According to UNESCO, 164 cultural sites across Gaza have been damaged by Israeli strikes since 7 October 2023. Each site tells part of a larger story. Together, they tell the story of a people whose presence on this land stretches back millennia.

That is why the destruction of these places feels so devastating. It is not simply that Gaza is losing ancient churches, mosques or markets. It is that Palestinians are being forced to watch the physical evidence of their history disappear before their eyes.

The first time I visited Gaza City’s old quarter after months of displacement, I found myself searching for landmarks that had guided me my entire life. The Great Omari Mosque. Saint Porphyrius Church. Al-Zawiya Market. The gold market. For generations, these places were more than buildings. They were points of reference in our daily lives, repositories of memory and reminders that Gaza’s story stretches far beyond the wars that have come to define it in international headlines. What I found instead were ruins.

Since October 2023, the world has witnessed Israel’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and universities across Gaza. Less attention has been paid to another target of this genocide: the cultural and historical landmarks that connect Palestinians to their past. This destruction is often discussed as collateral damage. It is not.

Cultural Erasure

What has happened to Gaza’s churches, mosques, markets and archaeological sites is part of a broader assault on Palestinian existence itself. A people can be displaced. They can be starved. They can be killed. But they can also be erased by severing their connection to history, memory and place.

The Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, believed to be the third-oldest church in the world, stood for centuries in Gaza City’s al-Zaytoon neighbourhood. It survived empires, invasions and wars. There are approximately twenty Christian homes standing around this church.

At Saint Porphyrius Church, more than 400 people crowded into the ancient stone halls, hoping the walls that had stood for so many years would hold. Just a few hundred metres down the street, the Latin convent next to the Catholic Holy Family Church offered refuge to another 500. Two communities, two churches, the same desperate search for safety.

That safety did not last. The church was targeted by an Israeli strike on 19 October 2023, killing 17 Palestinian Christians who were sheltering there. It was the first time in history that this church had been targeted.

On 16 December 2023, gunfire cracked through the courtyard of the Holy Family compound. An Israeli sniper shot and killed two Christian women as they moved inside the church grounds where they were sheltering.

The violence returned 19 months later. On 18 July 2025, an Israeli artillery shell hit the Holy Family Church directly. Three Christians sheltering there were killed in the strike: Saad Salama, 60, who had worked for years as the parish janitor; Fumya Ayaad, 84, an elderly woman who was receiving psychosocial support in a Caritas tent on the grounds; and Najwa Abu Dawood, 71. What began as sanctuaries for Gaza’s small Christian community turned into places marked by loss, twice over.

Sacred Ruins

For many outside Gaza, churches and mosques represent separate communities. In Gaza, they often represent something else: coexistence. Saint Porphyrius was not merely a Christian landmark. During previous wars, it opened its doors to displaced Muslim families. It was a symbol of a city whose social fabric was woven from shared suffering and shared survival. When such a place is destroyed, the loss cannot be measured only in stones and walls.

Just a short distance away stood the Great Omari Mosque, Gaza’s most important mosque and one of the oldest in Palestine. For centuries, its minaret dominated the skyline of the old city. Generations learned to pray there. Children played in its courtyards. Families arranged their lives around it.

The Great Mosque of Gaza — al-Omari Mosque, a 1,400-year-old landmark named after Caliph Umar bin al-Khattab — was struck twice in late 2023. It sustained partial damage to its minaret on 19 November, then was left in a near-ruinous state after further bombardment on 8 December.

Nearly two years later, on 6 November 2025, crews began clearing rubble from the site in Gaza City. Salvaged stones were set aside for future restoration, and the courtyard was reopened for worship. For Palestinians, places like the Great Omari Mosque are not tourist attractions. They are living institutions that carry the memories of countless lives. To destroy them is to attack the continuity between past and present.

Living Markets

The same is true of Gaza’s historic markets. Without the Omari Mosque, the market loses its spirit. Long before Gaza became synonymous with siege and war, al-Zawiya Market was the beating heart of the city. Its narrow alleys connected traders, craftsmen and families across generations. Since October 2023, al-Zawiya Market has been hit again and again. Israeli airstrikes and artillery pounded the market until entire rows of buildings and shops collapsed into rubble. Today, about 75 percent of it is gone.

This was not just any market. Al-Zawiya used to hold everything. It was a cluster of smaller markets inside one: grain stalls, spice souqs, apothecary shops. It was where people bought their daily bread, their medicine, amid the smell of cumin that told you that you were home. It was where Gaza shopped, traded, and lived its daily life. What’s left now is a skeleton of what it was.

Tucked into one corner of al-Zawiya Market sits Gaza’s gold market. It contains 120 jewellery shops beneath arches that look as though they were carved to last forever. It is an architectural masterpiece and the only one of its kind in the Strip. It’s called Qaysariyya, a name borrowed from the Roman era for industrial and commercial arcades. Local history says it was built in 1476.

But like so much in Gaza, it has lived many lives. After the Nakba in 1948, when Zionist militias and later the Israeli state expelled most Palestinians from their land, the gold market was emptied. It sat quietly. By the 1950s it had been turned into a shoemakers’ market. That lasted until 1968, when Gaza’s economy started breathing again and gold slowly found its way back.

The real shift came in 1970. Palestinians from Gaza were allowed to work inside occupied Palestine. Wages came home. But there were no banks, no stable currency to trust. So people did what people have done for centuries: they saved in gold. That’s what turned Qaysariyya around. By the early 1980s it was Gaza’s central hub for jewellery. There was nowhere else like it. No gold market in the north, centre, or south. Just this one. More craftsmen came. Renovations were made. By the 2000s the market gleamed again. Then the genocide began in October 2023.

Against Oblivion

The gold market was hit repeatedly. The worst came on 4 July 2024, when an Israeli strike bombed the arcade. The blast tore through the shops and even damaged the nearby Great Mosque of Gaza. Today, around 30 jewellery shops have been completely destroyed or burned out. The rest are being patched up by the traders themselves, with their own hands, under the same arches that have stood for more than 500 years.

These places remind Gazans of their fathers and grandfathers, and of their childhoods spent among the market’s alleys. They reminds us how we lost part of ourselves after so many of these places were destroyed. That is because heritage is not separate from human life.

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Too often, discussions of cultural destruction create a false choice between people and buildings, as though concern for one diminishes concern for the other. But the destruction of heritage matters precisely because it affects people. Buildings become meaningful because generations fill them with stories, traditions and memories.

Yet even amid the rubble, people continue to pray at the Great Omari Mosque. Merchants continue to reopen damaged shops. Christians continue to gather at Saint Porphyrius. These acts may appear small, but they carry enormous significance. They are declarations that Gaza’s history cannot be erased as easily as its buildings can be demolished.

Israel may destroy stone, wood and marble. It may reduce centuries-old landmarks to rubble. But memory survives through the people who carry it. And as long as Palestinians continue to remember these places, tell their stories and rebuild what has been destroyed, Gaza’s history remains alive.

Palestine Deep Dive’s Ahmed Alnaouq and Hala Hanina are joined by Palestinian poet and writer Mohammed El-Kurd, and British MP and chair of the Gaza Tribunal Jeremy Corbyn.

Together, they discuss the relationship between material complicity in genocide and narrative dehumanisation of Palestinians, the Gaza tribunal, politics of appeal and the changing political debate in Britain and the United States.

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Palestinian embroidery, known as tatreez, is not a souvenir, nor a folkloric performance staged for cultural consumption. Tatreez was never meant to be enshrined behind glass nor reduced to an aesthetic object estranged from lived experience. It was created to be worn, to move with the body, to absorb sweat, dust, and time. To be washed, repaired, and passed from generation to generation.

Because tatreez lives on the body—particularly on the bodies of Palestinian women—it has survived what archives and written histories have often failed to protect. Embroidery stitches threads into patterns, in the way a poem stitches words into meaning, weaving memory, identity, and resistance onto cloth. Tatreez and Palestinian poetry share a common purpose: to preserve what colonialist history has tried to erase.

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Long before Palestine was reduced to a political problem or an international dispute, it existed as a space of community and continuity. Generations lived and died on the same land. History did not arrive as a single narrative but as accumulated layers—Canaanite, Roman, Arab, Ottoman—each leaving traces without erasing what preceded it.

Tatreez developed within this layered time. Its motifs did not record rulers or dates but documented presence. Embroidered dresses, shawls, blouses, belts, and other household accessories and objects were made using different patterns from village to village, documenting an intimate, sustained relationship with the land. To study the various styles and stitches illuminates geographies of belonging and remembrance. Today, tatreez continues to parallel the Palestinian voice: each stitch is a part of a larger narrative, each motif a verse in an ongoing poem of survival. This echoes the craft of poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Fadwa Tuqan, whose words are enshrined in memory.

Living Maps

For Palestinian women, embroidery accompanied domestic labour, seasonal rhythms, and social structures. Women embroidered inside homes, between agricultural tasks, during gatherings, and across generations. Tatreez embodied knowledge passed from hand to hand through repetition and observation. Each region developed its own combinations of stitches, reflecting a different relationship to land, labour, and environment. Coastal cities produced patterns shaped by trade and openness; mountainous villages favoured dense, symmetrical designs reflecting settled agricultural life; desert regions allowed freer lines shaped by mobility and harsh conditions.

A Palestinian dress was an emblem of social knowledge: region, marital status, wealth, and community were all readable by the knowledgeable at a glance. Geography was carried on women’s bodies, turning them into living maps. Colour, density, placement, and motif all carried meaning. Unmarried women wore vivid colours; married women softened the palette while increasing the complexity and precision of the stitches; widows wore muted colours to express mourning and restraint. Red signified strength and vitality, black conveyed dignity and gravity, green conveyed land and fertility, and blue served as an amulet of protection. Each stitch had a purpose.

This tradition takes on new weight given the systematic disruption of Palestinian history. Empires ruled and fell, but the most violent rupture arrived with modern colonialism. Land became property; presence required proof. Under the British Mandate, systems of ownership selectively recognised presence. What could not be bureaucratised was erased. Women’s labour, oral knowledge, and domestic practices were rendered invisible within official records.

Then came 1948.

