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.

After nearly two years of genocide, many people outside Gaza continue to ask the same question: How are Palestinians still standing?

How can a mother who has buried her children continue caring for those around her? How can a man who has lost his home, livelihood and family still speak about hope? How can a child who has survived air strikes, displacement and starvation still dream of becoming a doctor, a teacher or a journalist?

The answer lies in something Western psychology has never fully understood: faith.

Experts tell the world that Gaza is suffering from a mental health crisis. They measure trauma levels, calculate rates of depression and anxiety, and warn of the long-term psychological consequences of genocide. They produce graphs, surveys and diagnoses in an attempt to explain how Palestinians continue to live amid horrors that would shatter most human beings.

The dominant schools of psychology were largely developed in secular Western societies where religion has been pushed to the margins of public life. As a result, many psychologists view faith as merely one variable among many that can help individuals manage stress.

When Western psychologists look at Gaza, they often see a population drowning in trauma. They search for symptoms and disorders. They speak the language of pathology.

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But many Palestinians do not understand their suffering through the language of pathology. They understand it through the language of meaning.

A mother whose child has been killed does not necessarily ask, “How do I recover from this trauma?” She may ask, instead, “How do I remain patient? Ya Allah, please provide me with strength.”

A father who has lost his home may not ask, “How do I manage my anxiety?” He may ask, instead, “O Allah, grant me patience. How could everything I spent years building disappear in an instant?”

A child who has survived an air strike may not speak about post-traumatic stress disorder. He may speak about injustice. These are not semantic differences. They reveal entirely different understandings of human suffering.

Restoring ‘Normality’

Western psychology is built around the individual. Palestinian existence, by contrast, is deeply collective. Western psychology often assumes that healing means restoring an individual to a previous state of normality. But what is normality in Gaza? What previous state are people supposed to return to? There is no “before” for many Palestinians. Violence is not an interruption of ordinary life. For generations, it has been woven into ordinary life itself.

The frameworks designed to treat trauma after a car accident or a natural disaster struggle to make sense of a society living under permanent siege.

The diagnosis itself begins to fail. The concept of post-traumatic stress disorder assumes that trauma happened in the past. The word “post” matters. In Gaza, there is no post.

The bombing has not ended. The displacement has not ended. The stress has not ended.

Every new atrocity reopens every previous wound. Yet despite this reality, Palestinians continue to endure.

This endurance is frequently described by outsiders as resilience. But even resilience can be a misleading word. It suggests an individual psychological characteristic, something possessed by exceptional people.

What sustains Gaza is not merely resilience. It is conviction. The conviction that suffering is not meaningless. The conviction that injustice does not erase truth. The conviction that human dignity survives even when homes, schools and hospitals do not.

Faith gives suffering a moral context. It does not make suffering easier. It does not remove grief. It does not eliminate fear. But it gives people the strength to endure it.

Faith as Meaning

For Palestinians, faith is not the opposite of grief. It is what allows grief to coexist with purpose.

Perhaps this is what many outside Gaza struggle to understand. The Quran anticipated the human experience of fear, hunger, loss of wealth, loss of loved ones, and the destruction of all that people cultivate: “We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth, lives, and fruits. But give glad tidings to the patient.”

For many Palestinians, this verse is not simply read—it is lived. It gives language to experiences that no clinical diagnosis can fully contain. When homes become rubble, when families disappear, when hunger becomes routine, many do not see themselves as abandoned by God. They see themselves enduring a trial that God Himself described, one that calls not for despair but for sabr—steadfast patience rooted in faith. Their tears are real, their grief is overwhelming, but so is their conviction that every loss is witnessed by the One who promised that suffering is never without meaning.

This is why, amid unimaginable devastation, Gazans so often respond with Alhamdulillah, Hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakeel, or Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. These are not expressions of indifference to pain. They are declarations that suffering has not severed their relationship with God, nor their conviction that justice ultimately belongs to Him.

Anyone who has lived through Gaza knows that faith does not stop people from crying, despairing or breaking down. But it prevents suffering from becoming meaningless.

The Missing Dimension

This is what many international observers miss. They encounter people who have lost entire families and are astonished to hear them speak of gratitude to God. They hear survivors quoting the Quran amid devastation and interpret it as denial. They see people praying beside the rubble of their homes and assume religion is merely helping them cope.

What they fail to understand is that faith is not a psychological escape from reality. For many Palestinians, it is reality. It shapes how Palestinians understand life, death, justice and responsibility.

Faith offers something that no therapeutic framework can provide: a moral explanation for endurance. It tells people that their suffering is seen, even when the world refuses to see it. It tells them that justice exists, even when earthly justice appears impossible. It tells them that death is a relief in Gaza when life seems like hell.

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For a people witnessing entire bloodlines disappear, these beliefs are not abstract theological concepts. They are sources of psychological survival.

This is not something that can be measured through surveys or quantified through mental health indicators. Yet it may be one of the most important factors explaining why Gaza has not broken.

The tragedy is that much of the international discussion about Palestinian mental health treats faith as a footnote. Experts analyse symptoms while ignoring meaning. They study despair while overlooking belief. They count trauma while failing to understand what enables people to live with it.

As a result, Palestinians are often portrayed as damaged people in need of treatment rather than human beings drawing strength from traditions, communities and beliefs that have sustained them through generations of dispossession.

The world looks at Gaza and asks how much suffering a human being can endure. Palestinians ask a different question: what is required of us despite that suffering?

The answer is often found not in psychology textbooks but in prayer, community, memory and faith. Until Western psychology learns to take those things seriously, it will continue to misunderstand Gaza. It will continue to catalogue our wounds while remaining blind to the source of our strength.

Access to clean water in Gaza has collapsed during the genocide, turning a basic necessity into a daily struggle for survival. Damage to water infrastructure, fuel shortages, repeated disruptions to desalination facilities, and the targeting of water distribution systems have left hundreds of thousands dependent on limited and often unsafe sources of water. For many families, obtaining drinking water now requires long journeys, hours of waiting, and difficult choices between health and survival.

Mohammed Al-Ghoz, 30, a father of two children, Rakaan, 4, and Yamaan, 2, lost his home and access to his neighbourhood of Al-Tuffah in eastern Gaza City. “My wife gave birth to two children during the genocide, and she needed special medications, food, and water, but almost nothing was available,” Mohammed said.

Before the genocide, potable water was easily accessible. “I used to fill my 500-litre barrel within a few minutes for $3,” he recalled. “Sometimes, I bought mineral water just to be healthier. I had never imagined there would be a water crisis in Gaza.”

When Mohammed evacuated from his home on 13 October 2023 to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, he left carrying only one bag of belongings. He expected water to be available in the south, but quickly discovered otherwise.

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“I thought water would be available in southern Gaza, but because of the massive displacement, people were fighting over bottles and competing to fill containers from the water shipments,” he said. “I bought a 20-litre gallon for $22 just so I could fetch water.”

Every day, regardless of the season, Mohammed woke before dawn to secure a place in line.

“Even in winter, I had to wake up around dawn to get in the queue so that when the water truck arrived at the camp, I would have a chance to get some water,” he explained. “In July 2024, potable water was non-existent in my area, so I had to walk more than two kilometres toward Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital to fetch water for my son.”

Jaundice

According to Mohammed, even water produced by desalination facilities was not always considered safe, particularly for pregnant women. During this period, thousands of people in southern Gaza were infected with jaundice, locally known as Regaan.

“When I asked a friend who was working as a doctor at a medical point in a nearby refugee camp, he told me that many of these cases were caused by drinking contaminated water,” Mohammed said. “The water produced by desalination plants relies on seawater, and sewage has been flowing into the sea because infrastructure was destroyed.”

Faced with those conditions, Mohammed worried constantly about his family’s health.

“I could not allow my wife to continue drinking water from water trucks and risk my son’s life,” he said.

When the current ceasefire was announced in October 2025, Mohammed returned to Gaza City and moved into his aunt’s apartment in Al-Shati camp. Yet access to water remained a daily burden.

“Living in my aunt’s apartment was physically exhausting because I had to carry potable water every day, but I had no other alternative,” he said. “Eight months have passed since the announcement of the ceasefire, and nothing has changed.”

Since the beginning of the genocide, access to water has remained uncertain. Water shipments, which have become the primary source of potable water for much of the population, have been targeted on multiple occasions. Even during the so-called ceasefire, in April 2026, two water truck drivers supplying residents in eastern Gaza near the yellow line were killed while working at a water distribution point.

“Although fetching potable water from water trucks is not safe, I have no other option,” Mohammed said. “The entire Strip depends on these water shipments.”

Daily Struggle

Like Mohammed, Bader Shallah, 20, has spent much of the genocide searching for water. A member of a six-person family, Bader has been displaced since 13 October 2023 and now lives in a tent in the backyard of a school in Deir al-Balah.

“I am responsible for fetching potable water for my family, so I walk hundreds of metres every day searching for a water shipment to fill our gallons,” Bader said.

By July 2024, the desalination plant serving the Deir al-Balah area had stopped operating because of severe fuel shortages. Access to safe drinking water became increasingly restricted, forcing many families, including Bader’s, to rely on non-potable water to survive.

“It was first my sister who was infected with Regaan,” he said.

Regaan, the local term for jaundice, causes the skin and eyes to turn yellow because of a build-up of bilirubin in the blood. Often associated with Hepatitis A, the condition became increasingly common across Gaza during the genocide amid worsening sanitation conditions and shortages of clean water.

To prevent the disease from spreading, Bader’s family stopped sharing food and drinks with his younger sister. Despite their precautions, he became infected two weeks later. “I do not know whether I was infected by my sister or somewhere else. The disease was spreading everywhere,” he said. “At first, my eyes and face turned yellow, and I couldn’t get off my mattress.”

The illness left him severely weakened. “My mother used to prepare my favourite meals no matter how much they cost, but I kept throwing up everything I ate,” Bader recalled. “I suffered from severe diarrhoea and was too weak to go to the bathroom alone. Someone always had to accompany me.”

Treatment options were extremely limited. “My only medicine was sweets, which were scarce and unimaginably expensive,” he continued. “My father bought one kilogram of honey, which cost $8 before the genocide, for more than $40.”

Bader believes contaminated water played a major role in his illness. “I remained sick for two weeks, unable to eat or do anything,” he said. “My father bought mineral water for me because the water from the water shipments only made my condition worse.”

Even during the current ceasefire, he says the disease continues to spread. “I know three individuals from a nearby camp who were infected with Regaan just a few days ago,” Bader said.

Chronic Illness

For people with chronic health conditions, the consequences of Gaza’s water crisis can be even more severe. Waael Yousef Bader, 60, a father of seven, purchased a new home in the Sudania area in north Gaza only four months before the genocide began. He was forced to evacuate on the first day and has never returned. “My home was completely destroyed,” Waael said. “I have evacuated seven times within Gaza City.”

Before the genocide, Waael worked for the Ministry of Transportation. He had also lived for years with a transplanted kidney. “In 2006, I was diagnosed with renal failure, and I underwent a kidney transplant in 2007,” he said. “Everything I needed was available—medication, proper food, and clean water. Since the beginning of the genocide, my situation has worsened.”

Access to food, water, and medicine quickly became limited. “What affected me most was water,” he explained. “I had no access to mineral water or malt drinks, both of which were important for my condition.”

On 15 January 2024, his health deteriorated and he required urgent medical intervention. “Fluid began to accumulate around my transplanted kidney because I lacked proper food and access to clean, filtered water,” he said.

At the time, obtaining treatment in northern Gaza was extraordinarily difficult. “Everything was impossible to find because there were no functioning hospitals or adequate medical teams,” Waael said. “Getting medication or medical assistance from the south was an immense struggle because the road between northern and southern Gaza had been cut.”

Laboratories in northern Gaza were no longer functioning. “When I first became ill, I went to Al-Shifa Hospital hoping to receive a diagnosis, but there were no specialists available to assess my condition or drain the fluid around my kidney,” he said.

