He Knew He Was a Delayed Martyr
The Story of Abdul Hadi and the Men Who Stayed in Northern Gaza Until the End
Foreword
Gaza loses people faster than the world can keep up with, and every loss leaves another family, another friend, another writer carrying a new wound. One of those losses was Abdul Hadi, a police officer killed in a recent Israeli strike — someone our young writer, Abood A, knew personally.
What you’re about to read is his tribute. His memory. His grief. His way of making sure Abdul Hadi doesn’t become just another number.
If you want to support Abood and his family, you can donate through his link or become a free or paid subscriber to his work.
I am writing this article about my friends — the ones I knew closely, sat with for countless hours, and shared fear, hunger, and the sounds of bombardment with during Gaza’s darkest nights. They were ordinary young men like many others in this homeland, yet they carried one unshakable belief in their hearts: that they would one day die as martyrs, facing death without turning their backs.
In northern Gaza, where death was closer than anything else, Hani and Abdul Hadi chose not to flee south to escape the Israeli airstrikes. They remained there among the destruction, surrounded by warplanes, tanks, and endless shelling, believing that protecting their land and their people was a duty they could never abandon.
Before the war, Abdul Hadi was a police officer. When northern Gaza was invaded, he volunteered to help protect his neighborhood and its residents. For five long months, he lived without seeing his family or friends. The only things he saw were smoke, rubble, Israeli soldiers, and tanks. His life was never easy, yet he never surrendered and never thought of running away despite the death surrounding him every single day.
He fought knowing that death followed him everywhere. He often said that no one could escape death — if it did not come today, it would come tomorrow. Every time he survived an attack, he described it as “a delay of death,” as though he already knew how his story would end.
Only two days before he was killed, Israeli forces targeted a police vehicle, but the officers inside survived. Abdul Hadi escaped death once again. That day, he told those around him that death had not gone away — it had only been postponed.
On the day he was killed, Abdul Hadi told his brothers he wanted to visit the police site to greet his fellow officers before Eid. Calmly, as if he were saying goodbye, he told them:
“I will not stay with you much longer… I am a target, and sooner or later they will strike me.”
His family begged him not to go. Fear filled their eyes, but he insisted, as though his heart already knew it was his final journey.
When Abdul Hadi arrived, he sat with his friends for a short while. Suddenly, they heard the sound of a missile landing nearby. Abu Anas — the only survivor of the attack — later said that they stepped out from under the shelter to see where the first missile had landed, never expecting another missile to be waiting for them.
Within seconds, Abdul Hadi and the other officers fell to the ground dead.
Abu Anas was wounded in his leg, but he stayed motionless on the ground pretending to be dead after a quadcopter drone landed only a few meters away from the strike site to confirm they had all been killed. He closed his eyes and remained silent until the drone finally left after confirming their deaths.
Minutes later, people and ambulances rushed to carry the bodies to Al-Shifa Hospital in central Gaza.
I was there waiting for them.
I saw them with my own eyes. I saw their faces torn by shrapnel, and I saw the unbearable grief on the faces of their families. It was a scene too painful for any human heart to endure. The pain was not mine alone — it belonged to a family that had begged him not to go and now looked at him with regret, realizing that their final glance at him had truly been the last.
And despite all this pain, we still carry an unshakable belief: that God has wisdom in everything, that martyrs are alive with their Lord, and that patience in Gaza is not a choice but a faith we have been raised upon through years of war and loss.
Here, we have learned to accept God’s decree and destiny, and not to fear death or the future no matter how dark it becomes, because we believe in the words of God:
“Nothing will ever happen to us except what Allah has ordained for us.”
This is not merely the story of one young man from Gaza. It is the story of an entire generation that chose to remain steadfast despite hunger, fear, siege, and death.
That is why I ask you to help share the stories of these young men who gave up the pleasures of this world in order to protect their homeland, their people, and their dignity — so that they do not become just numbers in news reports, and so the world may know that in Gaza there are men who lived with honor and died with honor.
Thank you for your witness. We will never stop talking about Gaza.
Gaza will always be in our hearts. 💞