With the Nakba, Palestinians were expelled from their homes. Their history and connection to the land were called into question. Entire villages were destroyed, names erased from maps, archives burned or rewritten. A population with continuous presence on the land was described as temporary or invented. History was not only interrupted but overwritten.

Tatreez responded the only way it could: with quiet persistence.

Stitched Exile

Palestinian women embroidered images of the villages they could no longer return to. Dresses transformed into peripatetic archives. Symbols of the living world became symbols of what was lost. The cypress spoke of endurance in the face of drought. Grapes recalled abundance, generosity, and ancient cultivation. Horses evoked dignity and resistance. The placement of these motifs—whether on the chest, sleeves, or hem—reflected their importance within women’s lives and imaginations.

In refugee camps, embroidery shifted from an embellishment on everyday clothing to an act of intentional preservation. Tatreez became a method of holding onto place when the place itself was inaccessible. Palestinian women learned that erasure occurs through violence and through language—through reframing and denial. What is stolen is labelled as “disputed.” Colonisation is “conflict.” Lives are reduced to “numbers.”

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Today the erasure of Palestine is algorithmic. Palestinian grief is flagged as “graphic” or “inflammatory,” while the violent structures producing that grief remain obscured. The story is rarely denied outright. It is atomised and exhausted into silence. Palestinian women especially find that their voices are unheard as they continue to carry memory and care under siege.

Tatreez stands in direct opposition to this logic.

It does not ask to be believed nor require institutional permission. It carries its truth through its patterns. When a stitch is removed, the fabric retains its trace. Knowledge here is not declarative—it is practised.

Threaded Resistance

In contemporary contexts, tatreez continues to evolve. Artists integrate tatreez into metal, sound, installation, and digital forms. These practices do not detach embroidery from its roots. They extend its vocabulary and its reach, reaffirming it as a tool of resistance and continuity. In this way, contemporary artists reimagine embroidery as a living language rather than a static artefact.

However, tatreez is not immune to appropriation. Palestinian patterns are frequently extracted from their context and marketed as “Middle Eastern,” “Mediterranean,” or simply “ethnic.” Aesthetics are preserved but people are removed. This too is erasure.

Yet, the thread resists. Those who carry the knowledge recognise the patterns. Memory circulates outside official recognition, passed from mothers to daughters, from communities to diaspora, beyond the reach of institutional denial. Much like poetry—especially in its oral traditions—these stories are carried in voices as much as in hands, recited, remembered, and reshaped across generations. What cannot be archived in institutions continues to live in rhythm, repetition, and breath.

Tatreez teaches a fundamental truth: history does not survive only in documents. It survives in practice, repetition, and care—the refusal to abandon form when its function is under attack. Tatreez does not offer closure, but continuity. In Fadwa Tuqan’s iconic poem, Enough for Me, she expresses the desire to “melt and vanish into her soil / then sprout forth as a flower.” Her words preserve memory by transforming the physical bond with the land into a cycle of eternal return and rebirth, ensuring that the connection to Palestine is perpetually renewed.

As long as Palestinian women stitch poetry onto cloth and into memory, the story will continue. In a world committed to our obliteration, their hands, continuing to work, make tatreez a beautiful form of resistance. Like poetry, tatreez creates where erasure seeks to undo; both transform absence into presence and silence into something that endures. As Refaat Alareer wrote, “If I must die, you must live to tell my story”—a reminder that survival itself becomes an act of narration and that carrying the story forward is a continuation of both poetry and resistance.

By Ahmed Dremly

For the past two weeks, 18-year-old Mohammed Alaa has been walking for more than three hours each day to reach a café with a reliable internet connection so he can sit his final high school exams online.

Mohammed lives with his family of six in their partially destroyed home in the Al Sahaba neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City. Like most families in Gaza, they have had no electricity or stable internet connection since the Israeli military campaign in Gaza began in 2023.

“I always thought the final year of high school would be the most important year of my life because it would help me achieve my dream of studying business administration at university,” Mohammed said. “But with the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, studying has become another kind of suffering.”

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His father, Alaa, who used to help him study every day, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December 2024.

“My biggest supporter was my father. He even used to teach me. Losing him made everything much harder.”

Besides losing his father, Mohammed has lost more than 25 relatives during the war, including his grandfather, cousins and three close friends.

He was also injured in an Israeli airstrike while fetching water during the first days of the war, although his injuries were minor.

Against Everything

Despite everything, he has continued studying, carrying his textbooks with him through repeated displacement while constantly searching for somewhere quiet enough to prepare for his exams.

His family’s 80-square-metre apartment has become home to three families after two of his uncles lost their houses earlier in the war. The overcrowded conditions make it almost impossible for Mohammed to find a quiet place to study.

“Most of my studying happened after midnight, when everyone else in the house was asleep,” he said. “I studied by the light of my phone’s flashlight or a candle. During the day, I was always exhausted because I couldn’t sleep properly with the constant noise and the buzzing sound of the drones overhead.”

Although his family tried to make studying his priority, Mohammed insisted on helping them with daily survival.

“My family always wanted me to rest and eat well because I was studying, but I still fetched water and collected firewood. I have one brother, and my three sisters are younger than me.

“Sometimes I was studying while hiding my tears because I was hungry, stressed, missing my father, or thinking about our financial situation. Sometimes I needed to buy books or paper, but they were too expensive. Still, I knew I had to continue because my whole family had placed their hopes in me.”

Mohammed used to go to a café or visit friends whose homes have solar panels to download his online lessons or study for a few hours.

“Every time I walk through the streets, I’m afraid I could be killed in an airstrike before I even reach the café. But I have no other choice.”

Alongside his studies, Mohammed works part-time in his cousin’s accessories shop to help support his family. The income also allows him to pay for private tutoring, educational centres and internet access in cafés or temporary learning spaces powered by generators or solar energy, where students can connect to online classes and exams.

Online Exams

The Ministry of Education in Gaza announced that this year’s final high school examinations would begin on 20 June. This marked the first time since October 2023 that students in Gaza were able to sit the exams alongside their peers in the occupied West Bank.

Because most schools in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli attacks, students completed their examinations through the online platform Wise School.

For the third consecutive year, the examination process is taking place under the shadow of war. Thousands of students have faced displacement, electricity cuts, unreliable internet access and constant security risks while trying to complete their exams.

Mohammed is one of more than 37,000 students in Gaza sitting this year’s examinations. According to the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, another 1,941 Gaza students are currently abroad, while 51,499 students are taking the exams in the occupied West Bank.

Not everyone managed to finish.

“Some of my friends were unable to complete their exams because the internet disconnected while they were taking them,” Mohammed said. “I walked for miles and hours to sit in a café with a better connection, but even there the internet sometimes failed. I also kept my mother’s phone with me on standby in case mine ran out of battery.”

“I was taking my exams while worrying about the questions, worrying about my family, and wondering whether I would even make it back home alive. The bombing never stopped.”

Raghad’s Dream

Those fears became even more real after Mohammed learned that 17-year-old Raghad Ashour had been killed in an Israeli airstrike while walking to study at an educational institution along a route similar to the one he regularly takes.

Raghad was on her way to study at an educational centre near her family’s makeshift tent in central Gaza City on Monday, 22 June, when an Israeli airstrike killed her.

Displaced from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, Raghad had always been an outstanding student. Shortly before her death, she had earned first place in a competitive scholarship programme in artificial intelligence.

“Her education was always her highest priority, despite the fear, displacement and constant airstrikes,” said her uncle, Jamal. “She dreamed of going to university and finding a job so she could help support her family financially.”

Raghad grew up without her father, who was killed in an Israeli attack in 2011 when she was nearly two years old.

Jamal visited the family’s tent at least once a week. The day before the strike, he had spent the afternoon with them.

“She made us mint tea, and we sat together talking about ordinary things,” he recalled. “Now I visit her mother and four brothers every day. We talk about our memories of her because we still cannot believe she is gone. We miss her deeply.

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“Raghad was the princess of our family, like a daughter to me. She was kind-hearted and sensitive. She was always helping her family and was not only a loving daughter but also one of her mother’s closest friends.”

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, Raghad is among at least 19,100 school students and 1,379 university students who have been killed in Israeli military attacks since October 2023.

Jamal said the family hopes the international community will act to end the war.

“We want the world to put pressure on Israel’s far-right government and Netanyahu to stop this genocidal war. The people being killed in Gaza are innocent civilians. We don’t want to live through any more war; we want to live in peace.

“We want to return home in peace and rebuild Gaza, Beit Hanoun, Rafah, Al Shujaya and every part of Gaza.”

At least 1,052 Palestinians have been killed and 3,406 wounded in ongoing Israeli military attacks on Gaza since the ceasefire agreement on 11 October 2025.

Narrow Escape

Alongside Raghad, other people were also on the same street when four Israeli airstrikes hit the area, including eight-year-old Reta Ajour and her five-year-old cousin, Naya, who were standing just a few metres from one of the cars that was hit.

The girls, who are displaced and living on Al Wihda Street, about a kilometre away, walk every day to a nearby school in the Al Rimal neighbourhood with one of their relatives. On that day, Reta’s 10-year-old sister, Lolo, had come to walk them home.

“A parked car happened to be between the girls and the vehicle that was struck, shielding them from most of the shrapnel. If it hadn’t been there, they would almost certainly have been killed,” said Sami Ajour, 35, Reta’s father. “Lolo was injured by shrapnel in her leg, while Naya suffered shrapnel wounds to her head.”

Sami was at work as an accountant for a company in the southern Gaza Strip when his wife called to tell him what had happened. He paid a tuk-tuk driver three times the usual fare to take him back to Gaza City so he could reach his daughters.

“When I arrived and saw the site of the strike, I couldn’t believe they had survived something so close,” he said. “At the same time, I kept thinking about the girl who was killed. She could have been any one of our children.

“They are still living in fear after everything they experienced. Every loud sound, a passing car, gunfire or the constant buzzing of drones, terrifies them. They refused to leave their mother’s or my side, and they refused to return to school for several days.”

Sami’s wife now spends the entire school day with them.

“My wife stays with them at school until the end of the day because it helps them feel a little safer. We encouraged them to go back because the war has already caused enormous disruption to their education. There is no real difference in safety between school and home; danger is everywhere.

“What have our children done to deserve this? They deserve to live safely, to play, to learn, and not to be killed.”