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After searching extensively, Waael located a radiologist who agreed to help. “He inserted a drainage tube into my abdomen to remove the fluid,” Waael recalled. The procedure was performed without anaesthesia. “There was no anaesthesia available during the procedure, and I suffered unbearable pain,” he said.

Despite the hardship, the procedure was unsuccessful. “The fluid was not fully drained, and after some time the tube stopped functioning,” he explained. “The fluid accumulated again, and I needed a second procedure.” By then, Al-Shifa Hospital had been destroyed, and he could no longer reach the same doctor through normal channels.

Contamination

After three weeks of worsening pain, Waael managed to contact the radiologist again and underwent a second procedure, also without anaesthesia. “The fluid eventually came out in large amounts, filling the drainage bag several times,” he said. “Medications for my condition were barely available, and mineral water could not be found anywhere.”

Before the genocide, Waael underwent monthly kidney function tests. With hospitals and laboratories no longer operating in northern Gaza, that routine became impossible. “I couldn’t find any laboratory operating in northern Gaza,” he said. “I was forced to drink non-potable water that was not suitable for human consumption.”

According to Waael, contaminated water had the greatest impact on his health. “I have lived with a kidney transplant for seventeen years and had never experienced serious complications,” he said. “Yet within the first three months of the genocide, I began suffering from fluid accumulation, largely because of the contaminated water I drank and the lack of essential medication.”

With no specialised hospitals available to treat his condition, he eventually made the difficult decision to leave Gaza. “On 28 April 2024, I evacuated to Egypt seeking medical treatment abroad,” he said. “To preserve my life, I had no choice but to leave.”

His family, however, remains in Gaza. “The situation remains the same,” Waael said. “People are still drinking contaminated water, and the food and medicine entering the Strip remain insufficient.” He fears many others with serious medical conditions have been unable to survive. “Many people are still suffering from conditions similar to mine and lack medical care and access to safe drinking water,” he said. “I do not know whether those people are still alive, but I believe many of them did not survive because they required urgent treatment that they could not receive.”

Although a ceasefire has been announced, Gaza’s water crisis remains far from over. Damaged infrastructure, shortages of fuel and repair equipment, and continued dependence on water shipments leave many families without reliable access to safe drinking water. For people across Gaza, the struggle for clean water continues to shape daily life, while the health consequences of contaminated water remain a constant threat.

I used to think exile began at borders. I thought it started with a suitcase, an airport, a foreign language, and a final glance through a departing window. I thought exile required distance. I was wrong.

Sometimes exile begins while you are still standing on the same street where you learned to ride a bicycle. Sometimes it begins when the city remains in place, but life inside it becomes unrecognisable. Sometimes it begins when your homeland no longer offers a future, only survival.

Today, a Palestinian schoolgirl was killed on her way to sit for her final secondary school examinations. She was not crossing a border. She was not fleeing a war zone. She was not seeking asylum. She was simply walking toward her future.

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In another country, this would have been an ordinary morning. A girl carrying a pen, reviewing forgotten notes, worrying about grades and university applications. Instead, she became another name in a long list of interrupted lives.

The news will report her death as a number. But what was killed was not only a girl. A future doctor was killed. A future teacher. A future poet. The version of herself she might have become ten years from now was killed before she had the chance to meet it.

Occupation does not only destroy bodies. It destroys trajectories. It attacks the fragile bridge between the present and the future.

Internal Exile

For years, Palestinians have been told that exile is something that happens after departure. Yet many of us learned another truth. Exile can begin long before leaving. It begins when your dreams become impossible to plan. When schools become shelters. When universities become ruins. When every ordinary act carries the possibility of death.

This is the quiet architecture of internal exile. You remain in your homeland, but your homeland is systematically transformed into a place that struggles to sustain life. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. The streets still carry their names, yet they lead somewhere else entirely. Home ceases to be a place where a future can be imagined; it becomes a place where survival must be negotiated every day.

The violence is not only physical. It is existential. A people are gradually pushed into a condition where they are made to feel temporary on their own land. Not necessarily through direct expulsion, but through the relentless dismantling of everything that makes life liveable. A university degree becomes uncertain. A career becomes uncertain. Marriage becomes uncertain. Tomorrow itself becomes uncertain.

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The result is a strange and devastating form of displacement: remaining where you are while becoming estranged from the possibility of living there.

The world often speaks about Gaza through the language of catastrophe. It sees ruins, statistics, humanitarian crises, and emergency aid. What it rarely sees are the futures buried beneath the rubble. It does not see the student who wanted to study medicine. The writer drafting her first manuscript. The musician saving money for an instrument. The child rehearsing a dream that now exists only in memory.

Separated from Life

An occupation does not merely destroy a place. It attempts to redefine it. To transform a homeland into a landscape associated only with death. To make the world forget that beneath every collapsed building there once existed ordinary ambitions, ordinary love stories, ordinary lives.

Perhaps this is the deepest form of exile. Not leaving your country, but watching your country be reshaped into something the world no longer recognises as a place meant for living.

And yet Palestinians continue to insist on imagining a future. They sit for exams during bombardment. They write poems beside mass graves. They plant flowers beside ruins. They continue to dream in a geography designed to suffocate dreams.

Maybe that is why the schoolgirl’s death feels so unbearable. Because she was not killed while fleeing her future. She was killed while walking toward it. And perhaps that is the most painful definition of internal exile: not being separated from your homeland, but being separated from the life you were supposed to have within it.

By Yusuf El-Mbayed

The last time I saw al-Shujaiya, my neighbourhood in Gaza City, was on October 7. Back then, the streets were still vibrant with the voices of my friendly neighbours, many of whom are now martyrs, killed by the IOF. I still remember children running through the streets, happily playing hide-and-seek, while adults called out from balconies above, inviting everyone downstairs to gather and enjoy a game of football in the alley behind our house.

Even the familiar sounds of donkey-cart vendors, once part of the daily rhythm of life, have been silenced by deafening bombs and military assaults. Our pre-October 7 reality, though heavy and oppressive under siege and occupation, feels like a different world compared to the genocide we are living through now.

As children, my friends and I loved pulling pranks on passers-by. We would splash them with water from hidden corners and rooftops, then run away before they could catch us. Sometimes, we launched surprise attacks with handheld slingshots, laughing as we scattered in every direction.

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I miss those carefree, sunny days when death did not seem so imminent. Back then, moments of laughter still survived. The streets had not yet become graveyards of rubble and silence; childhood still found ways to endure. I long for those golden days.

As a young adult, our property in al-Shujaiya was one of the few places where I could find a brief respite from the constant chaos of life under siege. My mind was free to wander while birdsong serenaded my spirit, and whenever I looked skyward, I marvelled at the vast blue canvas stretching above me. When a gentle breeze blew, it carried the fragrance of blossoming fruits from our garden: lemons, peaches, figs, pomegranates, and oranges.

Pure Tranquillity

In my memory, al-Shujaiya was a place of pure tranquillity.

Before the outbreak of the ongoing genocide, my youthful naivety prevented me from fully feeling the weight of the siege. Back then, things seemed a little more within reach, even if life was far from easy. I would wake up early in a worn but familiar bed, wash my hands and face in a proper bathroom, and dress neatly for school with a wide smile. I was excited, unaware of much of the world’s harshness, but ready to face whatever came my way.

Under normal circumstances, I would take a taxi to work and back. I would eat meals that filled my stomach and gave me strength. I could light the stove with gas, prepare food with ease, and enjoy eating outdoors, surrounded by lush greenery.

I would begin my day with a warm, relaxing shower, adjusting the water to the perfect temperature. Then I would sit at my beloved desk, writing stories filled with dreams and possibilities. I remember the white grapevines glowing softly outside my window at night. How beautiful that view was, with moonlight filtering through the leaves.

What I cannot get out of my mind are the unforgettable moments spent watching my mother bake bread in the clay oven on our farm behind the house. We often invited friends, relatives, and in-laws to gather there. Thursdays were especially meaningful, filled with the aroma of barbecued fish, beef, chicken, and freshly baked manaqeesh.

I cannot forget how simply and joyfully we lived our lives in that stolen garden.

Shattered Life

In an instant, everything I knew shattered around me.

The home that once sheltered my dreams and laughter became an echo in time. The streets where I spent my childhood, where neighbours greeted one another with warmth, became lifeless. The safety and peace I once took for granted vanished overnight, replaced by fear and uncertainty.

Watching my world crumble beneath the weight of bombs and violence felt like losing a part of my soul. Every familiar corner, every cherished memory, was swept away, leaving me displaced—not only from a house, but from the very essence of my life.

I feel humiliated and diminished, having lost everything I once held dear.

I do not even know where to begin to express how painful and tragic my reality has become. Words fall short when trying to describe this misery. I once knew happiness and ease—a life I never imagined could slip through my fingers.

Every day, I wake up alongside 16 family members squeezed into a partially damaged rented flat with missing walls. It breaks us to pay $700 a month for a filthy, dilapidated space unfit for human habitation, yet we have no choice if we want to avoid homelessness.

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We sleep on cold, unforgiving floors. The chill bites through our bodies as we lie crowded together in an overcrowded space that offers neither comfort nor relief.

Once daylight arrives, my time is consumed by searching for the things we need, running errands, trying to work, and making exhausting trips up and down the seemingly endless stairs to the flat.

Outside, we walk long distances searching for charity food kitchens, known locally as Tikya, so we can feed our starving children. We search for cardboard and sometimes even have to buy it so that we can light a fire to make a cup of tea or coffee when we return.

We cook and eat only the bare essentials necessary to survive these hellish days. Without electricity or gas, preparing food has become an arduous task. Firewood is prohibitively expensive, and most people simply cannot afford it.

Everything here is a struggle for survival.

It pains me to endure the same agonising routine every day. The thought of spending the rest of my life in this partially damaged, wall-less apartment in western Gaza feels suffocating. The cramped conditions are claustrophobic enough as they are.

We are exhausted by this reality. How desperately I wish it would end, yet nothing seems to change.

New Catastrophe

My parents, my history teachers, and elderly people gathered in the streets used to tell us about the darkest chapters of Palestinian history and how painful those times were.

Yet even those who survived those events could never have imagined that another catastrophe would arrive decades later. Many believed the Nakba was the defining tragedy of Palestinian history. They never expected to witness another disaster of such magnitude.

Today, many feel that nothing compares to the catastrophe we have endured over these past years.

My family and I are among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from eastern Gaza who were forced out of al-Shujaiya and other districts, enduring countless hardships simply because we wanted to live with dignity, like anyone else in the world.

Meanwhile, Israel has maintained complete control over the area for more than a year, with no sign of withdrawing. It has expanded its control deeper into eastern Gaza, advancing toward Salah al-Deen Street, which divides the Strip in two. As a result, vast areas remain inaccessible, suffocating daily life and making survival even more difficult for Gazans.

Many of us have been left with almost nothing as famine continues to tighten its grip.

Every morning, we wake up preparing ourselves for another harsh and uncertain day.

At night, I whisper a prayer to Allah, pleading for peace, for an end to the occupation, for an end to the bombs, and for the restoration of the lives this genocide has stolen from us.

I long to return to al-Shujaiya, the place I love most, where my heart truly belongs. I wish to return and spend the rest of my life there. The thought of returning home is what sustains me through these difficult days.

Endurance

This genocide has forced me to confront a painful truth: leaving home is not always a journey toward new opportunities or a better future.

Sometimes, it means becoming homeless in your own country while everything around you transforms into a living nightmare consumed by grief and loneliness.

Though my family home and much of al-Shujaiya have been wiped off the map, my desire to return to our farm remains as strong as ever.

There are countless stories like mine.

Justice is long overdue for our dignity, our freedom, and our right to live in the land where we were born. We remain here, uprooted yet unbroken, dreaming of return.

Our hearts belong to al-Shujaiya, Gaza, and Palestine.

We endure because we have no other choice.

But to people around the world who enjoy freedom, security, and choice: it is not enough simply to bear witness. Choose to stand with us. Hold your governments and institutions accountable. Take meaningful action. Our stories should not end in silence.

