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Abu Ubaida...Al-Mulatham: Symbol of the Gaza Battle

“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)
“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)
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Abu Ubaida...Al-Mulatham: Symbol of the Gaza Battle

“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)
“Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades (Al-Qassam media)

The name that many Palestinians keep repeating today is “Abu Ubaida,” the military spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement. The masked man (Al-Mulatham in Arabic) also imposed himself on the Israelis, in the midst of a difficult, complex and fierce battle, which turned him into a hero for many Hamas supporters in the Arab and Western worlds, and a hated enemy for Tel Aviv and its allies.

“Abu Ubaida” has been appearing on screens since Oct. 7, after Mohammad Al-Deif, the commander of Al-Qassam, announced the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.

His interventions come once every few days, via a recorded speech, wearing the green camouflage soldiers’ uniform, and wearing a red keffiyeh, to present the position of Al-Qassam and talk about developments in the battle.

Since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, Abu Ubaida has appeared before or after every decisive position, and has managed the media war with remarkable professionalism in the face of the Israeli spokesmen, according to the Palestinian supporters of Hamas.

“Abu Ubaida” was known for the first time in 2002 as one of Al-Qassam’s field officials. He spoke to almost all the media and in press conferences, but never uncovered his face, following the example of the former leader of Al-Qassam, Imad Aqel, who was killed by Israel in 1993.

After the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, “Abu Ubaida” was officially appointed spokesman for Al-Qassam.

The man comes from the town of Naalia in Gaza, which Israel occupied in 1948, and now lives in Jabalia, northeast of Gaza, according to the limited information sourced from Israel. His house was bombed several times, in 2008, 2012, 2014, and in the current war in Gaza.

In the 2014 war, he announced the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Shaul Aron in the midst of ground confrontations.

Palestinians at that time took to the streets in the West Bank in spontaneous marches, chanting for him and the “resistance.

“Abu Ubaida” previously had an account on Twitter (currently X), and another on Facebook, before they were closed. Today, he publishes his messages on the official Al-Qassam website and uses the Telegram application and the “Al-Aqsa” channel affiliated with Hamas to broadcast his videos, which are republished by various satellite channels and media outlets.

Israel claims to know the true identity of the Hamas spokesperson. Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said that the masked person, Hudhayfah Kahlout, was hiding behind the keffiyeh, and his nickname was Abu Ubaida.

Adraee published a picture of Kahlout, describing him as a “liar and a coward.” Neither Hamas nor Al-Qassam commented on the information.

Before the 2014 war, Abu Ubaida presented a master’s thesis at the Islamic University from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion, under the title, “The Holy Land between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Today, he is considered the spearhead of the “psychological war against Israel.”

 

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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)

Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.

The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the armed group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.

Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza's markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.

“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”