Teaching Hope

For Arabic language teacher, Saja Hijazi, 28, who has worked at an educational institution for the past seven years, both the education system and the role of teachers have changed dramatically since the war began.

“Before the war, we helped students understand the curriculum alongside what they learned at school and supported them in their daily lives. Now, for many students, we have become their only source of education because most of them have no mobile phones or reliable internet access to study online.

“We also have to support our students psychologically and encourage them to keep learning and hold on to hope despite the constant loss, fear, hunger and displacement that we, as teachers, are also living through.”

Saja teaches more than 200 students. She says many are struggling with serious disruptions to their education and difficulty concentrating, particularly those who have lost family members or been injured in Israeli attacks. Despite these challenges, she says most students and their families remain determined to continue learning.

“My house was bombed; I have been displaced several times, and I have lost many relatives, just like so many other families in Gaza; so I understand what my students are going through. I try to be patient with them, give them the space to express themselves, and remind them that they deserve a better future.

“Each student in Gaza has a story of loss and hardship, but they still want to learn.”

Saja believes that continuing to teach despite the ongoing Israeli war is itself an act of resilience. She says her students, family and colleagues give her hope that education can help build a better future.

“Education is the foundation of every society. Entire generations of children and young people in Gaza are being deprived of their right to education and to live in safety because of the ongoing war.”

Ahmed Dremly is a journalist from Gaza whose writings have appeared in Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, The Electronic Intifada, Palestine Deep Dive, The Intercept, Al-Monitor and others. He is currently studying in Italy after leaving Gaza in May 2026.

Gaza has long been recognised as one of the most educated and highly literate societies in the region, despite decades of Israeli occupation, blockade, repeated military assaults, and displacement. Palestinians, including those in Gaza, have often been described as among the world’s most highly educated refugee populations.

In this episode of Falasteeniya, Palestine Deep Dive’s Hala Hanina is joined by Dr Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Associate Professor of History and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies at Rice University, to examine the systematic destruction of Gaza’s education system. Together, they explore the impact of the devastation on Gaza’s universities, schools, libraries, archives, and cultural institutions, and consider what the future of education in Palestine may look like in its aftermath.

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In Gaza, illness has become inseparable from waiting. Cancer patients and those suffering from life-threatening diseases are trapped between a collapsing healthcare system and an increasingly difficult path to treatment abroad. For many, obtaining permission to leave Gaza for urgent medical care can take weeks or months—or may never happen at all—turning treatment into a race against time and, sometimes, an unreachable dream.

For my uncle’s wife, Ruba, that dream never came true.

In early 2025, Ruba started experiencing persistent pain under her left arm. At first, she assumed it was fatigue caused by daily stress and the harsh conditions of life in Gaza.

The pain gradually intensified, spreading to her chest and shoulder. She visited several doctors and hospitals, yet diagnostic resources were extremely limited. Doctors initially suspected inflammation or a nerve condition and prescribed painkillers and antibiotics.

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As the months passed, her condition continued to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s healthcare system was struggling with severe shortages of medical staff, equipment, and diagnostic resources. In December 2025, after further examinations and a biopsy, Ruba was diagnosed with advanced cancer. Doctors explained that her condition was severe and that she required treatment outside Gaza, where specialised cancer care was available. However, obtaining permission to travel remained difficult and complicated.

In Gaza, she received five chemotherapy sessions, but the tumour continued to grow. She lost a significant amount of weight, and the cancer spread rapidly, leaving her unable to eat or breathe properly. Doctors then stopped her chemotherapy and explained that the treatment she needed was unavailable in Gaza. Her only remaining option was medical evacuation and access to specialised care abroad.

Waiting for Evacuation

Ruba and her family spent six months waiting for permission to travel outside Gaza. She had obtained every medical referral, completed every required form, and taken every bureaucratic step needed for a transfer to a specialised cancer hospital. She continued to speak about treatment abroad as though it remained possible. In her imagination, the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman, Jordan, became more than a hospital; it became a destination tied to survival itself. When the crossings briefly reopened, hope returned. Ruba believed her turn might finally come. But it never did.

On 9 May 2026, Ruba, aged 22, died after a painful battle with cancer, leaving behind her daughter, Tuhfa, and a family still struggling to comprehend her loss. For six months, Ruba had waited for the chance to leave Gaza and receive the treatment she believed might save her life.

Ruba’s daughter, Tuhfa, is only three years old. At this age, her understanding is still forming through fragments of words and gestures.

When her family tried to explain that her mother had gone to heaven, she smiled and said, “You are lying. My mum is in the hospital, and she will come back.” At other times, when Ruba’s name is mentioned in front of her, she becomes quiet for a moment and then goes back to playing, as if trying, in her own way, to understand absence.

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Ruba’s story is not an isolated tragedy. It reflects a broader crisis facing thousands of Palestinians in Gaza whose conditions require treatment that cannot be provided there. Patients suffering from cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, and severe injuries find themselves trapped in a healthcare system devastated by war and repeated destruction.

For cancer patients in particular, the crisis is especially cruel. Gaza has long lacked adequate oncology services, forcing patients to seek chemotherapy, radiotherapy, specialised surgery, or advanced diagnostic care outside the territory. After months of war and the collapse of much of Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure, however, access to even basic treatment has become uncertain.

Hospitals have been damaged, medical supply chains have been disrupted, and many essential medicines have become scarce or unavailable. For patients whose conditions depend on continuity of care, an interruption can lead to the progression of disease, increased suffering, or death.

The Wider Crisis

According to Abdel Hakim Al-Batta, administrative director of the Gaza Cancer Center, around 11,000 cancer patients live in Gaza, including 4,000 who hold medical referrals and are in urgent need of medical evacuation but have been unable to travel for treatment. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he added that cancer-related deaths have risen sharply, from roughly one death per day in the past to nearly three deaths per day, largely because of the lack of medicines and radiotherapy services.

In Gaza today, illness carries another burden: waiting. Waiting for approval. Waiting for crossings to open. Waiting for referral coordination. Waiting for names to appear on travel lists. Waiting while pain worsens, medicines run out, and bodies weaken. For some, waiting becomes permanent.

The language often used to discuss Gaza’s healthcare crisis tends to rely on figures: the number of hospitals destroyed, the shortages of medicine, and the number of patients awaiting evacuation. But behind every number is someone like Ruba: someone who filled out forms, followed procedures, gathered medical reports, and believed survival might still be possible. Someone who made plans for treatment abroad. Someone who packed hope into conversations with family. Someone who imagined returning healthier to a child and a family waiting at home.

Tuhfa will grow up with stories about her mother’s determination, her suffering, and the months she spent hoping for permission to seek treatment that never came. Like many children in Gaza, her life has already been shaped by a harsh reality.

Ruba’s death raises painful questions that extend beyond one family’s grief. What happens when access to healthcare depends on freedom of movement that patients cannot control? What does survival mean in a place where medical treatment exists elsewhere but remains unreachable?

For Gaza’s patients, the struggle against illness is no longer purely medical. It is logistical, political, and deeply unequal. Recovery depends not only on diagnosis and medicine, but also on permits, border access, functioning crossings, and circumstances entirely outside a patient’s control.

As the genocide in Gaza continues and the occupied West Bank faces accelerating settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing, Britain and the wider West are witnessing a rapid change in the political and media landscape.

In this episode of Palestine Deep Dive’s weekly chat show, Ahmed Alnaouq and Hala Hanina are joined by journalist and author Owen Jones, alongside former BBC journalist and media critic Karishma Patel, two people who have been at the centre of many of these conversations.

Together, they discuss the intensifying crackdown on Palestine solidarity, the fierce debates inside mainstream media institutions, the future of British politics, the latest developments in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and what all of this tells us about where Britain and the wider West is heading.

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For as long as I can remember, football has been more than a sport in Gaza. Families gathered around television screens to watch the World Cup, children spent hours playing in neighbourhood streets and on local pitches, and aspiring players dreamed of representing Palestinian clubs and the national team. Since the beginning of the genocide, however, those routines have been profoundly disrupted. Football pitches have been destroyed, players have been displaced, and even watching a match has become difficult amid the daily struggle for survival.

Mohammed Hatem Taher Aliwa, 24, is the founder of Gaza Al-Irada, Gaza’s amputee football team, and is part of a ten-member family. Before his injury, Aliwa was a football player living in the Shejaiya neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

“Football has been part of my life since I was a child; it was my life and soul,” Aliwa recalled. “On 9 September 2018, I participated in the Great March of Return protests and was shot in my right leg by Israeli occupation forces.”

“When I was shot, I entered a coma for a few days, and when I woke up, I didn’t find my leg,” Aliwa continued. “My whole life changed, and it took me more than four months to get used to the crutches and walk again.”

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Despite losing his leg, Aliwa refused to leave football behind. He continued playing for several clubs and represented the Palestinian amputee national team in international tournaments.

“I proved to myself that losing my leg would not stop me from playing football,” Aliwa said. “I even played in the Turkish amputee football league when I was able to travel. However, since the beginning of the genocide, I have not been able to travel and continue my career.”

When the genocide began, Aliwa was displaced more than twelve times. After fleeing his home in Shejaiya, he moved between different areas across Gaza. “My family could not bear the life of tents, so we risked our lives to live in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood near the yellow line,” Aliwa added. “During the genocide, we could not practise and everything stopped.”

Playing On

When a ceasefire was announced in January 2025, Aliwa decided to establish Gaza Al-Irada, a football team for amputee players. “Because the Israeli occupation violated the ceasefire, I couldn’t continue establishing the team,” Aliwa said. Despite this setback, the team was officially founded on 1 January 2026 with 20 amputee players. “I established the team because there are many amputees in Gaza, and we have the right to play football like everyone else,” Aliwa added.

For Aliwa and the other amputee players in Gaza, access to medical supplies remains one of their greatest challenges. “We need prosthetic limbs and crutches,” Aliwa said. “I have been waiting for more than two years to undergo another surgery on my leg, but I still have not been able to receive it.” He continued: “People around the world should not look at us with sympathy because we are amputees, but rather like any other football team. We are professional players who need support to continue playing.”

Aliwa’s story is one of several that illustrate how football in Gaza has been reshaped by displacement, destruction, injury, and loss.