Yusuf El-Mbayed is an English teacher at a school in Gaza, a human rights activist, and a freelance writer. He has contributed as a writer and reporter for Palm Strategic Initiatives Centre, Palestine Now, and the 16th October Group, among others.

In mid-January 2026, Gaza’s collapsing health system reached a catastrophic tipping point. Hospital corridors were already overcrowded with patients suffering from malnutrition, chronic illness and genocide-related injuries when a new wave of respiratory disease began spreading rapidly across the Strip. On January 14, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, warned publicly that respiratory viruses were circulating at an alarming speed, overwhelming a healthcare system that had long since lost the capacity to respond.

Doctors observed that seasonal respiratory illness had become significantly more severe. Medical staff reported unusually harsh symptoms, including prolonged high fever, extreme fatigue, intense body pain, and acute respiratory distress. These symptoms are most dangerous among malnourished children, elderly patients, and those with pre-existing conditions.

Due to the destruction of laboratories, the absence of diagnostic testing, and the fact that there are no functional large-scale testing facilities, doctors are unable to confirm the exact strain of the virus in Gaza, nor are they allowed to send tests outside of Gaza. As a result, physicians have no access to vaccines targeted to the circulating illness. Instead, they rely on clinical symptoms and recurring patterns among patients to gain an understanding of the illness. Many suspect it is a mutated influenza strain or a coronavirus-like respiratory infection, exacerbated by starvation and chronic stress.

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Illnesses that doctors are unable to clearly identify — due to the lack of diagnostic testing and functional laboratories — may include both common infections and potentially unknown strains. What is evident, however, is that in a health system stripped of medicine, equipment, and staff, and amid a population already weakened by prolonged crisis, these illnesses are becoming far more severe than they would normally be. Conditions that would ordinarily respond to rest and basic treatment are instead escalating into prolonged and debilitating cases, increasingly difficult to manage.

Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the largest hospital in Gaza, has pointed out that the spread of infections is not occurring in a vacuum; the immune systems of the people of Gaza have been systematically weakened by prolonged starvation, repeated displacement, and more than two years of sustained Israeli military assault. Respiratory viruses are acting on bodies already depleted by hunger, dehydration, chronic stress, and trauma.

Doctors explain that a lack of food has left many patients with severely compromised immune responses. Minor infections linger, worsen, and spread, while recovery becomes slow or impossible. In this context, a seasonal virus that would otherwise be manageable has become potentially fatal.

Failing Bodies

Hospitals across Gaza are operating far beyond their capacity. Bed occupancy has exceeded 150 percent in several facilities, while routine preventive care — including annual vaccinations for children, the elderly, and people with chronic illnesses — has effectively collapsed. In many cases, vaccines are simply unavailable.

What is happening in Gaza is the predictable outcome of a deliberate and systematic dismantling of public health infrastructure.

Since October 2023, Israeli airstrikes and ground operations have damaged or destroyed hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and medical infrastructure, while hundreds of medical workers have been killed and injured as the assault continues.

By the end of 2025, only a fraction of Gaza’s hospitals were even partially functional. Intensive care units regularly operated beyond capacity, while shortages of fuel, electricity, clean water, and medical supplies crippled basic services. Children and the elderly were particularly vulnerable. Doctors were forced to perform surgery without adequate anaesthesia and, at times, without reliable lighting due to power outages.

Al-Shifa Hospital — Gaza’s largest medical complex — was repeatedly raided, besieged, and forcibly evacuated during the genocide. Patients were ordered to leave while still critically ill, some forced to walk long distances under fire.

On 23 November 2023, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya was arrested by Israeli forces while accompanying a United Nations–coordinated medical evacuation convoy. He was held in Israeli detention for approximately seven months without charge or trial and was released on 1 July 2024, without any formal indictment. His detention removed one of Gaza’s most senior medical administrators at a moment when the health system was already collapsing.

Systematic Collapse

In displacement camps and overcrowded shelters, families are forced to survive on minimal calories and drink unsafe water with inadequate sanitation. In parts of northern Gaza, sewage flows through residential areas after pumping stations were shut down due to fuel shortages. In these conditions, infectious disease spreads rapidly. Acute respiratory infections, influenza-like illnesses, and other communicable diseases have surged, particularly in overcrowded shelters where physical distancing and basic hygiene are impossible.

To understand how the outbreak is affecting daily life, I spoke with several Gaza residents who, based on their symptoms, doctors believe are infected with a respiratory virus. Their testimonies were strikingly similar, reflecting a shared and recurring experience across the Strip. “People here are no longer just dying from bombs,” one local told me, “they are dying from hunger and disease.”

Osama, a 19-year-old living in central Gaza, described symptoms that had begun just two days before we spoke, but had escalated rapidly. He spoke of intense headaches, extreme muscle weakness, nausea, and a complete loss of appetite — symptoms he said were far worse than any influenza he’d experienced before. Like others I spoke with, Osama had sought treatment but found that no medication was available. By necessity, traditional remedies such as tea with lemon had to substitute for medical intervention.

Exacerbated by a severe lack of both food and medicine, the illness has left him exhausted and largely unable to move throughout the day, preventing him from carrying out basic tasks. What he fears most is that without access to proper care his condition will worsen. His message echoed what every interviewee expressed in different words: “People in Gaza are human beings, just like everyone else outside.”

Quiet Deaths

These testimonies reflect a shared reality — illness is spreading in a place where rest, nutrition, warmth, and medical care are largely unavailable.

International humanitarian organisations have repeatedly warned that Gaza’s health catastrophe is not accidental. Medical groups have described the current state of hospitals in Gaza as overwhelmed and unsafe, while global health officials have emphasised that the destruction of healthcare infrastructure has made disease control nearly impossible.

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Under international humanitarian law, attacks on medical facilities, obstruction of medical aid, and the starvation of civilians constitute grave violations. Yet accountability remains absent, even as preventable diseases become fatal.

The respiratory virus spreading through Gaza in early 2026 is the biological consequence of siege, famine, and the systematic dismantling of healthcare.

Doctors warn that without immediate intervention — including food, medicine, fuel, and protection for medical facilities — the outbreak will continue, claiming lives quietly while the world looks the other way.

The last time I saw Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, it was through a screen shaking with war.

He was standing inside Kamal Adwan Hospital, moving between wounded children and exhausted medical staff, his white coat no longer a symbol of calm professionalism but of endurance under fire. Around him, the hospital was no longer just a place of healing—it had become a shelter, a battlefield, and a final line of survival.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is not only a hospital director; he is a paediatrician at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. His medical work was centred on children. According to accounts from his family and legal representatives, the only “charge” repeatedly attributed to his detention was that he remained at his post, refusing to abandon his patients while the hospital itself was under siege. In this sense, his arrest becomes not an exception, but a reflection of a broader pattern: the criminalisation of care itself in a place where healing has been turned into a form of resistance.

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In Gaza, we learned to measure time differently. We did not ask what day it was—we asked whether the hospitals were still standing, whether the doctors were still alive, whether someone like Dr. Abu Safiya was still speaking. His presence meant that something in the system had not yet completely collapsed.

Then even that voice disappeared.

The last message we received about Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya did not come from the doctor himself. It came through a lawyer. A lawyer who described Dr. Hussam as being placed in solitary confinement, deprived of essential medication, cut off from the outside world and punished, reportedly, for daring to challenge the extension of his detention. Relying on fragments carried through legal visits should alarm anyone who still believes that medical personnel are protected in war.

For Palestinians, however, his story is about more than one detained doctor. It is about what happens when those who heal become targets.

More Than a Doctor

I remember watching his video messages during the war. Amid the devastation, his face became one of the few constants. He moved through hospital corridors surrounded by wounded children, speaking calmly about shortages, attacks, and impossible choices. He looked exhausted, but he remained.

He first became widely known as the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. During some of the most intense phases of the war, he became a familiar presence: exhausted but determined, documenting the collapse of a healthcare system under relentless pressure. While many institutions were destroyed, he remained. While bombs fell, he remained. Even after losing his son on 25 October 2024, he remained.

For many of us, he came to represent something larger than a hospital director. He represented the refusal to abandon life itself. In a place where death had become routine, he insisted on saving lives. In a place where hospitals were being dismantled, he insisted on keeping one alive.

Those inside Kamal Adwan recall that his presence, alongside the medical staff, was not symbolic—it was strategic. Their decision to remain, despite repeated evacuation pressure, helped sustain one of the last functioning medical facilities in northern Gaza and contributed to preventing the complete depopulation and forced displacement of northern Gaza. In that sense, the hospital became an anchor for civilian life in a collapsing system.

Imprisoned Healer

Against this backdrop, his detention since December 2024 is widely seen as part of a broader effort to dismantle not only Gaza’s health system but also the remaining structures that tether people to place and survival.

That is what made the image of his detention so striking: a doctor in a white coat moving through rubble toward military vehicles. A healer walking into captivity.

I remember seeing that image and wondering what it said about our world. What does it mean when a doctor becomes a prisoner while those responsible for destroying hospitals act with impunity? What does it mean when the people trying to save lives are treated as threats?

Since then, months have turned into more than a year.

According to his lawyer, Dr. Abu Safiya has been transferred to solitary confinement and denied necessary medical care despite chronic illness. His isolation appears designed not only to confine him physically but to sever his connection to the world beyond prison walls.

Solitary confinement is often described as a prison within a prison. The use of solitary confinement in his case, according to critics and human rights observers, reflects a severe form of dehumanisation. It is seen as part of a wider trend in which Palestinian medical workers are not only detained but isolated in ways that strip them of dignity and visibility. In this context, the targeting of doctors is widely interpreted as an attempt to silence those who could testify to what has taken place inside Gaza’s hospitals.

Reports from former detainees and human rights organisations describe Palestinian prisoners being held in cells measuring roughly two by two metres, often without windows or natural light, and with minimal bedding. Allegations of beatings, electrocution, rape, and other forms of ill-treatment have also been documented. Within such conditions, detainees are said to be deprived of basic dignity and due process.

Targeting Doctors

Cases such as that of the late Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, who died in custody under circumstances described by rights groups as involving torture and medical neglect, are frequently cited as warnings about the risks faced by detained medical professionals. These accounts have intensified urgent questions among rights groups and observers: how many more doctors must suffer or die before effective international action is taken, and before safeguards for medical personnel are meaningfully enforced?

In his most recent communication, the doctor—through his lawyer—was said to have sent a message to his son, Elias, urging him to contact the Palestinian journalist Anas al-Sharif. Yet what makes this message deeply tragic is that Dr. Abu Safiya was reportedly unaware that Anas had already been killed in August 2025. The journalist had been assassinated by Israel months earlier. The result is a devastating rupture between memory and reality under conditions of total isolation.

According to his son, Elias Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old doctor has been enduring severe and deteriorating conditions in detention, including deprivation of medical care and food. He said that after prolonged isolation, his father was only able to meet his lawyer after around 90 days, with the family receiving no direct updates in between. Each message, he added, is received as though it may be the last.

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The detention of Dr. Abu Safiya cannot be viewed as an isolated case; rather, it reflects a wider pattern involving the systematic weakening of the medical personnel and institutions that are responsible for keeping Palestinians alive.

The case of Dr. Abu Safiya also reflects trends documented by human rights organisations and journalists, in which detainees describe prolonged isolation and extreme restrictions. One striking example is that of Palestinian journalist Mohammad Arab, detained since March 2024, who reportedly asked his lawyer to describe his own facial features after more than two years without seeing himself in a mirror. Such accounts illustrate not only physical confinement, but a deeper form of erasure—where prisoners are deprived even of the most basic connection to their own identity.

Struggle to Survive

International humanitarian law explicitly protects medical workers and hospitals during conflict. Yet in Gaza, hospitals have been bombed, medical staff killed or detained, and the health system pushed to the brink of collapse. These developments have raised serious questions among observers about the gap between legal protections and reality on the ground.

