Sheltering with her family in Gaza, Jumana is desperate to make it to Australia before the invasion (2024)

Every red square on this map of Gaza represents buildings that have likely been damaged or destroyed in the Israel-Gaza war since October 7.

Five months in, satellite data shows around 54 per cent of Gaza's buildings are in a state of ruin.

The heaviest concentration of destruction is here in Gaza City.

What the data doesn't show you, is that under every cell there's a human story.

Here, on the eastern outskirts of Gaza City, used to be the home of Jumana and her family.

The 19-year-old, who goes by the nickname JoJo, has been in close contact with the ABC over the past month, documenting her journey through Gaza. #JUMANAIMAGE

But months after fleeing her home, she's now caught in a perilous waiting game as she attempts the final leg of her journey — out of Gaza, into Egypt, and onto the first available flight to Australia.

It's been a race against the clock to escape before the ground invasion of Rafah by the Israeli military.

"They're bombing nearby. Every day it gets closer."

"I am so scared."

Jumana spends her nights trembling in fear under a borrowed blanket in a small room with her family in Rafah.

She's hiding with her parents and two brothers, near the border with Egypt, waiting to cross to safety.

Jumana says the bombing is at its worst overnight.

"We never sleep," she says.

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They've been displaced at least 12 times, but have stopped counting. Since this war began in October, they have lost 20 family members.

Jumana and her family were granted temporary visas to Australia sponsored by their uncle in Sydney in December last year, but were unable to get out of Gaza before the visas expired on March 2.

They have reapplied but while they wait for the application to be approved, they have to navigate a bureaucratic maze to cross into Egypt.

From a war zone with barely any internet access, the family has had to fundraise tens of thousands of dollars to pay a travel company owned by a prominent Egyptian businessman who has been linked to Egypt's intelligence service.

The family wants to leave together, which makes the already complicated process even more difficult.

"We can't leave each other, this family of five, we have nothing left here in Gaza," Jumana told the ABC in a series of messages translated from Arabic.

"We have no house, no future.

"Everything is gone. All we have left is this family."

Their journey through Gaza to the brink of escape is as astonishing as it is heartbreaking.

Wind back the clock five months.

On October 7, Hamas militants carried out a terrorist attack on communities in Israel, including at the Supanova music festival, killing around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, mostly civilians. A further 250 more were kidnapped.

In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched a military campaign vowing to destroy Hamas. Days into its offensive, it ordered a blockade to deny food and water into the Gaza Strip.

IDF's air and ground attacks have so far killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gazan health ministry.

Humanitarian organisations have warned a quarter of Gaza's population is at risk of famine as aid trucks struggle to deliver food to starving survivors.

Human rights experts, including those at the United Nations, have alleged starvation and indiscriminate bombing amount to war crimes.

Of the more than 2 million people living in Gaza, the majority are aged 19 and under.

Jumana is one of them, a self-described ordinary teenager who was in her first year of university studying IT.

She says October 7 is a day "nobody will ever forget".

That morning, she was at home with her family when she was woken by the sound of explosions and chaos outside.

"We were told to evacuate our homes like refugees," Jumana says. "We barely took anything with us."

This began their desperate journey for safety.

In fear for their lives, the family moved from shelter to shelter.

Jumana thinks they moved to five different places, all within a few streets of each other. But it all became a blur.

Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza intensified, with places of worship, medical facilities, schools, and residential areas destroyed.

After the fifth move, the safe house they were sheltering in with dozens of other families was bombed.

"The whole house collapsed on us," Jumana says.

"We saw death right in front of our eyes. It was destiny that we somehow survived.

"God saved us. Thank God."

After learning their family home had also been bombed, they decided it was time to leave Gaza City.

The family travelled south to Khan Younis.

At the time, the IDF declared this a "safe zone" — an area where Palestinians could flee to escape fighting.

Jumana can't recall the exact route her family took because of the chaos that was unfolding. However this was their likely path because the corridor via Salah Al-Din Road was the Israeli army's designated evacuation route.

Sometimes they managed to get a lift in a vehicle, sometimes Jumana ran for long periods of time, but mostly the family walked the 24 kilometres to Khan Younis.

It was a perilous journey. Death was everywhere. Rats swarmed abandoned buildings and corpses were strewn among the rubble.

"We'll never forget," Jumana says.

On November 12, they pitched a plastic tent at Al Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.

Jumana didn't take many photos or videos here.

It wasn't just because of the patchy internet access. She also struggled with the idea of documenting the terrible situation they were in.

"I don't want to remember … It was the most horrible and difficult life," she says.

"We were barely getting any water … There was so much shelling and destruction. We saw yet again, a lot of death. Bullets, debris, and rocks would fall onto our tent."