Mohammed Abu Al-Mezha, 24, is an accountant from the Al-Nasser neighbourhood in Gaza City. During the genocide, he was displaced several times across the Strip. “I evacuated to Al-Jalaa Street, the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, the Al-Suweidi area, and Deir Al-Balah,” he told me. “Since I was five years old, I have been playing football in my neighbourhood, school, and clubs.”

“At first, football was just a hobby, but I always hoped to become a professional player,” Abu Al-Mezha added. “In 2015, I played for Al-Jazeera Club for a few weeks, and later I played for a week for Palestine Club … I participated in school tournaments and local championships organised by the Ibn Baz Association.”

His ambitions were interrupted when he broke his leg. “When my leg was broken, I had to stop playing for months and abandon my hopes of playing competitively,” Abu Al-Mezha continued. “After my injury, I only played with my friends, and we used to rent football pitches two or three times a week just to enjoy ourselves.”

“I was always afraid of injuring my leg again, so I never pushed myself too far,” Abu Al-Mezha said.

Priced Out

Although his injury changed the way he played football, the sport remained central to his life. Abu Al-Mezha had never missed a match in the previous World Cups. “Since 2014, I have watched almost every international match in the World Cup,” he said. “Football was never something you watched alone.”

“During the Qatar World Cup, people waited for the matches and celebrated together,” Abu Al-Mezha added. “I would gather with friends at cafés or watch them with my family at home.”

Since the genocide began, Abu Al-Mezha’s relationship with football has been disrupted, just like every other aspect of daily life. “I stopped playing from October 2023 until the ceasefire was announced in January 2025,” Abu Al-Mezha explained. “During the genocide, I had no time for football as I was busy searching for water, going to the market, collecting firewood, working, and evacuating.”

For Abu Al-Mezha, remaining in northern Gaza also meant losing access to many of the places where he had once played. “Around 90 percent of the football pitches in northern Gaza were completely destroyed,” he explained. “The first match I played was during Ramadan 2025, when my friends and I rented a pitch for around $80 just to gather and play for an hour.”

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Abu Al-Mezha believes that, these days, football has become a luxury in Gaza. “Booking a football pitch costs around $70, while buying football boots and a shirt would cost more than $100,” he explained. “A new football pitch recently opened near Al-Shifa Tower in the Al-Nasser neighbourhood, but renting it costs more than $90 per hour.”

“I consider myself lucky as I have recently returned to playing football once a week,” Abu Al-Mezha said. “Football was an escape for people in Gaza and that escape has been taken away from us.”

“When I see people around the world celebrating the World Cup while we cannot even watch a match in Gaza, it hurts,” he continued. “Life is not fair.”

For others in Gaza, even following football from a distance has become increasingly difficult.

Watching Afar

Abdulrahman Ayman Shallah, 21, completed his high school exams during the genocide after the Israeli occupation targeted his home and killed his mother. He is currently working at a supermarket in the Al-Shama area in eastern Gaza City, near the yellow line.

“I have been displaced since I lost my home in December 2023,” Abdulrahman said. “My family now lives in a tent in the Zawayda area while I remain working in Gaza City to support my family.”

Before the genocide, football was a constant part of Abdulrahman’s life. “I had never missed a match for Real Madrid,” Abdulrahman said. “I had watched the entire 2022 World Cup in cafés with my friends or at home with my family.”

“For the 2022 World Cup final, I watched the match at home with my family and my uncle’s family,” he continued. “My brothers, cousins, and the whole family gathered to watch the match.”

Abdulrahman was so passionate about football that he would even stay awake until dawn just to watch a match. “In the 2021 Copa América final, I stayed awake until 3:00 a.m. to watch the match,” Abdulrahman added.

Like thousands of people in Gaza, Abdulrahman has lost much of what once made football special. “I lost several friends whom I used to watch matches with during the genocide,” Abdulrahman continued.

For Abdulrahman, following football has also become increasingly difficult. “During this World Cup, I have only been checking the final scores,” he explained. “I work until late in the evening, so by the time I finish, I am exhausted.”

“Even if I had time, I don’t have access to electricity or internet, which makes watching football impossible,” Abdulrahman said. “If I want to watch a match now, I have to watch it on my phone, and to get an internet connection, I have to sit outside in the street.”

For Abdulrahman, watching people around the world celebrate football while Gaza remains under bombardment leaves him with mixed emotions. “It hurts to see everyone enjoying the World Cup while we cannot watch it or live like other people,” he said. “I hope that one day the Palestinian national team will qualify for the World Cup so we can be like every other country in the world.”

Despite years of displacement, destruction, and interrupted lives, football continues to represent something worth holding on to for many people in Gaza. Some still search for a place to play, while others follow matches by checking final scores on their phones. At the same time, amputee players continue training despite the lack of prosthetic limbs and medical care.

Their stories show that football is not only about competition. It is also about community, belonging, and the determination to preserve ordinary moments of life under extraordinary circumstances.

By Rida Thabet

Welcome to the Gaza Strip, summer 2026. In other corners of the Mediterranean, June is a season of sun-drenched beaches, iced coffees and family picnics. Here, under the suffocating ceiling of a nylon tarp, summer is an entirely different kind of beast. It is the third summer of a war that has levelled entire lives to the earth, leaving behind over 61 million tonnes of toxic rubble—a vast, grey landscape of crushed concrete under which thousands of missing, decomposing bodies still rest.

For the displaced, returning home is a dream. Following years of shifting yellow blocks, over 60 per cent of Gaza’s land now falls within the restricted “Death Zone” or its newly expanding military buffer zones. The human overflow has been squeezed into tightly packed tent encampments. These shelters, cobbled together from cheap plastic sheets, offer no protection. As the morning sun hits the tarp, the tent transforms into an absolute greenhouse. By 8am, the air is thick enough to bake bread. “No matter what I tell you, I can’t describe what life is like in tents,” says a displaced mother living in the al-Mawasi zone. “In the winter, we drowned in rain; now, we are baked alive.”

To survive the indoor furnace, men have abandoned the tents entirely at night, opting to sleep in the open air. It has become a perfectly ordinary part of the morning routine: if you walk down the road early enough, you will see groups of men stretched out on thin mattresses by the roadside, twisted into various, accidentally hilarious, yoga-like positions just trying to catch a stray breeze.

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But sleeping outside requires negotiating with Gaza’s new rulers. Since the infrastructure is completely shattered, wastewater runs freely between the tents, and mountains of solid waste sit right next to where children play. In the old days, municipalities sprayed the swamps to kill the larvae before the heat hit. Now? The insects operate like elite military units working in perfectly coordinated shifts.

The morning shift belongs to the flies. They don’t just buzz; they engage in psychological warfare, aggressively kissing people’s faces until they are forced to stand up. In some camps, they are joined by heavy artillery: scorpions and snakes.

At night, the air belongs to the mosquitoes, which attack in dark, heavy clouds, biting aggressively until they are bloated with the blood of tired, malnourished Palestinians.

Pest Siege

Then come the fleas. Unlike the mosquitoes, fleas are the cowards of the insect world: they hide deep in the seams of your clothes, completely invisible. They bite around the clock, working all shifts simultaneously, leaving children’s bodies covered in angry red welts that take weeks to heal.

If the bugs are the infantry, the rodents are the commanders. A year ago, these families endured a brutal, manufactured starvation campaign. Naturally, anyone who manages to buy or receive aid now guards a small food reserve like gold. But mice have evolved. They can bypass thick plastic, iron wires and wooden stilts.

“They walk on our faces while we sleep,” a displaced father said. “The rats eat the tents from underneath.”

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They have lost all fear of humans. A 68-year-old diabetic grandmother woke up to find her bed soaked in blood after a giant rat gnawed at her toes. “Rats live with us in these tents,” she said. “They eat what we eat, sleep where we sleep.” When people try to chase them, the rodents simply execute a flawless disappearing act, slipping back into the endless concrete ruins that surround the camps.

Beyond the heat and the pests, the ultimate casualty of the plastic city is human dignity. In a camp where thousands of tents touch one another, privacy has become an unattainable luxury.

Every family’s story is accidentally shared because plastic sheets do not block sound. To change clothes or take a makeshift bath, a family must coordinate a complex tactical exit, with everyone waiting outside in the blazing sun so one person can clean themselves in the tent.

It is a life stripped down to its barest, rawest elements, wrapped in a dark, absurd comedy of survival. These are the forgotten people of Gaza, trying to survive a torturous summer in which even a whisper is public property and a good night’s sleep is a battle won against a rat.

Rida Thabet is an education specialist working for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, Palestine.

Who is the UK’s PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham? And what does his political record tell us about the next British government?

In this episode of The Deep Dive, Ahmed is joined by investigative journalist Matt Kennard to examine Andy Burnham’s political career, from his time under New Labour and his vote for the Iraq War, to his positions on Israel, Palestine, the NHS and the future direction of British politics.

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Kennard reflects on why Burnham’s record matters more than his public image, and what his potential leadership could mean for issues including Gaza, foreign policy and the wider political landscape in Britain.

The conversation also explores the state of British democracy, the decline of traditional party politics, the rise of the Green Party, and whether a new political movement can emerge outside the Labour–Conservative system.

Before we talk about writing as resistance, we need to remember a voice that refused to be silenced, even after defeat and invasion changed her world. After the 1967 Naksa, when Palestine was still in shock, Fadwa Tuqan turned to language not to escape but to survive.

She wrote: “Our freedom begins with the word. I will keep engraving its name as I fight—on the earth, on the walls, on the doors, and on the doorsteps of our homes…”

For Palestinians, expressing ourselves through words is an act of resistance, a vital link to the outside world, and a fierce shout against oppression.

Not long ago, before October 2023, before the genocide, I used to write my stories—my little masterpieces—from the comfort of my fancy desk, with the breeze brushing through the grapevines that draped themselves outside my window. When the desk or the walls of my room felt too heavy, I would escape into the garden and let the fresh air lighten my thoughts. Now, however, I write my bleak and gloomy stories out on the street.

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I cannot write inside my fragile shelter because it is overcrowded, noisy, and unbearably hot, making it almost impossible to think. Sometimes, when the sun sets and the weather cools, I sneak onto the landlord’s rooftop to finish my stories. Writing demands calm, a touch of nature, and a quiet space where thoughts can flow freely onto the keyboard.