In a place where every remaining doctor is urgently needed, the loss of medical leadership carries consequences far beyond any single case. This is not the removal of an individual from a functioning system, but the weakening of a system already struggling to survive.

And yet Dr. Abu Safiya has become more than a physician in detention. He has become a symbol—not because he sought it, but because his presence represented something increasingly rare: the refusal to abandon care amid overwhelming destruction.

Perhaps that is why his story resonates so deeply. Dr. Abu Safiya reminds us that even amid genocide, there are people who choose humanity. Even amid destruction, there are people who choose care. Even amid despair, there are people who refuse to surrender their moral responsibility to others.

It is also a reminder that behind every headline, there is a family waiting. A son, such as Elias, waiting for news of his father. A family forced to interpret silence as information. And a doctor who, even in detention, remains defined by the same identity that placed him at risk in the first place: not a combatant, but a healer.

And if the world remains silent while a doctor is denied freedom, medical care, and basic human dignity, then it is not only Dr. Abu Safiya who is being abandoned. It is the principle that those who save lives should never become targets.

And until he is free, the questions his case raises will not go away.

The world often treats Gaza as breaking news. A strike. A death toll. A statement. A headline. Then another crisis emerges elsewhere, and Gaza slips once more into the background. But what is happening in Gaza today is not a fleeting development, nor a daily update, nor a routine conflict. It is the continuation of a catastrophe that has entered its third year, a reality so relentless that even the extraordinary has become ordinary.

There is no ceasefire in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 950 Palestinians in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire was announced in October 2025, pushing the territory’s death toll above 72,000, according to Palestinian health authorities. That means Israel has killed an average of over four people a day in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire was announced.

Despite repeated references to a “ceasefire” reached in late October 2025, Palestinians in Gaza continue to be killed almost every day. Air strikes, artillery shelling and targeted attacks remain a constant feature of life. Every morning brings new names to the lists of the dead and wounded. Every evening leaves families wondering whether they will survive until dawn.

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As if this reality were not cruel enough, Israel has once again shut all crossings and halted the entry of vital humanitarian aid following the recent escalation with Iran, further tightening the siege on more than two million Palestinians already struggling to survive.

People are killed in streets, apartments, displacement camps and crowded markets. Entire families disappear within minutes. Survivors emerge from the rubble only to discover that they have become the sole remaining witness to their family’s existence.

Endless Killing

At the same time, the space available for survival continues to shrink.

Today, roughly two million Palestinians are compressed into just 30 percent of Gaza’s territory. The rest is either occupied, militarised or designated under expanding “Yellow Line” and “Orange Line” restrictions imposed by Israel. Families are repeatedly displaced from one overcrowded area to another, carrying what remains of their lives in plastic bags and torn suitcases.

The humanitarian crisis deepens with every passing day.

At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, operating rooms have stopped functioning after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and generator oils needed to keep critical infrastructure running. Other departments face imminent closure. Across Gaza, a healthcare system already shattered by months of attacks is now collapsing under the weight of shortages.

Hospitals report a 50 percent deficit in medicines, a 60 percent shortage of essential medical supplies and the depletion of laboratory stocks required for basic diagnostic tests. Thousands of patients suffering from cancer, chronic illnesses and severe war injuries are waiting for medical evacuation abroad, knowing that every day of delay may be the difference between life and death.

Meanwhile, one of Gaza’s most prominent physicians, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, has reportedly been transferred to solitary confinement in Nafha Prison. His crime is that he continued treating patients while Gaza’s hospitals were under siege.

The imprisonment of a doctor who refused to abandon the wounded is emblematic of a reality in which not only patients are targeted, but those who attempt to save them.

Empty Pots

The hunger crisis has become equally devastating. The World Central Kitchen, whose community kitchens became a lifeline for vast numbers of Palestinians, has significantly scaled back its operations. For many families, those kitchens represented the only reliable source of food.

Only weeks ago, Palestinians gathered in the streets carrying empty cooking pots in protest against worsening hunger. The image was painfully simple: empty hands holding empty pots.

Behind it lies a reality of soaring poverty, near-total unemployment and the collapse of income sources across Gaza. Families search desperately for flour, cooking gas and basic necessities while prices continue to climb beyond reach.

Even money itself has become inaccessible. With banking systems crippled and cash liquidity nearly exhausted, Palestinians often pay enormous commissions simply to access their own savings. The cost of withdrawing money can consume a significant portion of what little remains, transforming every purchase into another struggle for survival.

Stolen Futures

Yet beyond the statistics are the stories that reveal the cruelty of this reality. A few days ago, a young Palestinian named Mohanad Ferwana was preparing for what should have been the happiest day of his life. His wedding day. But he never made it to the ceremony. An Israeli strike targeted his tent in Khan Younis and burned him alive on the morning he was meant to marry.

He never wore his suit. He never saw the guests arriving. He never watched his bride, Asmaa, walk toward him in her white dress. His wedding became his funeral. “The joy of my life was today,” his mother cried. “It was the joy of my life, but they took him from me.”

In Gaza, genocide does not only kill people. It kills futures. It kills celebrations. It kills the ordinary milestones that make life worth living.

Happiness itself becomes a target. Killing happiness is one face of the genocide. Every attempt to rebuild, every effort to celebrate, every small act of normalcy appears fragile under the shadow of constant violence.

Inherited Absence

Another story emerged days later after an attack near the al-Jawazat area in western Gaza City. A young father who had spent the previous day celebrating the birth of his first daughter was killed before he had the chance to know her.

One day he was distributing sweets and smiles. The next day he was carried as a martyr. His daughter opened her eyes to the world only to discover that the first thing taken from her was her father. He did not have time to memorise her face. She will never have the chance to remember his voice.

This reminds me of the story of journalist Yahya Sbeih, who was killed shortly after the birth of his daughter Sana—only managing to see her for a few fleeting minutes before he was taken from her in the al-Tilandi massacre. These are not isolated tragedies. They have become a repeating pattern in Gaza, where children are born into life already marked by absence, and where parents are killed just as their families begin.

In each case, a life is reduced to a brief moment of meeting before it is violently cut short, leaving behind a child who will grow up knowing their parents only through photographs, stories, and the weight of absence.

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Today, eight-year-old Jad Suleiman was killed while returning home from school in Jabalia Refugee Camp. He was still wearing his school bag. His father clutched the bag and cried, “Jad is gone. He is gone.”

People often speak of the children killed in Gaza, but they rarely understand what it means to raise a child here. Parents dream of graduations, birthdays and futures, only to find themselves carrying white coffins instead. Jad should have returned home from school with stories from his day. Instead, he became another child whose future was taken before it had the chance to begin.

World’s Silence

This is the reality in Gaza behind the headlines. A reality in which children are orphaned before they learn to speak, couples are separated before they begin their married lives and parents bury sons and daughters while trying to convince themselves they can endure another day.

The tragedy is not only what is happening. It is how the world has learned to absorb it. Daily death tolls are consumed as statistics. Images of destroyed homes pass quickly through social media feeds. Expressions of concern are issued while policies remain unchanged.

But no amount of repetition can make this normal. No number of days can make mass displacement normal. No passage of time can make hunger normal. No political language can make the destruction of hospitals normal. And no future historical explanation will erase what is being done today.

The reality in Gaza remains brutally simple. People are being killed every day. Families are being displaced every day. Hospitals are collapsing every day. The genocide continues every day.

What Gaza requires is not more statements of concern but meaningful pressure, accountability and action. Because history will not remember how many press releases were issued. It will remember who acted and who remained silent.

As the Arab poet, Amro Al-Zubidi, wrote:

“You would have been heard had you called out to the living,
But there is no life in those you are calling.

If you had blown upon a fire, it would have illuminated,
But you are only blowing into ashes.”

No ocean can ever wash away what Israel has done to the Palestinians in Gaza. And no silence can erase the truth.

By Ohood Nassar

In one of the most striking stories reflecting the targeting of the Palestinian people, their voice, and their narrative, the name of Dr. Refaat Alareer stands out. He was among the most prominent Palestinian intellectuals and academics who carried the cause of his people to the world through literature, media engagement, and academic work. Alareer was not merely a university professor, poet, and writer; he was also a witness to the suffering of Gaza and a steadfast defender of Palestinians’ right to tell their own story. He remained committed to that mission until he was killed during the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip in December 2023.

Refaat Alareer was a writer, poet, translator, and professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. Throughout his career, he became known for his intellectual and cultural contributions, as well as for his dedication to nurturing a new generation of Palestinian writers capable of conveying their experiences to the world in English. In addition to his academic work, he maintained a strong media presence, publishing articles and participating in international interviews and discussions that highlighted the realities of life in Gaza. Through these platforms, he consistently spoke about the impact of the blockade, military assaults, and the daily challenges faced by Palestinians living in the Strip.

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The final chapter of Alareer’s life unfolded during the Israeli war on Gaza that began in October 2023. On December 6, two months after the attack on the Strip began, an Israeli airstrike targeted the house where he had taken shelter at his sister’s home in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood, east of Gaza City. The strike killed Alareer, his sister, and several members of her family. News of his death quickly spread, provoking widespread grief and reactions from academic, cultural, and media circles both within Palestine and around the world.

Sense of Responsibility

According to the account of a close friend, Alareer had received repeated threats during the war because of his media and digital activism. Throughout the conflict, he used social media platforms to report on the bombardment and destruction taking place across Gaza, documenting the suffering of civilians and drawing attention to what they were enduring. The same source stated that only hours before he was killed, Alareer received a phone call informing him that he was under surveillance and that his location was known.

At the time, Alareer and his family had been displaced and were staying in one of the schools operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). However, fearing that any attack directed at him could place thousands of displaced civilians sheltering in the school at risk, he made the decision to leave and move to his sister’s house instead. The decision reflected both his sense of responsibility and his concern for the safety of others, even while facing immense personal danger.

Yet the tragedy that claimed Alareer’s life was not the first profound loss he had experienced. During the 2014 war on Gaza, he lost many members of his family when the family home in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood was bombed. The attack killed more than thirty relatives from both his family and his wife’s family, making it one of the most painful episodes of his life. Despite such devastating personal losses, Alareer continued to devote himself to education, writing, and public engagement.

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Throughout the years, he remained committed to his intellectual and cultural work. Although his academic achievements and expertise could have enabled him to build a career at prestigious universities and institutions abroad, he chose to remain in Gaza. He believed that his place was among his people and his students, and that his mission was inseparable from the community in which he lived. His friend, journalist Asem Al-Nabeh, described him as a “genius” whom he had known since childhood, emphasising that Alareer consciously chose to stay in Gaza despite having opportunities elsewhere.

Influence Beyond Death

Alareer’s dedication to education was evident throughout his academic career. He devoted special attention to mentoring students and helping talented young Palestinians develop their skills in creative writing, storytelling, poetry, and translation. He understood that telling Palestinian stories was not only a literary endeavour but also a means of preserving identity and ensuring that Palestinian voices could reach international audiences. For this reason, he became one of the contributors to the founding of We Are Not Numbers, a project designed to empower Palestinian youth to share their stories and human experiences with the world in multiple languages.

Even amid the devastation of war, Alareer continued to think about the future. According to Al-Nabeh, he often spoke about projects he hoped to pursue if he survived. Among these was a literary initiative dedicated to documenting Palestinian experiences during the war and transforming personal testimonies into books and novels. He envisioned these works as a way of preserving collective memory and ensuring that future generations would have access to first-hand accounts of what Palestinians had endured.

Although Refaat Alareer is gone, his influence did not end with his death. He became a symbol of the intellectual who remained committed to his people until his final moments and a voice determined to carry the truth from beneath the rubble to the wider world. His life embodied a belief in the power of words, education, and storytelling as tools of resistance and remembrance. While his body was buried under bombardment, his words remain as testimony that the Palestinian narrative cannot be silenced, and that although people may pass away, their impact endures in memory, history, and human conscience.

Ohood Nassar is a journalist and teacher from Gaza. She has written for We Are Not Numbers, New Arab, Al Jazeera, Institute for Palestine Studies, Electronic Intifada, and Prism.

