Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight when Mahmoud Shaheen received a call at dawn.
He’d been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.
He’d heard a rising clamour outside. “You need to escape,” somebody in the street shouted, “because they will bomb the towers”.
As he left his building and crossed the road, looking for a safe place, his phone lit up.
“I’m speaking with you from Israeli intelligence,” a man said down the line, according to Mahmoud.
The voice addressed Mahmoud by his full name and spoke in flawless Arabic.
“He told me he wanted to bomb three towers… and ordered me to evacuate the surrounding area.”