The street and the rooftop of the building where I have taken refuge are dull places, but they are the only havens where I can continue to put my thoughts into words. As I write in either place, I feel a lump rise in my throat. I pause for a long moment, gather myself, and then carry on, overwhelmed by the stark contrast between the life I had and the one into which I have been thrown.

Creative Siege

Every time I sit down, pull myself together, focus on my homework, and try to write something powerful and meaningful, I feel I fall short.

The truth is that I am too distracted. There is too much on my mind—too many responsibilities, errands, and urgent tasks demanding my attention. My days are packed from start to finish. I wish I had time for myself, but I always end up putting my family’s needs first.

Writing well these days feels nearly impossible. Weaving ideas together and creating something that makes people stop and see what is happening to the people of Gaza often feels beyond me. Overthinking, grief, and the weight of countless burdens have worn me down for so long that finding meaningful words feels like climbing a mountain.

My mind is always full, always occupied, and often too exhausted to find the right words for the world. It takes so much effort, time, and energy to write and send these stories while the weight and harshness of life keep pressing down on us.

Throughout this unforgiving genocide, our creativity has been assassinated and our productivity has been stifled. We are left thinking only about how to survive another bleak and monotonous day. It feels like being forced to read page after page of a book you hate: you keep turning them, but none of the words reach you.

Despite these genocidal conditions, there is no way we are giving up. These hardships could easily break our spirits and silence us forever, forcing us to internalise our pain and stop speaking out. But I refuse to let that happen.

Every day, we endure immense struggles: fetching gallons of water, standing in long queues for a small bag of bread, and fighting for our share of the meagre communal meal known as tikya, which barely fills our stomachs.

Inner Resistance

I carry so many battles inside me—endless internal wars. Some days are rough, but I still write because my stories matter. Because the world needs to know that we are still here. Still suffering. Even with a pounding headache, I write. Even when I am hungry, I want to tell the world that my cause means everything to me, no matter what may come.

That is how we fight: either we win, or we win big. There is no other choice.

Defeat is not in our vocabulary. We persist, striving to reach the world, tell our stories, and carve into history the fact that we were the generation that persevered, doing our best even in the darkest moments of our youth.

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Writing is the only thing I can still do to resist, survive, and fight back—not only against the occupation, but against the overwhelming waves of anxiety and anguish burning inside me. It is my sole refuge from the stress, fear, horror, and poverty surrounding me.

Writing helps me confront the aching questions that never leave my mind: Will I survive these bombings? Will I, and the loved ones I have left, ever live to experience peace and happiness like people elsewhere in the world? For now, that is our deepest wish.

In Gaza, especially when you are out on the street, death can come at any moment. The streets, once places of refuge and ordinary life for Gazans, have themselves become sources of grave danger.

I once wrote from the comfort of a soft bed, a desk, and a breathtaking garden. Now, I find myself writing on the street like a beggar—holding words instead of coins. Even when I write, fear often holds me back. It tries to diminish the power of my story. But if I stop writing, the occupiers win, and the world remains blind to the reality in Gaza.

So I continue to write, because silence is another form of occupation—a form I refuse to accept.

I had not stepped outside my home since 18 March 2025. The day before – 17 March, the final day of the ceasefire – I went on a drive with my father, my sister, and my brother. We drove across Gaza, stopping at every relative’s home, knocking on doors, visiting tents, seeing everyone we could squeeze into a single day. The streets were alive then—the smell of fresh falafel frying in corner shops, the sweetness of knafeh being pulled hot from the oven, the sounds of children kicking a half-flat football down the dusty alleys, girls skipping rope and counting in loud cheerful voices, and the chatter of neighbours passing teacups across their balconies.

I remember the voices of street vendors selling chips, instant noodles, and snacks, their calls echoing through the neighbourhood. We laughed with our cousins, exchanged old family stories, and snapped photos on our phones. That day, the world seemed ordinary, almost safe. By the time we pulled up in the driveway of our home, night had already covered the streets. We were exhausted, but our hearts were light. I never imagined that only a few hours later the massacre would resume, tearing apart the city, our families, and the rhythm of our days. From that moment, I did not leave home for six months.

During all these months, I had no energy to talk to anyone, to listen, to walk. My only remaining strength was barely enough for my university courses. I study English literature at the Islamic University, which now exists only online, its buildings having been destroyed. Any leftover fragments of energy went to my writing, which is my private therapy. Writing is how I survive. It is where I speak when my voice cannot leave my lips, where I release the grief that the walls of my home absorb silently.

Then, in August, my teeth forced me to leave our home.

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I had hidden the pain for a week, refusing to admit it, but for three days, I could not close my eyes. The pain was unbearable, a constant pressure that throbbed in rhythm with my heartbeat. On top of this, I was suffering from a severe flu with bone-deep aches, which made everything worse. My immunity was almost zero. Anyone who knows me knows how I struggle with illness, how it takes forever for my body to recover. Every night was a battle between my aching body and my restless mind.

Finally, after enduring days and nights of pain, I surrendered. I agreed to go to the dentist.

Outside Again

That morning, I had no energy even to dress. I forced myself to shower, to put on my black abaya and hijab. My mother disapproved of wearing black on black, but my hands chose it automatically. It felt right, as if my mood, heavy with grief, demanded it. My mother and I stepped outside, and I was immediately met with the first shock: there were no vehicles on the street. Not a single car. The city felt like a graveyard, silent except for distant echoes of destruction.

Every step was heavy. Every street told a story of destruction. Homes I had known, streets I had walked a thousand times, were now shattered and unrecognisable. Dust and rubble clung to my shoes, the heat of the sun pressing down on my shoulders, and every corner whispered of death. I asked my mother, again and again, “When did this happen?”

On the way, I passed the house of my dearest friend Shimaa Saidam, the girl who accompanied me in studying and memorising the Quran. Her house was destroyed. I stopped, frozen. I took a photo only to convince my mind that this was real. I wondered: did she survive, or is this a memory I will never touch again? I remembered her gentle family, our last visit just a week before the genocide, one of the happiest moments of my life. My feet did not want to move, and my heart weighed me down. My mother turned to me, silently urging me to keep walking.

We came to the cemetery, the resting place of my grandparents, my aunt, my uncle’s wife, his children, and my close friends. I stopped. I wanted to cry, but the tears would not come. The wind whispered among the graves, carrying dust into my eyes. All I could do was pray for them, my quiet words ascending to the sky, as I kept walking.

Graveyard Streets

Further along, on the right, I saw my uncle’s house, bombed by Israeli forces on 29 November 2023. I remembered my aunt Asmaa, my uncle’s wife Neeven, and their baby daughter Fatima, only two months old when the genocide stole them. I prayed silently and took another heavy step forward. My legs felt as though they would give up, refusing to carry me further.

Then came the hardest sight of all: my grandfather’s house. Four floors filled with memories, the home that embraced me from birth until the age of fourteen. It had been completely destroyed by multiple missiles from the Israeli occupation on 30 December 2023. Rubble and twisted metal filled the space where walls, floors, and my family once stood. Dust hung thick in the air, and the once-spacious garden was reduced to shattered trees, broken branches, and upturned soil, the trees my grandfather used to water with his own hands now charred and lifeless.

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My uncle Abd al-Salam, my cousin Huthaifa, and his daughter Hala were killed there by Israeli missiles. As I stared at the ruins, memories flashed before my eyes like a relentless, painful film. I remembered the sound of laughter, footsteps across the wooden floors, the smell of maqluba cooking in the kitchen, the warmth of family hugs. My chest felt crushed, and the weight of everything made my steps slow and heavy.

We walked for an hour and a half, making our way through the streets of Gaza, until we reached Abu Amra — a small shop that sold almost everything. It was located on a busy main street; people used to stand at its entrance, hoping to catch rides with passing cars. We were desperately searching for any form of transport that could take us further. Finally, we found something: a small car towing a wooden cart covered by a makeshift roof. I did not know what to call it, but I knew it was an invention born from necessity. After we climbed into the cart, I held onto my mother’s abaya tightly. I had never ridden in anything like this before.

Market Road

The cart dropped us off at the edge of the market. We walked three more streets to the dentist. He was late, so we waited for about an hour and a half. I was in the middle of my midterm exams, so I opened my Translation II course on my phone. The pain was too intense to focus properly. I had hoped to use studying as an escape, a way to distract my mind from the painful scenes we had passed on our journey, but I couldn’t concentrate and my thoughts kept returning to what I had witnessed and what we had lost.

Finally, the dentist arrived. He was in his late forties, and ever since I was a child, we had always gone to his clinic — he was our family’s dentist, the one we all trusted for our dental care. The clinic looked the same as it had before the genocide, except for the glass door, which had been broken and was now patched up. His demeanour, although serious, was kind and gentle—he knew I was afraid of dental work and treated me with calm care. He examined my teeth and told me that I had infections caused by my wisdom teeth, which were pushing and carving a space for themselves in my gums, and that was the reason for all the pain I had endured for days.

We left, walking again until we found another cart. I had no energy to protest. I collapsed onto the wooden seat, completely drained by the sun, the walk, the memories. The market was full of faces etched with fatigue, grief, and loss. There were vendors calling out their wares, small stalls filled with goods, and children playing in the streets. The children’s faces haunted me the most — tired before their time, worn down by the weight of a world they should not have inherited.

As the cart moved, my mind did not stop. Everywhere I looked, I saw the people I had lost, the houses I had known, the mosques turned into rubble. Even Al-Farouq Mosque, once so beautiful, was now only a pile of stones. I wanted nothing more than to return home, to lie down, to try to forget what I had seen. I had gone out to fix my teeth, not to carry the burden of an entire city of memories.

On today’s episode of the Palestine Deep Dive chat show, Ahmed Alnaouq and Hala Hanina are joined by by South African former ANC MP, anti-apartheid activist and investigative author Andrew Feinstein. They are also joined by Gaza-born writer, playwright and academic Ahmed Masoud.

They discuss the parallels between South African apartheid and Israel’s system of rule over Palestinians, the global movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, the role of culture and literature as forms of resistance and, of course, the World Cup!

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My best friend stopped calling or texting me and went completely incommunicado. It turned out they had been taken away by counter-terrorism police. The next time I saw Amu, they were behind glass at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. At that point, I didn’t even know what “remand” meant.