On Saturday morning, 3 January 2026, my family and I set out early for Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza. The journey felt heavy with contradictions. We were heading toward a place that once symbolised healing and survival, but was now surrounded by ruins and charred buildings - the remains of incessant Israeli bombardment. Burned wards and collapsed walls stood as undeniable evidence of ruthless Israeli attacks on healthcare infrastructure, amounting to medicide under the conditions of the ongoing genocide. We were not heading there in grief or for treatment; we were going to celebrate life.

On that Saturday morning, families filled the courtyard of that devastated space. Their faces were radiant, hands clasped, shoulders brushing, eyes searching the stage. Jubilance surfaced where silence had long lived. Tears came, but this time, they carried pride. Across the rows, parents straightened their posture as graduation gowns appeared against the rubble, phones raised, breaths held. Pride did not need to be named; it rested openly on faces that had learned how to survive loss. The graduates moved forward carefully, step by measured step, their gowns sweeping ground still scarred by destruction. My sister was among the graduates.

I attended the graduation ceremony from its first moment to its final oath. I watched it unfold slowly, deliberately, as if time itself had decided to pause and pay attention. What I witnessed went far beyond a graduation—it was an act of collective resistance, memory, and hope—a declaration that Gaza’s future would not be written solely by those who sought to destroy it.

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The ceremony marked the graduation of 230 medical students—men and women—who began their studies in September 2019 and completed them in September 2025. Their education was stitched together across years shaped by siege, repeated military escalations, wars, collapse, and genocide. While medical students elsewhere measured their progress by exams and rotations, these students measured theirs by survival.

They studied while bombs detonated. They revised lecture notes during displacement. They trained in hospitals operating far beyond capacity, without sufficient electricity, medication, or safety. They learned medicine amid emergencies rather than controlled environments, a reality that blurred the line between classroom and battlefield. Some lost homes. Some lost family members. All buried classmates before earning their degrees.

Yet they persisted. As one graduate said: “We didn’t just learn medicine—we practiced it while losing people we loved.”

The Phoenix Cohort

The graduation ceremony was organised and supervised by the Samir Foundation, an institution established in memory of Samir Lulu, the martyred father of its Executive Director, Dr. Ezz El-Din Samir Lulu. Rather than allowing loss to end his father’s story, Dr. Ezz El-Din transformed it into a mission: supporting medical students and strengthening Gaza’s healthcare system through scholarships, mentorship, and essential resources.

The foundation’s work is rooted in a belief that medical education is inseparable from dignity, and that sustaining healthcare in Gaza is a form of resistance against erasure.

Unofficially named “The Phoenix Class of 2025,” the graduating cohort included students from Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University of Gaza. In its statement, the Samir Foundation declared: “Their journey, marked by perseverance and excellence despite extraordinary challenges, stands as a testament to their commitment and to carrying forward the legacy of their fallen colleagues.”

The word fallen was not symbolic. It was literal.

The ceremony opened with remarks by Dr. Abdul Karim Samour, who welcomed the audience with language that captured the gravity of the moment: “We welcome you all to the graduation ceremony of the medical faculties—The Phoenix Cohort. A cohort that chose to rise from beneath the rubble, to make pain a beginning rather than an end.” This was no rhetorical flourish—it described reality.

Dr. Rania Mansour followed, grounding the ceremony in faith and ethical responsibility: “Praise be to God who never abandons a patient heart, who does not waste sincere effort. Praise be to God who heals, through His grace, those who have lost hope in medicine and remedy. He honoured physicians so that through them, suffering may be lifted.”

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A Qur’anic recitation by Dr. Ziyad Al-Shawa followed. His voice filled the open courtyard with verses from Surah Al-Hashr: “Not equal are the companions of the Fire and the companions of Paradise. The companions of Paradise—they are the successful.” The words echoed against damaged walls, offering a moral contrast between atrocities and perseverance—between those who annihilate and those who heal.

When the announcer called the graduating doctor, Dr. Sojood Ahmed Al-Wawi, the moment felt suspended between the personal and the collective. She was my sister—but she was also one of hundreds who had refused to disappear. She moved forward with the procession of graduates, her name called among hundreds of others. From where we sat, we watched her step ahead with the others, and our faces radiated with smiles we could not hold back. Pride passed quietly through us. She had earned this moment through years of effort and persistence; she was someone who had worked diligently, endured, and arrived.

The Wreckage of Days

I recorded a short video when her name was announced and shared it on my Instagram story, a small act of documentation for a memory we knew we would want to return to. In the final part of the ceremony, we joined her beside the stage and took a family photograph together—images that felt almost unreal in their beauty. These were moments we had waited for a long time, and when they finally arrived, they carried more meaning than words could fully hold.

As I stood among families clutching certificates, photographs, and memories, it became clear that the ceremony honoured both those present and those who should have been there.

The Palestinian national anthem followed—an anthem for a homeland occupied for decades, besieged for nineteen years, subjected to two years of systematic genocide, and yet still insisting on life. As President of the Samir Foundation, Dr. Ezz El-Din Samir Lulu delivered one of the most emotionally resonant speeches of the day. Turning to his mother, Ms. Hanadi Skaik, he said: “She is my mother—the lady of my heart and the refuge of my soul. She strengthened me and made me lean on her determination, not on the wreckage of days.”

The audience understood immediately: this was not only a personal tribute. He was revering Palestinian mothers everywhere—women who have held families together under bombardment, displacement, and grief.

Speeches followed from Dr. Raghad Hassouna, representing the graduates, and from medical faculty members Dr. Anwar Sheikh Khalil and Dr. Adnan Al-Ajrami. Their words emphasised that these graduates emerged as both doctors and witnesses—trained under conditions that demanded moral clarity as much as technical skill.

Dr. Youssef Abu Al-Reesh, representing the Ministry of Health, spoke of a generation shaped through catastrophe rather than stability. As one faculty member put it simply: “They were students and first responders at the same time.”

Passion of the Heart

Between speeches, traditional dabke performances by Asa’el Troupe erupted into the space—an insistence that joy, culture, and heritage remain alive. One of the most haunting moments came through an AI-produced video honouring martyred medical workers—doctors, nurses, paramedics killed while saving others.

Around the destroyed surgical building, organisers had written: “We walk in your footsteps and continue the path of medicine and humanity.” Photographs of fallen medical students surrounded the ceremony under the words: “They were with us on the road, but absent from the graduation stage.”

The absence was tangible.

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A special musical tribute by Hamoud Al-Khudher followed. His voice carried across the ruins:

“Welcome, dream—where have you been all this time?
How beautiful you are, fulfilled in my hands…
Between you and me there was a test—
Its hardship passed, and everything endured.”

One line lingered above all others: “A Gazan never fails when passion lives in their heart.”

Then, the ceremony’s grand surprise was announced: The Samir Foundation, in collaboration with HCI, said it would support the Phoenix Class throughout their internship year with a comprehensive program, including monthly financial assistance starting after Ramadan. The initiative is rooted in sustainability, not charity—ensuring that Gaza’s doctors can continue their mission and rebuild a devastated healthcare system.

Across social media, images of the ceremony spread rapidly. Commentators described it as “an unbelievable miracle.” Gaza’s official symbol—the phoenix—was invoked repeatedly. The phoenix, it is said, burns only to rise again from its ashes. And there, in the ruins of Al-Shifa, Gaza rose once more. This moment was a declaration of continuity. A refusal of erasure. A promise that Gaza’s future remains its own.

By Ohood Nassar

In the Gaza Strip, where bombardment has become a constant backdrop to daily life and the line between survival and death grows increasingly thin, countless stories emerge that reflect the scale of civilian suffering.

Among them is the story of Mohammed Jahha, a young Palestinian from Gaza City who survived after being buried beneath the rubble of his family home and mistakenly believed to be dead. His experience encapsulates the realities of war in Gaza: the destruction of homes, the collapse of basic services, the dangers of rescue efforts, and the extraordinary struggle to stay alive.

Mohammed Jahha is from the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City. Recalling the early weeks of the military assault on the Gaza Strip, he says his family home became a refuge for approximately 150 people, including relatives and displaced families who had fled nearby areas in search of safety.

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As the bombardment intensified, the family began searching for a safer place. Like many others, they attempted to move to shelters, hoping to escape the constant threat of airstrikes. However, schools, hospitals, and other public buildings had already become overcrowded with thousands of displaced people. Conditions were dire, with little space, limited resources, and no real guarantee of safety.

Meanwhile, Mohammed’s uncle and his family sought shelter at a school operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj neighborhood. But even that refuge proved unsafe. The school was bombed, forcing those sheltering there to flee. With nowhere else to go, many eventually returned despite the risks.

The Strike

On December 6, 2023, tragedy struck the Jahha family directly. Their home was hit in an attack that killed 117 people. Mohammed remembers that there had been no warning. Family members and displaced people inside the house were going about ordinary moments when, within seconds, the building collapsed into rubble.

Mohammed was buried beneath the debris along with many of his relatives. Unconscious and severely injured, he remained trapped as neighbours desperately attempted rescue efforts. Working with little more than their hands and basic tools, they managed to pull out several survivors and victims. Because ambulances were unavailable, those they rescued were transported on donkey carts.

The rescue operation itself soon became dangerous. According to Mohammed, nearby homes and a mosque were also targeted during the search efforts, forcing neighbours to abandon their work for fear of further strikes. It was not until the following day that they were able to return and continue digging through the wreckage.

When they eventually found Mohammed beneath the rubble, they believed he was dead.

With extremely limited resources and surrounded by devastation, the neighbours recovered his body and began preparing him for burial. They washed him, prepared him for the funeral prayer, and dug a grave nearby. Family members and neighbours gathered to perform the prayer over what they believed was another victim of the attack.

Then something unexpected happened.

During the funeral prayer, Mohammed’s body suddenly moved.

The movement stunned everyone present. Moments earlier, they had been preparing to bury him. Now they realised he was still alive.

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Neighbors immediately attempted to provide whatever first aid they could. Yet medical resources were almost non-existent, and movement through the area remained dangerous because of ongoing military operations and the presence of tanks nearby. Mohammed was taken to a neighbouring house, where he remained unconscious and bleeding for two days without adequate medical care.

As his condition deteriorated, those around him made the difficult decision to transport him to a medical point despite the risks. Because fuel shortages and restrictions had effectively eliminated normal transportation options, he was again moved by donkey cart.

The journey was perilous. Shelling continued in the area, and gunfire could be heard overhead as volunteers attempted to bring him to safety.

At a nearby medical point, Mohammed received emergency treatment before being transferred to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in western Gaza City. There, doctors fought to save his life as he slipped into a coma that would last for three months.

After Survival

When he finally regained consciousness, he had no memory of who he was.

He could not remember his name, recognise members of his family, or understand what had happened to him. Confused and frightened, he repeatedly asked medical staff for answers. Eventually, they told him the truth: most of his family had been killed in the attack that destroyed their home.

Slowly, fragments of memory began to return. Along with them came the painful realisation of everything he had lost.

Mohammed says he lost nearly his entire family in the strike. The only surviving relative from his immediate family was his younger sister, who was also seriously injured. She underwent multiple surgeries inside Gaza, but doctors later determined that she would need treatment abroad to complete her recovery.

Today, Mohammed and his sister live in a school that has been converted into a shelter for displaced people. The home they once lived in no longer exists, and the life they knew before the war has vanished.

He says that silence has become one of the hardest things to endure. Quiet moments often bring back memories of family members he lost beneath the rubble. Despite the grief and trauma, he continues to move forward, determined to care for his sister and preserve what remains of his family.

Mohammed Jahha’s story is not an isolated one. It reflects the reality experienced by thousands of civilians across Gaza, where homes become targets, rescue efforts turn into life-threatening missions, and survival itself often depends on chance. Amid widespread loss, injury, and displacement, stories like his serve as a living record of an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe and the resilience of those struggling to endure it.

