Today, Shatila bids farewell to her oak tree, Umm Muhammad Rajeh

Writer: Walid Al-Awad

44 years ago, we were a few young men who refused to go out with the fighters of the Palestinian revolution from Beirut, and we insisted on staying in the Shatila camp with the camp’s people. Something inside us was saying that Sabra and Shatila were about to witness a massacre, and that we had to stay by our people, whatever the cost.

We had no shelter in the camp. We moved from house to house, from alley to alley, and slept in some clubs and with friends. When the massacre occurred, we played our role in defending thousands of camp residents, and contributed to rescuing thousands of them and evacuating them to safe places.

In that camp, the people of Shatila and its hard-working women embraced us, opened their homes to us, provided us with food and accommodation, and shared with us fear, bread, and anxiety. Their homes were a refuge for us in a time when the pursued had only people's hearts and homes.

Among those women was Hajja Umm Muhammad Rajeh, one of the women of Shatila who stood in the face of adversity and embraced the people of the camp and those who sought refuge with them.

After the situation stabilized, my wife came from Ain al-Hilweh camp, after communication had been cut off due to the war at the time, to search for me among the piles of corpses, and found me alive. Then Umm Muhammad Rajeh opened her home to us, just as she opened it to many others.

In Shatila, she gave birth to my first son, Hussein. At that time, I was being chased, moving from house to house and from alley to alley, and my wife needed someone to support her in caring for and raising our first child. Umm Muhammad was present with a mother’s heart and tenderness, and my wife relied on her to care for and raise Hussein, until she and her sons and daughters became a second family for us, a mother, brothers, and support in those harsh days.

Umm Muhammad was not just a woman who opened the door of her home to us; She was part of our memories in Shatila, and one of those women who preserved the camp’s spirit and preserved people’s lives and dignity in the darkest circumstances.

Whenever I visited Lebanon, I made sure to go to Shatila to visit her and check on her. I used to return to her as one returns to a part of one’s memory, to a house whose walls contain unforgettable stories, and to a woman whose name was associated in my mind with difficult years, but she was full of love and solidarity.

In recent years, she was paralyzed by illness, and she was no longer able to receive anyone as she used to. But she used to sit with her guests with a kind heart, making them realize that a lot of talk does not require a voice. She was imitating people with the tender blinks of her eyes, as if her eyes were summarizing everything that had passed: asking about us, reassuring herself publicly, and reminiscing with every visitor something from those distant days.

Today, Monday 9/21/2026, Hajja Umm Muhammad Rajeh, “Diba Musa Suleiman,” passed away.

The oak of Palestine, the mother of martyrs, passed away after a long struggle with illness.

She went to join her martyred children: the martyr Muhammad Rajeh Muhammad, the missing martyr Yousef Rajeh Muhammad, her late husband Rajeh Muhammad Abu Asiya, and her late daughters Fatima Rajeh Muhammad, Hamda Rajeh Muhammad, and Khadra Rajeh Muhammad.

She left to join them all, and left us the key to the ancient house, and left in our hearts a house of memories that does not close its door, so that we can continue on the path after her, and continue to carry her dream and the dream of her family to return to the homeland.

Today, Shatila does not bid farewell to a passing woman from the memory of the place; She bids farewell to one of her oaks, a woman who witnessed the pain of the camp, the steadfastness of its people, and the stories of its children, and she was part of our lives in its most harsh days.

Sleep in peace, Umm Muhammad.

Sleep, our beloved, our mother, the mother of martyrs, the oak of Palestine and the heroic Shatila.

Your house will remain open in our memories, and the blinks of your tender eyes will continue to remind us whenever we return to Shatila, or recall the stories of those days. Gaza / 9-21-2026