It was July 2025, sweltering—the kind of heat that turns the Victoria line into a sauna. Jayne, Amu’s friend from Scotland, had been messaging me all week. Amu had vanished. We agreed that I should go to their family home in Finsbury Park, knock on the door, and try to find out what had happened.

I remember sitting at the dining table waiting for Amu’s father to come home. When he walked through the door, he told me the police had called that morning. Arrested. At first, that was all he said.

Someone I had known since I was sixteen was about to disappear into a world I didn’t yet understand. Over the following weeks, the rest unfolded at brutal speed: Westminster Magistrates’ Court, accusations of breaking into RAF Brize Norton and painting two refuelling aircraft red, bail denied, and then remand to prison.

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This was my first exposure to the British government’s new war on direct action, something which would now be a significant part of my life. Eleven months later, I’m at HMP Bronzefield, near Ashford in Surrey. This time, it’s not Amu I’m visiting, but another person accused of direct action: Fatema Zainab Rajwani, one of the Filton 25 activists accused of disrupting a factory belonging to Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons company, in August 2024.

At the gate, I take a deep breath and tuck my keffiyeh into my bag. Solidarity with Palestine has become suspect everywhere. From politicians calling for keffiyehs to be banned in public institutions to prison officers trained to see a patterned scarf as provocation, the message is clear. Never mind the Union Jack flying outside the prison gates; olive branches and fishnet weaves stitched into fabric can become grounds for a denied visit.

I step forward, am searched, and eventually let in.

Hope

Inside, I find Fatema Zainab’s sister and head straight for the café queue. We need coffee before the line swells. Prisoners work in the prison, including in this café, for just 70p an hour. I call out a table number, collect our drinks, and sit down. After one sip of coffee, Fatema Zainab leans across the table. “I might be getting an internship with Jim Loach.” For a moment, everything changes. We all light up. I picture the films they might make. We look at one another and allow ourselves something that has become increasingly rare: hope.

The week before, I had visited Lottie—Charlotte Head—another Filton prisoner. After spending eighteen months in prison and emerging from the first trial without a single conviction, she had been accepted onto a Politics and Arabic degree during a brief window of freedom between the first trial and the retrial, at which she was convicted of criminal damage.

When she told us, we all exchanged glances and tried not to cry. Lottie barely touched the iced Americano we bought her. We spent most of the visit trying to persuade her to eat something. The injustice of it was overwhelming: a young woman accepted into university while facing the prospect of returning to prison for opposing genocide. Outside, the country baked in another heatwave. Inside, people were spending twenty-three hours a day locked in cells.

I visited them both just two weeks before their sentencing hearing. Fatema Zainab preferred to keep things light that day. The injustice of it is almost too large to hold in a one-hour visit. She had taken direct action for the first time, expected bail, and instead became part of the most high-profile test case for recasting direct action as terrorism. How do you begin to shape this into a one-hour visit?

With Lottie, I had wanted to talk through what we could still do before sentencing, but the heatwave had made being locked almost unbearable, and I could not bring myself to impose those conversations on her. Once sentenced, they would go from daily visits to one visit a week.

In June, Fatema Zainab was given five years and eight months behind bars, while Lottie was sentenced to six years.

Lottie and Fatema Zainab are remarkable poets. To see how much care, compassion, and imagination they bring into the lives of others while being subjected to such sustained attacks on their civil liberties feels almost unbearable. Two days before she was sentenced, Lottie wrote:

If the words die in our mouths, let us

Throw our bodies at the

machinations

Of destruction —

A year earlier, in June 2025, Fatema Zainab wrote these beautiful words:

I wish the love I dream of was enough.

I wish the love I dream of would hold your grief

the same way that our silence holds violence.

When there’s nothing else to write about, I write about love—

because there’s no life worth living,

no strength worth perception,

if not for love.

Damage

Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Lottie, and four others were arrested at an Elbit Systems research and manufacturing facility in Filton, near Bristol, in August 2024. That night, the six drove an old prison van into the compound and, in under twenty minutes, dismantled Israeli weapons components, including parts used in Israeli-made unmanned aerial systems. At sentencing, these were confirmed to include components for Elbit’s Magni-X and THOR drones, models deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

These were not merely surveillance devices. Human rights investigators, including medical witnesses such as Professor Nizam Mamode, have described Israeli drones striking wounded children who had already survived previous bombings. The prosecution alleged the action caused £1.2 million worth of damage to Israel’s largest arms company.

The resulting prosecution was widely regarded by legal observers as politically charged and procedurally irregular. At the first trial, the six faced charges of aggravated burglary, violent disorder, and criminal damage. Aggravated burglary carried a potential life sentence. After ten weeks of proceedings, the jury acquitted them of aggravated burglary and violent disorder. On the remaining charges, jurors were unable to reach verdicts. They left the courtroom unconvicted.

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After nearly eighteen months in prison without having been found guilty of any offence, many expected the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to end the case. Instead, it announced a retrial.

Their retrial felt even more disturbing. Once again, Judge Jeremy Johnson barred references to Gaza and prevented any conscience-based defence from being presented to the jury. Jurors were instructed to disregard the broader context of the action and to treat it as irrelevant “emotion”. The consequence was clear: the defendants could be judged for damaging weapons infrastructure, but were not permitted to explain why they had done so.

The restrictions extended beyond the defendants themselves. During the first trial, Rajiv Menon KC faced contempt proceedings after citing Bushel’s Case (1670), the landmark ruling that established the independence of juries and affirmed their right to deliver verdicts according to their convictions. The Bar Council described the prosecution as “troubling”.

Later, during the retrial, Judge Johnson apologised for aspects of how the contempt proceedings had been handled. Yet he declined to recuse himself, despite a letter signed by more than 5,000 legal professionals criticising what they described as bias and discriminatory conduct throughout the Filton cases.

The Tap

Throughout both trials, Fatema Zainab and their co-defendants were denied the opportunity to explain why they targeted Elbit. They could not describe the role of British-made components in Israeli military operations. They could not explain what they believed those weapon components, including quadcopter drones, would eventually be used for. And they could not share the simple analogy from Frank Sherman, accused over an action at Moog Aircraft Group’s Wolverhampton facility: “When a room is flooding and no one will turn off the tap, direct action is turning it off yourself.”

After being convicted of criminal damage, Lottie, Ellie, and Fatema Zainab were remanded to HMP Bronzefield while awaiting sentencing. The prosecution had not requested their remand. Judge Johnson ordered it anyway.

Sam Corner, who had remained in prison throughout the proceedings, was returned to HMP Belmarsh. Others, including Joey Hinchcliffe and Jordan Devlin, were acquitted on all charges after the CPS’s second attempt to prosecute them failed. Yet the broader message of the trials remains unmistakable: direct action would be met with the full force of the state.

Every time aid trucks enter Gaza, people run after them with one simple hope: to find something that helps them survive. No one here is searching for luxury. People are looking for what makes life possible: flour, cooking gas, fuel for generators, or even a piece of plastic to protect them from the rain.

But the painful irony, repeated again and again, is that many of these trucks carry products like Nutella, chocolate, biscuits, and soft drinks, while fuel remains heavily restricted. Hospitals continue to report shortages, and families live in tents without electricity or proper ways to cook food.

No one in Gaza hates chocolate. But the question people keep asking is: what does Nutella mean in a place where hospitals cannot run neonatal incubators and families cannot cook properly?

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I am an engaged woman from Gaza. At this stage of my life, I was supposed to be busy thinking about ordinary wedding details: a dress, a home, furniture, and maybe a small wedding hall. But the war changed the meaning of all these things. Instead of searching for decoration ideas, we now ask ourselves a different question: will we even find a place to live?

Because of the massive destruction and housing crisis, living in a tent has become a real possibility for us. The irony is that even tents themselves have become expensive and difficult to find. Everything here has turned into a crisis: tents, mattresses, bathrooms, kitchen supplies, and even small water pipes.

Tent Life

When we started thinking about life inside a tent, we realised it is not simply about finding a place to sleep. It is about trying to build an entire life from nothing. How will we cook? Where will we wash dishes? How will we use a bathroom? How will we access water? And how can a couple begin their married life in a place without privacy or stability?

One day after my engagement, we had to buy cooking gas just to make coffee quickly for guests who came to visit us. Using firewood would have taken too much time because there were many people. It may sound like a small detail, but for me, it showed how much life has changed. Even making coffee for guests now depends on whether fuel is available and affordable.

At the same time, aid trucks continue entering Gaza carrying products that do not solve any of these real problems. A family may receive chocolate, but they still cannot operate a stove. A child may eat biscuits while living in a tent without clean water or electricity.

The issue is not that food aid is being rejected. The issue is the painful feeling that the priorities have been completely turned upside down.

In Gaza today, fuel has become something people struggle for every single day just to stay alive. Hospitals depend on it to run their medical equipment and keep patients alive. Bakeries rely on it to bake bread for families. People also need it for basic things like cooking food and transportation.

Fuel First

When fuel is not available, it is not just about living in darkness. It means that many parts of normal life completely stop. Daily routines, basic services, and even the simplest needs become very difficult or impossible to continue.

This contradiction creates deep frustration among people here. It feels as though Palestinians are expected to survive just enough to stay alive, but not enough to live normally or with dignity.

Even marriage itself has become emotionally and financially exhausting. Wedding halls have become too expensive because of the economic crisis, and many families can barely afford basic necessities. Some families no longer think about celebration at all; they think only about finding a safe place to live.

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This, in itself, feels like another form of war. The war has not ended for us; it continues in different shapes and details of everyday life. It is present in the shortages, in the constant uncertainty, and in the struggle to secure the most basic needs. We feel it in every small decision we make, in every absence, and in every restriction. It is a heavy burden that we carry every day, not only because of what has happened, but because of what is still happening now. Life itself feels weighed down by this ongoing reality, where survival has become a constant effort rather than a natural state.

Sometimes I feel the war has not only stolen homes and lives, but also stolen the shape of normal life itself. What should have been a joyful engagement has become connected to questions about displacement, tents, rising prices, and uncertainty.

Dignity Denied

Still, people continue trying to hold onto small pieces of normal life. Families still make coffee for guests. They still try to buy new clothes for Eid if they can. They still try to create small moments of happiness in the middle of overwhelming destruction.