Ohood Nassar is a journalist and teacher from Gaza. She has written for We Are Not Numbers, New Arab, Al Jazeera, Institute for Palestine Studies, Electronic Intifada, and Prism.

By Ohood Nassar

Nine-year-old Ritaj Raihan had been waiting more than two years to return to school.

Like thousands of children in Gaza, her education was interrupted when the war began on October 7, 2023. When a learning tent was established on the ruins of Abu Ubaida Al-Jarrah School in the Al-Salatin area of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, Ritaj was excited to study again. For the first time since the outbreak of the war, she would be able to sit in a classroom and continue her education.

She did not know that her return to school would also be her last journey.

On April 9, 2026, only five days after the learning tent opened, Israeli forces opened fire while children were attending class. According to witnesses, Ritaj was standing at the front of the classroom tent waiting for her notebook to be corrected when a bullet from an Israeli sniper pierced the tent and hit her.

Classmates and teachers watched in shock as she collapsed. The bullet entered through her mouth and lodged in her body, fatally wounding her.

School staff immediately attempted to save her. However, Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure and transportation network left them with few options. Unable to find an ambulance or a functioning vehicle, they transported her using a donkey-drawn cart. Despite their efforts, she died from her injuries.

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Final Journey

That morning, Ritaj’s parents had taken her to school full of hope.

“I believed Ritaj would finally return to school after being in primary school before the war,” her father said. “But on the morning she was killed, everything ended. We took her to school walking on her own feet, and she came back a lifeless body.”

When the school first contacted the family, Ritaj’s mother believed her daughter had suffered a minor injury. Minutes later, they received the news that she had died.

Inside the family tent, her mother held a dress she had recently bought for Ritaj to wear at her uncle’s wedding, which was planned for only a few days later.

“My daughter left on her own feet and came back dead,” she said through tears. “All I feel now is longing for her. I smell her clothes because they still carry her scent.”

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Lost Childhood

Ritaj’s killing occurred during a ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025 following negotiations in Cairo and Doha. Although the agreement was intended to provide protection for civilians and ease humanitarian suffering, residents of Gaza continued to face insecurity amid repeated violations and ongoing violence.

Her death also reflects the broader devastation inflicted on Gaza’s children and educational system since the beginning of the war. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, by March 2026 more than 72,000 people had been killed, including approximately 17,000 children, 12,000 women, and 3,000 elderly people.

Education has been among the sectors most severely affected. UNICEF reported that 95 percent of Gaza’s schools were damaged or destroyed, while UNESCO estimated that 95 percent of universities had been destroyed.

For Ritaj, the consequences of the war were deeply personal. She spent more than two years deprived of education before finally being given an opportunity to return to learning. That opportunity lasted only a few days.

Ritaj was not carrying a weapon. She was carrying a notebook and a simple ambition shared by children everywhere: to learn.

Between the tent erected on the ruins of a school and the bullet that ended her life lies the story of a generation of children growing up amid war, displacement, and the loss of educational opportunities. Her death remains a stark reminder that even during a declared ceasefire, many children in Gaza continued to face grave risks, including in places meant for learning and safety.

Ohood Nassar is a journalist and teacher from Gaza. She has written for We Are Not Numbers, New Arab, Al Jazeera, Institute for Palestine Studies, Electronic Intifada, and Prism.

While walking through Gaza City’s Al-Rimal neighbourhood, a green street sign catches my eye: Al-Thawra Street, or Revolution Street. It was named to honour Egypt’s 1952 revolution, when Gaza was under Egyptian administration — part of a broader effort to give the city historical and Arab identities. Nearby, Wehda Street, meaning “Unity,” recalls the brief union of Egypt and Syria in 1958. Further along, Omar Al-Mukhtar Street stretches from Palestine Square to the seafront, its name reaching back to the Ottoman era. The street is largely in ruins now. But it still runs in the same direction it always did.

Israel has stolen or destroyed every home that was ever mine to claim: my grandparents’ village of Deir Sunaid, the house in Jabalia refugee camp where I grew up, and most recently my family’s home in Gaza City. The homes of my uncles, my aunts, my friends are gone. The kindergarten I attended. Every school I knew. Even the university.

UN agencies estimate approximately 61 million tonnes of rubble across the Gaza Strip. UNOSAT satellite imagery shows that around 81 percent of all structures have been damaged — of the 198,273 affected buildings, 123,464 have been destroyed. The destruction, however, is uneven: some areas suffered near-total devastation, while some neighbourhoods in the Strip were less affected.

Erased Landmarks

The destruction has not spared the city’s oldest layers. The Great Omari Mosque is severely damaged. The fourteenth-century Hammam al-Samra is gone. The Church of Saint Porphyrius, one of the oldest churches in the world, was struck in October 2023, along with many other buildings that stand as physical evidence that Gaza has existed, continuously, for millennia.

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This scale of destruction creates a dangerous illusion: that Gaza is an empty landscape waiting to be redesigned. It echoes a familiar colonial logic, the idea that devastation creates the right to reinvent a place.

I recently visited a work hub that was previously a house on Al-Thawra Street itself, the same street whose sign had caught my eye. The house was old, and inside I saw floor tiles I had never seen anywhere else in Gaza. When I called someone living in Ramallah, we realised we had the same tiles. They had traveled from Hebron to both cities, from a time when Gaza was still connected to the rest of Palestine.

It is a connection that no reconstruction plan has thought to preserve. Most of Gaza’s residents are Palestinian refugees or descendants of refugees displaced from lands that are now Israel, people whose history does not appear in any of the proposals being drafted on their behalf.

Eternal Visions

The reconstruction plans being drawn up in Western capitals treat the city as a development site. Tony Blair has called for rebuilding Gaza “not as it was but as it could and should be.” Jared Kushner has framed Gaza’s reconstruction as an economic opportunity, describing it as “a hope, a destination” where industry, commerce, and employment could thrive. The “Project Sunrise” vision, a roughly $112 billion proposal drafted in 45 days and presented in a 32-slide PowerPoint to Gulf investors, outlines tourist districts, industrial zones and “smart” infrastructure intended to transform Gaza into a high-tech coastal metropolis.

Who gets to decide what Gaza “should be”? These proposals say little about where two million people would live while their city is being redesigned, how surviving neighbourhoods would be integrated, or what should happen to the buildings that still stand. This reflects what Palestinian sociologist Sari Hanafi calls “spaciocide,” the systematic destruction not only of buildings but of the spatial conditions that allow a people to live, remember and sustain their identity. In these visions, Gaza appears not as a city of lived experience but as empty land waiting to be filled with someone else’s idea of progress.

We have been looking at the rubble. We should also be looking at what is still standing. In Al-Rimal, houses and shops that have stood for decades remain. In the middle areas of the Strip, entire neighbourhoods are still there. Many historical sites can still be restored. People still return to these places, because some things do not need reconstruction. They only need the chance to survive.

What Remains

Across Gaza, ordinary people have already begun. Windows are sealed with plastic sheeting. Where walls once stood, canvas tarps and curtains mark the boundary between inside and outside. Doors hang crooked, held shut by a dozen nails. Families live in the one room that still has a ceiling, or in the shell of a house that no longer has walls. These small acts are attempts to keep life tethered to place — a refusal to be erased.

Not long ago, I saw a video online of two young men in Gaza carefully arranging books in the damaged historic library. The shelves were dusty, and some volumes were damaged. I thought not about how they found the energy, but how they still believe that order is possible, that a book placed on a shelf still matters, and that someone, someday, will come to read it.

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Residents and volunteers have been collecting stones and fragments from destroyed sites, salvaging manuscripts, and rescuing what they can. In the old Qissariya bazaar of Gaza City, teams removed around 240 tonnes of rubble by hand to recover 20 tonnes of historic stonework. These efforts show that what remains of Gaza’s heritage is worth preserving, and that the city cannot be reduced to a “new” version of itself. The violence inflicted upon it does not erase that history. It only makes the demand to remember it more urgent.

Kushner’s hope is contingent on investment. But hope after genocide belongs to the people who lived it — not to those who arrive with plans. While planners look at Gaza as real estate, Palestinians look at an old tile beneath the rubble as an act of existence. Before Gaza is a destination, it is a home. True reconstruction begins with recognising that they already know something the PowerPoint slides do not: a city is not built from scratch—it endures.

By Hassan Abo Qamar

I opened my phone in the morning, scrolling through the messages I had received overnight. That’s when I came across an email from the Islamic University of Gaza announcing that registration for the second semester had been extended from April 1 to April 9, along with a reduction in fees. Students could now pay an initial installment–about $200 out of $600.

I skipped the message. As if I had read nothing at all.

That might seem strange to my family, my friends - even to myself - especially since I ranked third in my class during the first semester, with a GPA of 93.7 in a demanding major like electrical engineering. But today, I’m making a decision that may sound irrational: I will not continue my university education - at least not in Gaza.

Since childhood, I’ve had an intense desire to seek out new experiences - ones that raise my adrenaline, that I could one day tell my children about, and that give life a different meaning. I used to repeat a line from a song I love: A hundred bad days make a hundred good stories.

I believed that even if studying abroad would be difficult - even “bad” at times - it would still be an experience worth having.

Studying abroad was always at the top of my dreams: a new language, a different culture, even a different kind of architecture. Since I was young, I’ve been fascinated by both European and classical Islamic architecture.

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But since the genocide began, those dreams have turned into attempts - emails sent to universities across Europe and the rest of the world. I started reaching out to universities even before finishing high school, asking about any opportunity or scholarship to continue my education. The replies almost always began with one word: Unfortunately.

In October 2025, I finally graduated from high school with a 94.6 average. I thought doors would open. They didn’t. I didn’t receive a single scholarship.

Dreams Deferred

Looking back, I wondered if I had applied too late - many universities had already started their first semester. But now, after applying to so many scholarships with no results, one question never leaves my mind: was I simply not qualified? Or has the competition become impossible?

Three or even four age cohorts - those born in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 - compete for the same scholarship. Sometimes, undergraduate and master’s students compete for just five or ten spots.

Under pressure from my family, I enrolled at the Islamic University of Gaza, in case I failed to secure a scholarship. I chose electrical engineering and began my first semester.

But I found everything - except a university education.

The university announced that classes would be held online until conditions improved, with three temporary locations available for in-person attendance across Gaza, mainly for medical and engineering students.

Due to the high cost of transportation - and because in-person learning lacked even the most basic elements - I chose to study online. There were no laboratories, no library, no cafeteria where students could meet. There was no real campus - only a collection of rented halls.

Online learning wasn’t any easier. I had to pay extra just to access co-working spaces with stable internet, because lectures were uploaded in low quality yet still consumed large amounts of data. Even then, the experience was ineffective.

So I tried attending in person.

I walked into a hall packed with around 300 students. There weren’t enough seats, and some students had to stand throughout the lecture. It wasn’t even a university hall, but a wedding venue rented temporarily. Many students could barely see the board. There were no desks, so we wrote on our laps. The microphone barely worked, and the professor’s voice kept cutting out.

I couldn’t adapt. I went back to online learning - but that proved no easier. How can I study from a lecture recorded five years ago, with no interaction? I couldn’t ask the professor questions, couldn’t discuss ideas with classmates, couldn’t even confirm whether my solutions were correct.

A friend told me things would get better, so my curiosity pushed me to try again. But this time, the hall was nearly empty - only about 20 students.

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Between the beginning and the end of the semester, most students had disappeared - some unable to handle overcrowding, others unable to balance studying with the realities of daily life in Gaza, and many simply unable to afford transportation.

This time, I could ask the professor questions. But it no longer felt like a university - it felt like a private lesson.

An Education Crisis

None of this is due to a lack of effort from universities in Gaza. They are trying to continue under impossible conditions. With around 58,000 high school graduates, institutions have been forced to absorb unprecedented numbers of students, even as most facilities remain destroyed or unusable.

The Islamic University - once among the top universities in Palestine - can no longer provide even the most basic elements of education. Other universities, like Al-Azhar, Al-Quds, and Palestine University, are not in much better condition.