As the weather started to get colder, life in the uninsulated tent became insufferable. They knew it was time to move again.

"The neighbourhood was dangerous. My mum's legs were hurting so much from the cold, we really had to get out of this tent and find some place warmer."

After receiving word their visa to Australia had been approved, in December Jumana and her family began their journey from the camp in Khan Younis to Gaza's southernmost city Rafah.

The city was a two hour walk away and the only viable place for Palestinians wanting to leave Gaza.

At first they joined hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans who had set up tents.

Videos filmed here by Jumana show rows of makeshift tents draped in plastic and children walking down a dusty track.

But soon after they packed up again.

This time moving deeper into Rafah, to an apartment in a location the ABC has verified but chosen not to disclose.

Jumana has been here with her family since December, as they wait to begin the final leg of their journey to the Rafah border crossing and into Egypt.

With much of the Gaza Strip now reduced to rubble, Jumana has nowhere left to go and little choice but to wait and hope they can make it out before any ground invasion begins.

In Rafah, the daily struggle to find clean water and food begins at 5am. The family eats whatever they can find, which is mostly canned food.

It's the small things from their old life they miss — like a morning coffee.

The European hospital, on the outskirts of Rafah, is the only place they're able to charge their solar battery and mobile phones.

The small hospital is only intended for 240 patients, but, according to reports, thousands arrive everyday seeking treatment in its overcrowded corridors. Many succumb to their injuries due to lack of medical supplies.

Exiting Rafah

Gaza's border with Egypt is tightly-controlled. To get across, Jumana and her family are relying on the Hala Consulting and Tourism company.

Hala is owned by a prominent Egyptian businessman who has ties to Egypt's security services, according to a team of investigative reporters from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The family has to pay Hala $US5,000 a person, a figure that has risen from $US1,200 in the last few months.

For that fee the company provides two critical services — ensuring their names are registered on Egypt's list of people approved for entry from Gaza and operating transportation from the border to Cairo.

Permission to leave requires sign-off from both the Israelis and the Egyptians.

At night, the list of approved names is posted and published on Facebook and Telegram.

Travellers are required to be at the border gate at 7am the next day to begin the process of crossing the border.

Jumana says the family checks the list "every hour and can't sleep with anxiety" hoping their names will appear at any moment.

Paying the money is not a guaranteed ticket out of Gaza. People trying to cross are also forced to sign a disclosure accepting they will not receive a refund if their exit is unsuccessful.

Ultimately the decision about who leaves Gaza is up to Israel, which controls security at the crossing.

To raise the money for the family's border fee, Jumana started posting about her life on social media where she connected with people all over the world.

Friends she made in Australia helped set up a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $70,000 to cover the border fee and their initial living expenses due to their visa restrictions on work.

The family has now raised enough funds to pay Hala and have their names registered for the border crossing.

Jumana says seeing the support her family has received from strangers around the world has "lit a light of hope" in her heart.

"It's our dream to get out. [God Willing] we will get out."

The family needed to arrive in Australia by March 2 to be eligible to stay on their temporary visas.

But due to delays by the company managing their exit from Gaza they missed their deadline.

Figures from the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) show the Australian government has granted 2,273 visas to people with Palestinian citizenship between October 7 and February 6 this year.

But public lists posted on social media show only a handful of people have been able to get to Australia since the start of 2024.

The department told the ABC there were no arrangements in place to extend visas for people in Gaza.

"If a person's visa has ceased prior to travel, they would need to apply for and be granted a new visa to enter Australia," a DHA spokesperson said.

The family was hoping to spend the holy month of Ramadan with their uncle in Australia. But for now their lives remain in limbo.

With the threat of an imminent ground invasion, Jumana is feeling scared and anxious.

"We're in a desperate situation. In the coming days they've said they're going to invade Rafah. We're afraid they're going to come in on us while we're sitting here."

When the bombing gets too close, and afraid it's her last chance to communicate to the outside world, Jumana sends texts to the ABC asking for forgiveness, which is a common practice for Muslim Palestinians before impending death.

"My heart pains me. Forgive me," she has written to the ABC more than a dozen times.

Their bags are packed and waiting by the door. They check the lists often for their names.

"We are scared," Jumana says. "If we don't make it out alive, please tell everybody our stories."

Notes about data used in this story:

Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data was supplied by Corey Scherof CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoekof Oregon State University.

The map sections use data from the European Union's Sentinel-2 satellites, as well as high-resolution images from Planet Labs PBC.

Credits

Reporting and research: Zena Chamas, Mark Doman and Kevin Nguyen

Development: Katia Shatoba

Mapping: Mark Domanand Katia Shatoba

Social video production: Jack Fisher