But these efforts become even more painful when people feel the world responds to their suffering in shallow or symbolic ways. Chocolate cannot replace fuel. Nutella cannot replace electricity, treatment, or housing.

Gaza does not need aid that only creates temporary images of relief or moments that look good from a distance. What people here truly need are the basic conditions for life to continue in a real and dignified way: fuel to keep hospitals running, electricity to sustain essential services, clean water to drink, and medical care that saves lives instead of delaying death.

Without these basics, daily life becomes an ongoing struggle, where even the simplest tasks turn into heavy burdens. Chocolate may seem like a small detail in a place that is facing hunger, fear, and loss every day. But here, it has come to represent something much deeper. It reflects a painful contradiction, a reality where things that bring momentary comfort arrive while the essentials that keep life going remain missing or limited.

In a place like Gaza, how can we speak about normal life when even the most basic needs are still not guaranteed?

As Europe swelters under another record-breaking summer, Western headlines are dominated by a familiar genre of climate anxiety. Media outlets fill their pages with practical advice: how to transition to remote work during peak hours, how to stay hydrated, and which air conditioning units offer the best energy efficiency.

For millions living in the north of the globe, where every comfort of modern infrastructure is readily available, extreme heat is an environmental crisis managed by functional safety nets.

It is a seasonal hardship met with resources. But as Westerners seek shade, fill their glasses with clean, cold water, and plug in affordable fans, a chilling question must be asked: Has anyone stopped to think about the people of Gaza who are enduring this same Mediterranean heat without a single basic means to survive it?

​Just a short distance across the Mediterranean, in the ruined landscape of the Gaza Strip, heat is not a mere weather forecast. It does not invite lifestyle adjustments. After more than 1,000 days of a cruel, systematised genocidal war, the scorching summer heat has been weaponised. It has transformed into a silent, suffocating mechanism of confinement, compounding a man-made catastrophe where even a breath of cool air is a rationed, blocked commodity.

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This is our third consecutive summer under the assault. For the vast majority of Gaza’s population, it is a summer spent trapped inside the exact same worn-out, torn plastic and canvas tents that have served as makeshift shelters for years. Over time, under the relentless sun, these materials have degraded, yet they remain the only barrier between displaced families and the sky.

According to recent reports documented on the ground by local journalists in Gaza, these plastic structures function as literal greenhouses. They trap the ambient heat, multiplying the external temperature until the air inside becomes thick, stagnant, and unbearably hot during the day.

Air Denied

​With the electricity grid completely demolished, survivors are left with no conventional means to cool themselves. In any normal corner of the world, a simple, battery-powered desk fan is a cheap, mundane appliance, costing no more than $20. In Gaza today, because of strict Israeli restrictions on the entry of basic electrical goods and batteries, that same $20 fan has been artificially driven into a state of extreme scarcity. Its price has skyrocketed to over $500, while a functional battery to operate it can cost upwards of $1,000. A fundamental tool for human survival has been rendered an unattainable luxury, leaving millions to bake in the dark.

In the vocabulary of this war, I am considered one of the lucky ones. When the heavy bombardment began, my family and I lost our home in the initial waves of destruction, in February 2024. After months of uncertainty, we eventually managed to secure a rented, damaged house in al-Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City—which, despite being damaged, at least gives us solid walls and a roof over our heads. Yet, for over a month now, sleep has become an impossibility for me.

​Every night follows the exact same agonising rhythm. Fifteen minutes after I lay my head down on my worn cushion, the heat catches up with me. My skin begins to prickle, and within moments, I am drenched in sweat. The moisture quickly soaks through my clothes and saturates the thin floor mattress beneath me, rendering it hot and damp. Sleep cannot exist in these conditions. I am forced to get up from the floor and walk over to the living room window, pressing my face near the opening, desperately searching for a stray, moving breeze from the sea. Most of the time, the air outside remains flat, heavy, and warm.

​So, I sit by the window for hours, staring out into the pitch-black silence of al-Rimal, waiting for the night to end. But I am never alone in this vigil. Looking down into the dark streets, I can see the silhouettes of men and young people emerging from what remains of the surrounding buildings and nearby tent clusters. Driven out by the suffocating, oven-like heat of their indoor shelters, and unable to bear the restless cries of their sweltering wives and infants, they retreat to the edges of the dirt roads. They sit on the pavements in the dead of night, staring into nothingness. It is a profound, communal silence—a gathering of fathers and brothers bound together by the crushing weight of total helplessness, unable to provide even a gust of cool air to the people they love.

​We wait together for the Adhan, the call to dawn prayer. When the voice finally echoes through the ruins, people stream out toward al-Kinz Mosque, a makeshift, open-air mosque that has been set up among the debris. This dawn hour is the only fragment of the day when the temperature drops slightly, and the air feels remotely breathable.

Dawn Vigil

The moment the prayer concludes, the spiritual quiet dissolves into the heavy prose of survival. The conversation among neighbours never varies; everyone recounts, with exhausting detail, how they managed to endure the furnace of the previous night. My heart aches the most during these morning gatherings when I look at the elderly. Their frail bodies, already weakened by years of malnutrition, psychological trauma, and lack of medical care, can barely withstand the physical stress of this seasonal torment.

By 6am, the brief reprieve of the dawn is gone, and the sun begins its rapid ascent. This is when I usually run into the local children, including 13-year-old Kareem al-Shorafa. Kareem is bright, but his eyes carry the permanent shadows of chronic exhaustion. Every single morning, without fail, he greets me with the same update.

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He never tires of describing how he couldn’t sleep a single wink the night before. He tells me how the air inside his family’s tent felt like heavy steam, and how the mosquitoes and flies—unleashed in millions by the completely destroyed sewage networks and accumulated waste—swarmed their small living space. He shows me the angry, red welts left on his skin and tells me about the infants in the camp who cry continuously through the night, their small bodies covered in heat rashes and insect bites.

The desperate struggle to mitigate this heat dictates every hour of our daytime existence. Water, like air, has been weaponised. Whenever a freshwater filling truck manages to enter the district, the scene is immediate and frantic. Dozens of exhausted residents line up under the blinding sun, holding plastic jerrycans, waiting to secure just a few precious litres of drinking water.

Stolen Relief

But the children do not just wait for water to drink. They crowd around the sides of the truck, looking up at the driver with flushed faces and sticky hair, begging him to splash a few drops of water directly over their heads. When the truck finally drives away, you can see the children lingering, laughing, and playing in the tiny mud puddles left behind on the scorched ground. It is a heartbreaking sight—watching children try to extract a fleeting moment of childhood and cooling relief from a patch of wet dirt.

​When Western academics and policymakers discuss “climate injustice” or “environmental racism,” they often speak in abstract, future-oriented terms. They look at carbon footprints, rising sea levels projected for the next half-century, and international treaties. But if you want to understand the true, raw definition of climate injustice, you must look at Gaza.

The global climate crisis is real, and it is driving temperatures up across the Mediterranean basin. But in Gaza, this environmental reality is filtered through a brutal, man-made matrix of siege and destruction. The population of Gaza did not cause global warming; we do not have heavy carbon industries or sprawling factories. Yet, we are paying the highest price for a changing climate because a foreign military power has systematically stripped us of our infrastructure, our power grid, our roofs, and our civilian tools for adaptation.

When extreme heat hits London, Paris, or Berlin, it is a severe meteorological event that triggers state-funded cooling centres, public health interventions, and systemic adjustments. When that same heat hits the Gaza Strip, it serves as an amplifier of an ongoing genocide. It turns tents into kilns, deprives the vulnerable of sleep, accelerates the spread of disease through stagnant waste, and turns the simple act of breathing into a daily battle for survival. The world must realise that the siege does not only stop food, medicine, and building materials from entering Gaza; it stops the air itself.

What do historical records, ancient texts, archaeology, and DNA research actually tell us about Palestinians?

In this episode of The Deep Dive, Ahmed Alnaouq is joined by historian and bestselling author William Dalrymple to explore the deep history of the Palestinian people, which he argues have too often been erased from mainstream narratives and the documented history of Palestine.

Together, they discuss how history is taught in Britain, the origins of the name Palestine, the continuity of the people who have lived on the land for thousands of years, and why understanding the past is essential to understanding the present.

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Ahmed Alnaouq and Hala Hanina are joined in the studio by Richard Sanders of Double Down News, an independent media platform founded in 2017 and known for its in-depth reporting, political analysis, and commitment to telling stories that often don’t make it into the mainstream. They are also joined by Gaza-born journalist Jehan Alfarra, the new Executive Director of Palestine Deep Dive.

They discuss the role of alternative media, how narratives around Palestine are shaped and challenged, the pressures on those reporting in this space, and what it means to build platforms committed to context, humanity and accountability while navigating the media and political landscape in Britain and the wider West.

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2 July 2026 marks the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, one of Gaza’s most respected medical and academic figures. He was the Director of the Indonesian Hospital, but he was far more than his title. He was one of northern Gaza’s most respected cardiologists, a university lecturer, a mentor to generations, and a man whose life was devoted to serving his community.

Dr. Al-Sultan was assassinated when an Israeli missile was fired into the apartment in Gaza City where he and his extended family were staying after being displaced from northern Gaza. His wife, his sister, his daughter Lamis, and his son-in-law Mohammed were also killed in the attack.

His family says the Israeli airstrike “precisely” hit the apartment block where Dr. Al-Sultan and his relatives were staying. They believe he was deliberately targeted in the Israeli airstrike that killed him. His surviving daughter, Lubna, said the strike specifically targeted the room her father was in. “All the rooms were fine except for his; the missile hit it precisely,” she said.

During Israel’s war on Gaza, Dr. Al-Sultan became one of the leading voices documenting the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. As Director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, he continued working despite repeated Israeli attacks on hospitals, severe shortages of medicine and fuel, and the overwhelming number of wounded patients arriving every day. While many medical workers were forced to flee or work under impossible conditions, he remained committed to caring for patients and speaking publicly about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding around him. He worked tirelessly under unimaginable conditions, saving the injured without a single moment of rest.