And because of the lack of funding and support, tuition fees remain largely unchanged. Even before the genocide, they were already a burden due to limited job opportunities and low wages. Now, with widespread unemployment and rising costs of basic needs like food and shelter, university education has become a luxury.

Many high-achieving students can no longer afford to continue their studies. They cannot cover tuition, transportation, books, and basic supplies on their own. After a full semester, the picture became clear to me.

What we are experiencing is not just difficulty in education - it is a true education crisis, part of a broader humanitarian emergency.

That is what led me to my decision: I will not continue into the second semester. Instead, I returned to searching for opportunities abroad. I sent dozens of applications and managed to secure offers from universities in Italy, Germany, the UK, and France.

But acceptance means nothing without the ability to pay. Some universities in the UK asked for as much as £33,000. Even in Europe, where education is more affordable, the costs remain far beyond reach. And so, like thousands of students in Gaza, our dreams begin to shrink. Until they become nothing more than a possibility. An attempt. A roll of the dice.

If it works, it could change my life. If it doesn’t, it will simply be another attempt–one of hundreds that came before and thousands that may still come after.

On March 30, Israel’s Knesset passed a new law imposing the death penalty specifically on Palestinians. Under this legislation, Israeli courts can legally execute detainees “convicted of lethal attacks” carried out with the aim of “terrorism” or “denying the existence of the State of Israel.” Notably, the same law does not apply to Israelis accused of similar crimes, reflecting an expansion of an unequal legal policy rather than a neutral security measure.

The timing of the legislation is striking. Its passage coincided with Land Day, a day dedicated to remembering the Palestinian struggle against land confiscation, honouring the steadfastness of detainees, and reviving Palestinian heritage. Instead of remembrance, the day was overshadowed by the institutionalisation of the death penalty for detainees convicted of such acts.

Israel appears to have advanced this law amid global distraction, taking advantage of the world’s preoccupation with other crises to push the legislation out of international focus. At the same time, Israeli media framed it as an urgent security necessity, reinforcing a system that limits criticism while normalising policies that raise serious human rights concerns.

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Palestinian politician and activist Mustafa Barghouti stated in an interview with Alaraby TV that tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, while many prisoners have reportedly been subjected to field executions. He also pointed to ongoing harassment by Israeli settlers, including the burning of homes, setting cars on fire, and assaults on civilians, nearly always carried out with complete impunity.

These actions, he argued, are frequently justified under terms such as “self-defence,” “collateral damage,” and “war victims.” Within this broader context, the new legislation does not stand alone, but represents a deeper expansion of an already evolving system.

Resistance Dynamics

Barghouti further suggested that such policies may be intended to extinguish Palestinian resistance. However, from a logical perspective, when individuals are left with no option but death while defending what has been taken from them, such conditions are more likely to intensify resistance rather than suppress it.

From a human perspective, opposition to this law extends far beyond political disagreement. It reflects a fundamental concern over the erosion of the right to life itself. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) warned that the legislation is discriminatory and incompatible with international law, raising serious concerns about violations of both the right to life and the guarantees of a fair trial.

Building on this, Amnesty International described the law as “a display of cruelty and discrimination,” cautioning that it does not merely introduce the death penalty, but significantly expands its scope within a system already criticised for its lack of accountability. The organisation emphasised that such measures risk normalising irreversible punishment in a context where justice itself is under question.

Similarly, Human Rights Watch highlighted that the structure of the law effectively embeds a dual system of justice, where legal outcomes are shaped not only by actions but by identity. According to the organisation, this reinforces a long-standing pattern in which Palestinians are subjected to harsher legal standards, undermining the principle of equality before the law.

Judicial Risks

On the ground, the implications become even more concrete. Legal organisations such as Adalah warned that the law could institutionalise executions within a framework that already lacks sufficient safeguards, particularly in military courts. Within such courts, where procedural protections are more limited, the introduction of the death penalty raises the risk of irreversible miscarriages of justice.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society described the law as a step toward the formalisation of executions within prisons, warning that it transforms detention from a condition of confinement into one of possible annihilation.

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In parallel, the Arab Organisation for Human Rights framed the law as a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, emphasising that it reflects not only a legal shift, but a moral one—where the line between justice and punishment becomes increasingly blurred.

Taken together, these perspectives do not merely oppose a single piece of legislation. They highlight a broader transformation in which law is no longer simply a restraint on power, but a mechanism through which power is exercised. In such a context, the question is no longer whether justice is being served, but whether the very definition of justice is being reshaped.

Family Impact

The families of detainees began protesting in front of Red Cross headquarters in the West Bank from the moment the legislation was enacted. From waiting for a phone call or visit from their detained relatives to enduring delays or cancellations under the new law, the uncertainty has been overwhelming.

My friend Hamza Al-Saka, the son of a former detainee, recounted that waiting for his father during imprisonment was a form of torment. No information was certain—was his father in good health? Was he being mistreated or tortured? Was he even alive? Such uncertainty, he explained, consumed families from the inside.

Detainees inside prisons are not only stripped of their freedom but must also struggle for every basic right. Since October 7, 2023, thousands of Palestinians have been detained by Israeli authorities. Many have been held without clear charges and with limited access to legal support. Reports describe harsh treatment, including prolonged sleep deprivation, restricted movement, and limited access to food and water. Some detainees have also reported intimidation and mistreatment.

In such a reality, death is no longer feared solely as punishment, but is sometimes perceived as a final release from unbearable conditions.

Ultimately, the consequences of such legislation are not measured only in legal texts, but in human lives. What emerges is not simply a debate over policy, but a deeper question about justice itself—how it is defined, who it serves, and whether it can remain meaningful under conditions of inequality.

Lying with my shaking, fragile body on a dilapidated mattress under my favourite blue blanket in our house’s guest room, I video-called my friend Abdul-Ruhman Ismail to bid farewell and make some final memories before I set foot outside Gaza for the first time in my life. He was inconsolable. Behind his cheerful façade lay an ocean of pain and loss: this was the first time we would be apart in over 12 years.

“I’ll see you in an hour and a half at the roundabout [in Deir al-Balah], from where we will head off. For now, I’ll spend some time with my family and pack up my belongings,” I told him before hanging up.

My mother came to sit beside me, trying to lighten the hardship of leaving. Her face blanched; her eyes burned with sadness and agony. She was no longer the same mother I had known my entire life. I held her hand tightly and said, choking with sorrow, “I am leaving because I want to see you safe and happy all the time. I don’t want to endanger you anymore. I am going to be fine and I promise we’ll meet sooner than we imagine. Please don’t shed a tear because if you do, I will stay.”

She replied, with a broken expression, “May you find peace and joy in your next journey.”

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Minutes later, the sounds of explosions reverberated through the calls to the dawn prayers. I paused at the window, breathing in the gunpowder-polluted dawn breeze. I knew this would be the last time I’d hear these ugly sounds of death in Gaza for a while.

The clock was ticking. My mother was rushing me to hurry up and get ready. I took my four pens, my journalistic notebook, two sets of clothes, and my personal documentation and squeezed them into my travel bag. We were only permitted to bring one small bag, although I wish I could have brought much more. I felt that possessions from home could soften the impact of this imposed exile. But the occupation wanted us stripped of everything.

Saying Goodbye

I dressed, performed the dawn prayers, and took photos with each member of my family and of every room of our home. I had no idea what would happen next, but I stayed hopeful. My home was pregnant with a heavy silence before we made our last, but hopefully not final, goodbye.

The fear that I would be detained by the occupation ate at our hearts as I hugged everyone tight. A taxi we had reserved days in advance was waiting outside to take me to the assembly point downtown. My father, two brothers, and my two friends Khalid and Ismail came with me. I took a long, hard look at my house, my neighbourhood, and the olive and palm trees. I wanted the images fixed in my brain. I whispered to myself, “I will return. I definitely will.”

My mother came downstairs barefoot, her headscarf barely hanging on her head and tears filling up her eyes. I looked at her and reiterated my promise to her: “I will return. I will see you in a short time. I want you to smile, mommy.” But I doubt she could make out my attempt at a smile with her tearful eyes peering through the cracked car windows.

We met Ismail at the assembly point and took more photos. We exchanged laughs and smiles as we tried to lighten the mood and deny the enormity of what was happening. Then I boarded the bus that would take me outside Gaza for the first time in my 22 years.

We travelled through historic Palestine, the first time I had seen my occupied and defiled homeland with my own eyes, to the Israeli-controlled Karm Abu-Salem border with Jordan. There, I spent the night with other Palestinians from Gaza, mostly students, who had been given the same opportunity as me to escape the genocide. The next day, I took a plane to Turkey for a layover before arriving at my final destination of Dublin, Ireland. It was 18 April 2025.

Forced Adaptation

The genocide was continuing at the time. I had experienced the whole horror from the beginning - and at some point I stopped feeling sane. The only time I felt my old self was for a brief moment when the October 2025 ceasefire was announced.

But the process of adapting to Ireland has not been easy. In fact, adjusting to my new existence has been utterly torturous. Speaking a foreign language all the time, meeting and trying to connect with new people, and endeavouring to understand a new and alien culture, have exhausted my emotional energy. In normal times, this would have been exciting, but with the weight of my trauma-marked brain and fears of what might happen to my family and friends still in Gaza, it has been a struggle, to say the least.

In reality, my mind and my soul never left Gaza. It was just my physical body that moved. There was a brief moment at the start when I felt like I had been taken from hell to heaven, but the initial euphoria quickly dissipated.

One thing that kept me going through this all was that I knew I had to continue advocating for my homeland and amplifying my people’s voices despite the innumerable obstacles. I felt this responsibility heavy on me, and there was no time to rest.

But, despite throwing myself into work and immersing myself in the pro-Palestine movement in Ireland, I still always feel like an alien. In many ways I am. I am away from my family and navigating a totally new, different life. At the same time, my mission is to prove to people composed of the same blood and skin as me that my people deserve to live like them, with dignity and basic rights. This mission has never felt normal - and, of course, it should not be.

Walking in the streets of Dublin, pausing by the winding Liffey river, beholding the gorgeous scenery of the city—none of it moved me or took me away from the continuing genocide of my people. I was striving to steal a moment of joy or happiness, but my heart was turned off. The overriding emotion was, and is, numbness. What I have seen in Gaza seems to have frozen the blood in my veins.

But what hurt the most was observing the people around me. I couldn’t comprehend how friends would walk and laugh in the street, drinking a Coke, while tens of thousands of people were murdered in Gaza. I couldn’t understand how people went out to a McDonald’s to enjoy a meal while kids were starving to death in my hometown, or how university students would walk happily back home from their classes while all universities in the Strip were reduced to rubble. How was everyone getting on with their lives as if nothing was happening?

I asked myself, “How and why can people do this? Are all the protests for Palestine on TV and social media just a façade? What if, God forbid, one of their loved ones was killed or injured? Would they be able to carry on living in such a way?”

Alien Life

I couldn’t answer these questions, but I was intent on understanding. As my advocacy for Gaza intensified, I was speaking at the huge Palestine marches in Dublin as well as solidarity conferences in different Irish towns. I even visited the UK and Greece while giving various addresses to people online, including Americans and Canadians.

Gaza is in me - and I cannot help comparing the outside world to home. In Dublin, every morning, the streets are inundated with people rubbing the sleep from their eyes and dashing to their workplaces. There are buses and trains transporting students to their universities and schools, and seagulls screeching across the waters.

Not once did I see an old man or woman carrying heavy things and someone come to help them. Never did someone in their car stop to take me back home as I was drowning in a downpour. Rarely have I observed youngsters taking care of or accompanying their parents. I haven’t witnessed parents playing with their kids or spending enough time with them either. Everyone is busy with their phones instead.

The elderly are like autumn leaves here, fragile and breakable. Adults are hamsters in a wheel. Youths are exploited as robots. Children raised by screens. Everyone seemed busy surviving, but not living.

All that I saw was a favour or a service in return for money. Nothing is free. These scenes broke my heart and opened my eyes to the shackles imposed by capitalism which turns people into individualistic and materialistic machines. I realised that people in the West are physically free but mentally occupied. They can’t think beyond survival and making more money.

