, where he lived with his parents for three years.
He added: ‘[We lived there] until June 1948, when they arrived in Palestine/Israel, at the start of the war. My father refused to be drafted as he would not use arms, and was placed in jail.
‘My mother and I were then placed in a large British jail which had been serving for the survivors from Europe’s death camps.’
As Israel continues its ground offensive in Rafah, Professor Bresheeth-Žabner spoke to Metro.co.uk about what the assault would look like if it happened in the UK.
He said: ‘Imagine Brighton cut off the from the rest of the world. Telephone lines cut. No electricity. Nothing actually works. The water is cut off and there is no fuel, so no one is able to use their car to flee.
‘Generators that keep hospitals working stop. There is no fuel for ambulances.
A Palestinian child, wounded in an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced people, is assisted at a hospital (Picture: Reuters)
A wounded Palestinian boy sits on debris at the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah (Picture: Reuters)
‘People are not able to leave. Journalists are not allowed to enter to report on the assault. The only services that are working will be powered by solar energy, but it is entirely dependent on the sun.
‘To add to it, food stops coming in. There are no stockpiles because no one knew that there will be an attack.
‘No only that but Brighton has been under a blockade for the last 15 years, which limits outside supplies. The very minimal amount entering is not enough to keep people alive.
‘Many children and women die at birth because there is no infrastructure to help them. And that is before the bombs start to drop.
Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians (Picture: Reuters)
Palestinian woman Buthayna Abu Jazar reacts as she holds the hand of her son Hazma, who was killed in an Israeli strike (Picture: Reuters)
‘And then the whole Western world choses to abandon Brighton to its fate. There is no police as they are all killed. There are no hospitals because they are all destroyed.
‘Every amenity that you can think of is being bombed. And people keep running around Brighton to find a safe place. And whoever is running this genocide keeps telling them to go to certain places and then bombs them.
‘It is a picture not of chaos, but of hell.’
Echoes of World War Two
Both of Prof Bresheeth-Žabner’s parents lost family members in the Holocaust. Some survived Auschwitz, but were taken to other concentration camps in Germany and Poland.
The academic insisted that he is not comparing the two atrocities, but pointed out similarities and went as far as to describe the assault on Gaza as a ‘genocide’.
Prof Bresheeth-Žabner said his father used to say that life in the Jewish Ghetto was worse than in the camps.
He explained: ‘In the ghetto, you could run around all day to find a piece of bread, if you are lucky. In the camps, you would get a portion of this terrible gruel once a day.
‘I think about the children I met in Gaza every day’
Sacha Myers, aid worker at Save the Children, recently returned from Gaza where she met with sole survivors of entire families.
She told Metro.co.uk: ‘I feel physically sick to know more families are being wiped out, more children are being killed right now as the assault on Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip intensifies.
‘More than half a million children are currently sheltering in Rafah. Families I spoke to last week told me they were terrified, that they lie awake at night listening to the bombs and drones and wondering how they will protect their children. And how they will find the energy to flee yet again.’
More than 14,000 children have been killed in the last seven months, while thousands more are wounded and even more have been declared missing.
Thousands of children have also been declared displaced across Gaza
Save the Children warns that if Israel’s bombs do not kill them, then disease, dehydration and malnutrition will.
Almost all (90%) children in Gaza under the age of two are in severe food poverty, meaning they have eaten two or less food groups in the last 24 hours.
In the north, the situation is dire, with one in three acutely malnourished. Nearly all children in Gaza are at imminent risk of famine.
Ms Myers shared the story of 13-year-old Solave (name changed) who she met a few weeks ago at a field hospital where Save the Children’s Emergency Health Unit is treating children with blast injuries and other illnesses.
A Palestinians child injured following an Israeli strike, is brought towards Al Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah (Picture: EPA)
‘Solave was hit with a large piece of shrapnel when an airstrike destroyed her auntie’s house in the Gaza Strip,’ the aid worker said.
‘Solave’s mother found her. They attempted to carry her down the stairs, but the stairs had been blown away.
‘When they eventually made it to the hospital, the doctors tried to treat Solave’s horrific injuries with the limited medical supplies they had, but they couldn’t save both her legs.
‘She lost her right leg. She also lost two of her brothers that day, and any essence of childhood that was left in her life.
‘I heard many stories like Solave’s when I was in the Gaza Strip, including children who had had amputations and operations with very little pain relief, leaving them fearful about any medical procedures, even dressing changes.
‘Now I’m in Cairo, away from the bombs and constant sound of drones, I think about Solave and the other children I met every second of every day.’
‘This was not the case in the ghetto and this is not the case in Gaza. Newborns are not fed because their mothers are not eating and they have no breastmilk.
‘Young children are dying from starvation. They do not have clean water as well. Others are preying to die.’
In the first three years of his life, Prof Bresheeth-Žabner said that his family only survived because of the humanitarian aid supplied by the charities in their refugee camp in Rome.
This is also the case for people across Gaza as Israel continues to use starvation as a weapon of war, according to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week.
The United Nations has warned of ‘apocalyptic’ consequences due to shortages of food in the territory, where Israel has blocked desperately needed supplies.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also warned that only seven of its 24 health centres were operational and that it had not received any medical supplies in the past 10 days due to ‘closures/disruptions’ at the border.
This comes just days after Israeli extremists, part of the group Tzav-9, were filmed blocking convoys of lorries and ransacking humanitarian convoys headed for the city.
Burnt debris in the aftermath of an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced people, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, May 27, 2024 (Picture: Reuters)
Tents are set up along the beach in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip by Palestinians who fled Rafah (Picture: AFP)
Plight of children
More than 600,000 children are currently taking shelter in Rafah, making up half of the city’s now heaving population.
They are wounded, malnourished and traumatised. Many are orphaned, others unaccompanied and left to fend for themselves.
Some of the worst footage of the war on Gaza has been emerging from Rafah overnight, with videos showing motionless bodies of newborns ripped apart and others suffocated under rubble.
In the last Israeli strike on makeshift tents in the city, at least 35 people were killed and many more injured.
Prof Bresheeth-Žabner said: ‘Those children have experienced bombings that have never existed anywhere before. This is very important to understand.
‘If they survive, they will never be able to live a normal life because they are all traumatised beyond belief.
‘Their survival would be a cruel joke as there is no housing, no amenities. There is no way to live. As far as Israel is concerned, go to hell.’
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