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Dr. Al-Sultan’s son, Ahmed, who is studying medicine to continue his father’s path, said: “For the first few months of the war, we did not see him except for a few hours of the day because he was always at the hospital.” He added: “Until the last minute of his life, he did not leave his job. He paid for this dedication with his life.” Ahmed also said: “My father had been besieged at the Indonesian Hospital and also at Kamal Adwan Hospital many times, but he did not leave.”

Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, Director General of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, explained that losing Dr. Al-Sultan created a gap that cannot easily be filled. Gaza did not lose only an experienced cardiologist. It lost a mentor, a hospital leader, and one of the medical community’s most trusted reference points.

Beyond the Hospital

Dr. Al-Bursh recalled that despite the overwhelming responsibilities Dr. Al-Sultan carried, he always made time for others. No matter how difficult the circumstances were, he never allowed his workload to distance him from those who needed his guidance, support, or simply a conversation. Dr. Al-Bursh also remembered him as someone who built lasting relationships wherever he went. He was respected not only for his medical expertise, but also for his humility, kindness, and genuine concern for everyone around him.

Beyond the hospital, Dr. Al-Sultan was a devoted father who took great pride in his family. According to Dr. Al-Bursh, he often spoke proudly of his children and celebrated the values he had worked to instil in them.

He was my family’s neighbour in Jabalia and one of the people who helped shape my future. I still remember the day he visited our home after my twin sister, Amna, and I received our Tawjihi results. It was a Friday. I remember him smiling as he told me that he never really had free time, but that he always made time for moments like this because he felt it was his responsibility to share in our joy, encourage us, and help guide us toward the future.

For Dr. Al-Sultan, nurturing young people and helping them move toward their potential was inseparable from his sacred duty to his community. He came carrying gifts, congratulations, and, more importantly, reassurance. Like many students, I was overwhelmed by uncertainty about choosing a university major. He sat with us, smiling calmly, and told me: “We don’t look for titles; we look for purpose.”

Those words have stayed with me ever since.

Encouraging Others

He encouraged me to study English language and literature because he believed language could become a bridge between Gaza and the world. He believed it had the power to carry Gaza’s stories beyond its borders.

I also remember another conversation that revealed how deeply he loved Gaza. He shared with me that while he was abroad, he had been offered prestigious opportunities to teach and practise at world-renowned institutions such as Cambridge and Oxford. Yet he said “no” to the world and “yes” to Gaza. He chose to return to the besieged Gaza Strip, determined to help build our collective future instead of seeking personal glory abroad.

By choosing Gaza, he chose to share in every struggle. Every patient he treated, every academic lecture he delivered, and every life he saved was a brick laid in the foundation of his homeland. For him, building Gaza’s future mattered more than building an international career.

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Looking back today, I realise he was doing what he had always done: encouraging young people to believe they could make a difference through their own talents and passions. Today, as I stand on the verge of graduating with an excellent degree in English, I often find myself thinking back to that conversation in our living room years ago.

Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan encouraged me to choose this path because he believed language was more than a subject. It was a way to tell our stories, preserve our history, and carry Gaza’s voice beyond its borders. Writing about him now, one year after his assassination, is more than marking an anniversary. It is my way of honouring someone whose guidance helped shape my future.

His Legacy

The Israeli occupation ended Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan’s life, but it could not erase the impact he left behind. His students continue practising medicine, and his patients remember his compassion. They took his life, and they devastated our community, but they could never erase the profound sense of purpose he instilled in me. I carry his advice in every word I write. I do it to honour his memory, to give voice to his legacy, and to make him proud.

Dr. Al-Sultan’s death was not only a loss for his family, but for the whole of Gaza. He was one of only two remaining heart specialists in the territory, according to Healthcare Worker Watch, a Palestinian medical organisation.

The UN says that more than 1,400 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war in October 2023. All of the directors of hospitals in northern Gaza have either been killed or detained by Israeli military forces. For example, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlout, and its acting director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, are being held in an Israeli prison.

Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan’s life was taken, but his purpose remains. It remains in the hospitals he served, in the students he taught, in the patients he saved, in the family he raised, and in every person he encouraged to believe that their work could serve something greater than themselves. His assassination was meant to silence a doctor, a witness, and a leader. But one year later, his legacy continues to speak.

In the geography of catastrophe, Naser Abu-Taqia and Sireen Absi are more than just colleagues; they are a husband and wife who have turned their shared trauma into a sanctuary for others. Separated by borders—Naser still working on the frontlines in Gaza, and Sireen continuing her healing mission from Qatar—their bond is a testament to resilience.

When the bombs fell on their lives, they did not only lose their daughter, Aliyah; they lost the ground upon which their world was built. Yet, they chose to take their shattered pieces—Naser, the social worker, and Sireen, the psychologist—and build a lifeline for those left behind. This is the story of two healers who, across the miles of separation, found that the only way to survive the death of their world was to help others build a new one.

Their marriage, once defined by the quiet routines of domestic life in Gaza, has been redefined by the fire of war and the cruel reality of forced separation. To be married in a catastrophe is to be each other’s sole reality, yet Naser and Sireen now navigate this reality across continents. Despite the distance, they remain mirrors for one another’s pain. When Naser struggles with the city of memories in Gaza, it is Sireen’s clinical insight from Qatar that holds him back from the brink. When Sireen faces the agonising silence of a house without Aliyah, it is Naser’s voice from the field that provides the safety network she preaches to others.

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Their daughter, Aliyah, was more than just a daughter; she was Sireen’s world. Born in August 2021, the two-year-old girl with the thick glasses—which she wore like a second pair of eyes since she was ten months old—was the axis around which Sireen’s life revolved. “She was my leadership, my happiness, my safety,” Sireen recalls. When the war began, the terror wasn’t just for her own survival; it was the agony of hearing the bombs and wanting to shield her child inside her own body.

Aliyah’s Glasses

​While they were displaced in Rafah, the night of 3 February 2024 began with a whisper. Aliyah, tired and wanting to sleep, told her mother, “Mom, I want to sleep.” Sireen tucked her in, and just before she drifted off herself, she reached out to hold Aliyah’s small hand, whispering, “You are my safety, my love.” It was a final, haunting promise of protection in a world that had become a slaughterhouse.

​She woke up to the sound of Naser’s weeping. They had been bombed. Sireen’s first instinct, even through the haze of shrapnel wounds, a fractured skull, and a ruptured spleen, was not for her own survival, but for her daughter. When Naser brought Aliyah to her, Sireen saw the girl’s limbs hanging limp. She knew. Looking towards the sky, she whispered, “Oh God, accept her from me.”

​The following days were a blur of hospitals, surgeries, and a false hope that nearly broke her. For four days, family members tried to shield Sireen from the truth, telling her Aliyah was fine but resting. But a mother’s intuition is a powerful, dangerous thing. When she finally confronted the reality, Naser confirmed the impossible: the girl who had asked for sleep had simply never woken up.

​Amidst the ruins of their home, rescue workers spent ten days digging through the rubble, driven by a desperate mission: to find Aliyah’s glasses. They found them. Today, Sireen keeps those glasses close—the only physical tether left to the child who was her entire world. “It is agonising to look at them,” she says, “but I refuse to forget.”

Grief Unburied

​For Sireen, this grief is not a quiet, private martyrdom; it is a battle for sanity. Having seen the long-term physical toll that repressed grief takes on Palestinians—the mystery illnesses that plague those who choose to stay strong rather than weep—she refuses to suppress her pain. “I don’t want to bring back the dead,” she says. “But I refuse to live a lie. If I need to scream, I scream. If I need to weep, I weep. We have been taught to believe that patience means silence. That is a lie. True resilience is acknowledging that the pain is real, that it is burning coal in your chest, and choosing to walk through the fire anyway.”

​For both, the barrier between healer and patient vanished on 3 February 2024. The loss of their daughter forced a radical transformation in their work. Naser defines the lone survivor not just as one who escaped death in Gaza, but as one who carries an entire city of ghosts inside their mind.

“My job isn’t to fix them with pity,” Naser asserts from the field. “My job is to be the person who listens without judgement. I don’t believe in ‘at least you are better than others.’ My job is to walk with them through that city of pain.”

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​After being evacuated to Qatar for medical care, Sireen transformed her personal recovery into a professional mission. She currently works on the front lines of the displacement crisis, providing psychological support to the nearly 1,700 survivors who have been evacuated from Gaza to Qatar.

“When I meet these survivors, I don’t see cases or statistics,” Sireen says from Doha. “I see a mirror of my own journey. Many of them arrive in a state of total emotional anaesthesia. My role is to help them navigate this, to show them that we can weep for our children, our homes, and our city, and yet find the strength to breathe again.”

By helping those who, like her, have been forced to leave their lives behind, she is creating a community of recovery—a bridge between the Gaza that was lost and the future they are all trying to build in exile.

Surviving Together

​Living across different worlds, the couple observes a paradox: the lone survivor often fluctuates between isolation and a desperate need for connection. Whether in a shelter in Gaza or a community centre in Doha, they see survivors who become addicted to numbing agents just to escape the silence of their own minds. Yet, when Sireen reveals she is also a survivor, that she too lost her daughter, the barrier crumbles. She becomes a living model of recovery, proving to those she treats that it is possible to be broken and still be functional.

The work they do is poignant. Children in Gaza have been forced into adulthood prematurely. Naser focuses on creating safe spaces in the shelters, while Sireen provides the psychological frameworks to decode their pain. “They have been forced to take on responsibilities way beyond their years,” Naser reflects from Gaza. “When you sit with a child, you are not just looking at a patient; you are looking at a survivor who is trying to figure out why the world is so cruel.”

​Naser and Sireen emphasise that survivor’s guilt is the silent killer. “They ask, ‘Why was I spared?’” Naser explains. “Our job is to help them reframe this. We tell them: ‘You were spared not to live in guilt, but to carry the story of those who were lost.’” They argue that Palestinian society must stop sanctifying grief—stop making martyrs of those who can no longer function. True resilience, they argue, is using the pain as fuel for living.

​Naser and Sireen do not claim to be heroes; they claim to be survivors who have decided their suffering will not be their only identity. “We are not here to cry forever,” Sireen concludes from Doha. “We are here to acknowledge that we were broken, and that in the process of putting the pieces back together, we became something new.” As a husband and wife separated by borders, they are flourishing in the ruins, proving that love and purpose are the only true antidotes to the darkness of war.