Real survival

The idea of “survival” I had imagined in Gaza was incomplete. No one told me how people must work ten hours a day to survive, how they must spend years paying off their debts, how they are ensnared in invisible slavery, or how they are being dragged off to prison for criticising Israel or speaking their mind.

In Gaza, I always spoke my mind: I excoriated my killers and their partners and supported my people’s right to self-defence and the resistance fighters every chance I could. I never thought twice about that despite the constant bombardment overhead. Outside Gaza, I was being warned not once or twice but countless times about what I should say or how I should act. In pre-genocide Gaza, despite the crippling blockade, one day’s work could feed my family and me the entire month, healthcare was free in hospitals, and people would voluntarily stop to help me all the time without even asking for it. This wasn’t because resources are plentiful but because we believe in community and see ourselves as one.

During the genocide, I was hearing the barbarians telling me about the merits of “civilisation” and the tyrants teaching me about so-called “democracy”. The world is upside down. Nations that claim to represent democracy and civilisation engage in acts of horrific terrorism and barbarism, including genocide, while nations that are deemed uncivilised are the ones that stand up for these ideals.

Silent Control

Outside Gaza, my posts are monitored. My words are surveilled. At home, I didn’t fear death for saying the truth. But outside Gaza, I have to diligently choose my words and carefully curate my posts. “You can’t say that”; “Choose your words when you speak on Wednesday”; and, “Don’t ever bring the genocide into the conversation.” I still remember these different orders I received before speaking at events across the West. Even some events were not filmed or publicised in case I said something that was deemed too “risky”. Others were cancelled. I was due to travel to the US in August last year but was put on a watch list by the Trump administration and labeled as a “terror-supporting” journalist, so I had to cancel. This is all because I supported an internationally enshrined right: The right to resist an illegal occupation.

So, is this actually the democracy they told me about? Wasn’t I repeatedly told that Gaza was a graveyard for freedom of speech and that it must be freed from Hamas “tyranny”? None of it adds up.

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It was a surreal experience watching the UK government lock up elderly and disabled people for holding placards opposing a genocide, then reading about hundreds of people shackled up and deported from the US over some old posts. In Germany, I saw police officers manhandling and degrading women. This was the “free” West. The “civilised” West that gives billions of dollars for Israel to continue its genocide in Gaza and mass murder of innocent civilians across the region.

I no longer call them “democracies” because what they have done is more reminiscent of authoritarian dictatorships of the past.

I also find it astonishing that there isn’t a single Western government that doesn’t financially or militarily back Israel. It is astounding that even though every country has a diverse political spectrum and a wide range of opinions, they never disagree on supporting Israel. The Democratic and Republican parties in the US may quarrel with each other over free health care and LGBTQ+ rights, but never on Israel. Labour and Reform politicians have been shouting at each other non-stop around the recent elections but not about stopping arms sales to Israel. There is a secret here that no one can dispute: these nations’ elections are a deceptive charade in which voters have farcical rights to cast ballots in elections where the same people win whoever is voted into power.

Inner War

Every trip I took on my journey was exhausting and cumbersome. Aerophobia is always present. A feeling of terror and trauma hits me whenever I even see a plane. They remind me of the warplanes that wiped out the entire families of my cousin and aunt - and razed my neighbourhood to the ground.

Every time I met new people, my heart got more vulnerable and my mind got more fatigued. My heart is still beating at home. My head only thinks about my family. A minute of news on the radio has always been capable of destroying everything. The constant anxiety this produces is insurmountable.

How can I even feel sane when I attend prayers in Dublin and London’s mosques and there is no mention of Gaza? How can I believe there is a Muslim ummah when they drink, eat, and have fun while an entire population is being slaughtered and caged as animals? And what can I say about the thousands of Palestinians in the diaspora who were sharing their trips and food images on social media while people were being mass murdered while queuing up for food at GHF sites in Gaza? The contradictions, the separation between two worlds, which are both still human, is driving me insane. More fundamentally, it makes me wonder if there is any hope for humanity.

Endless Nights

Every other day, nightmares jolt me awake — visions of bombings, of being killed, of eating pet food again, and losing the people I love. I grit my teeth whenever I watch the news. Sometimes I weep, and I weep for hours.

My heart feels like a shattered jar, filled with conflicting emotions. I feel guilty whenever someone is killed or wounded in Gaza. I feel constant fear for my family. I feel ashamed when I drink pure water and eat good food. I feel homesick whenever I walk outside or behold the beauty of nature. I feel remorseful and angry that I took the agonising decision to leave my family behind.

I miss my parents deeply. More than anything, I want to be with them again. This sense of longing has followed me all year. Nothing in this exhausting, superficial life—layered with fear and trauma and dehumanising work—ever relieved my pain. The promise of freedom and survival is a mirage which always disappears when I reach for it.

I have been emotionally dead, which has also physically devastated me. Survival is never only physical. Freedom is also not wholly a physical condition. It is also mental. In Gaza, death may have been raining on me, but I felt like a true survivor — my mind was not colonised. In exile, I am now fighting for the dignity and freedom of my mind more than anything.

In Gaza, families cling to faith and fragile moments of joy while war strips away the rituals of ordinary life.

The streets that were once filled with children carrying balloons and families returning from morning prayers are now lined with rubble, tents and hungry faces. The smell that once marked Eid – grilled meat shared between neighbours and relatives – has disappeared, replaced by dust, smoke and the stench of destruction.

For the third consecutive year, many Palestinians in Gaza are being deprived not only of safety and dignity, but also of two of Islam’s most sacred traditions: Hajj and the Eid sacrifice.

Across the Muslim world, millions of pilgrims are gathering in Mecca dressed in white ihram, answering the call of God with the talbiyah: “Here I am, O Allah.” They circle the Kaaba, stand on Mount Arafat and pray for forgiveness, mercy and renewal.

In Gaza, we watch them through shattered phone screens under torn tents.

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Many of us do not even have enough food to survive, let alone the ability to travel for pilgrimage. Border closures, siege and war have turned what should be a religious right into an impossible dream.

For years before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza already faced severe restrictions on movement. Travelling to perform Hajj often depended on waiting lists, permits and border openings that could close without warning. Elderly people spent decades saving money for “the journey of a lifetime”, unsure if they would ever leave Gaza alive.

Now, after months of relentless destruction, the idea of Hajj feels even more distant.

Entire families who once hoped to perform pilgrimage together have been wiped out. Homes where relatives gathered to celebrate returning pilgrims no longer exist. Some who spent years saving for Hajj used that money instead to buy bread, medicine or tents for survival.

Others were killed before their names were ever called. In Gaza today, even grief has become unfinished.

Vanished Sacrifice

Eid al-Adha is supposed to commemorate sacrifice, faith and mercy. Families traditionally slaughter sheep and distribute meat to relatives and the poor so nobody goes hungry during the holiday.

But in Gaza, there are barely any sheep left to sacrifice.

The war has devastated agriculture and livestock. Prices for animals that survived became impossibly high long ago. Many families have not eaten meat for months. Children who once waited excitedly to watch the Eid sacrifice now stand in endless lines for water or flour.

This year, countless parents will once again invent distractions so their children do not ask why there is no meat and no celebration.

The deprivation cuts deeper because Eid in Gaza was never only about food. It was about community. About neighbours exchanging meat. About grandparents gathering grandchildren after prayer. About women preparing meals together late into the night such as Sumaqiyah. About hearing takbirat echo from mosques before dawn.

Now many mosques themselves lie in ruins.

There is a particular cruelty in being denied not only life’s necessities, but also the rituals that make suffering bearable.

Religion in Gaza has become one of the few remaining spaces where people try to hold onto meaning. Yet even worship is constantly interrupted by siege and violence. We pray beside destruction. We break our fast to the sound of drones. We celebrate Eid while counting the martyrs amid the so-called ceasefire.

Returning Life

And yet, this Eid carries something unfamiliar to Gaza after so much devastation: fragments of life returning.

The streets, though scarred, are filled with movement again. Lights flicker between broken walls, laughter rises hesitantly at first, then with growing courage. The air carries contradictions — the sweetness of baked maamoul intertwined with the lingering scent of smoke, joy brushing against grief, hope threading itself through exhaustion. It is not a perfect Eid. It is something far more profound: a stubborn, defiant Eid.

For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, we touched the essence of the holiday again. Not fully, not without ache — but enough to remember who we are. Markets open with fragile determination. Vendors arrange what little they have, stretching scarcity into abundance through sheer will. Families walk among the stalls calculating every coin, every purchase weighed not just in currency but in dignity.

The scent of kahk and maamoul drifts through alleys and broken doorways. Women bake with hands that had known both tenderness and loss, shaping dough into memory, into continuity. Recipes passed down through generations became more than food — they became resistance. Each pastry whispers: we are still connected to what came before, and no force can sever that thread.

Family Return

This Eid carries a rare and sacred gift: the return of togetherness. Families scattered by genocide and displacement found their way back to one another. Not all, not whole — but enough to fill homes and tents with warmth again. The embrace of a loved one after months, sometimes years, of separation carried a weight words could not hold.

Eid became an almost physical presence — something you can hear, smell and nearly touch. It lives in the distant echo of takbirat rising from damaged mosques, in melodies drifting through the night, in the hum of life returning, however briefly, to a familiar rhythm.

Everyone expresses joy in their own way, as though each smile itself was an act of healing. Children run through shattered streets in bright clothes that defied the greyness surrounding them. Their laughter rang out — pure, unburdened, miraculous. They clutch chocolates and sweets like treasures, their happiness unfiltered, their resilience instinctive.

The weight of reality never fully left us. The streets, though alive again, remain fractured. Transportation is scarce, movement limited not only by destruction but by unbearable cost. Prices have soared beyond reason, turning basic necessities into burdens. Even eidiya — the small gifts that once brought children such delight — feels painfully out of reach for many families.

Gaza lives in this constant tension: between what is and what should be. Between joy and grief, presence and absence, resilience and exhaustion.

Joy here is not accidental. It is deliberate. It is chosen again and again in the face of everything that argues against it. The smiles on children’s faces are not naïve — they are powerful. Family gatherings are not ordinary — they are sacred. The sharing of sweets and coffee is not simple hospitality — it is symbolism.

These are acts of defiance.

They are declarations that Gaza is more than its suffering. That Palestinians are more than victims. That life, even in its most fragile form, remains worthy of celebration.

Closed Borders

Faith persists, even when dignity is systematically stripped away. But faith should not require surviving starvation and bombardment.

Nor should millions of Muslims accept as normal the reality that an entire population remains cut off from pilgrimage and deprived of even the ability to perform Eid sacrifices.

Hajj symbolises equality among Muslims. Wealth, nationality and status disappear before Allah as pilgrims stand together in white garments.

Yet Palestinians in Gaza remain isolated behind closed borders and military siege, excluded not by faith, but by politics and violence.

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There is deep pain in watching the Muslim world celebrate Eid while Gaza buries its martyrs and starves and struggles.

Not because we envy others their joy, but because we remember what joy once felt like ourselves.

I remember Eids before the genocide: my mother preparing food before sunrise, children wearing new clothes, families visiting one another after prayer. I remember the excitement when someone returned from Hajj carrying Zamzam water and dates from Mecca. Entire neighbourhoods would gather to welcome them home.

Today, many of those neighbourhoods no longer exist.

Human Continuity

What remains in Gaza today is not only siege, displacement and death, but the slow erasure of the ordinary rituals through which people remember they are human.

The destruction of homes can be counted. The number of martyrs can be counted. Even the starvation can be measured in statistics and aid reports. But there is another loss that escapes numbers entirely: the loss of continuity, of tradition, of the small sacred moments that once stitched life together.

When people are denied Hajj, denied Eid, denied even the ability to offer sacrifice or gather safely for prayer, they are being denied more than religious practice. They are being denied participation in the shared rhythm of the Muslim world itself.

And yet, despite everything, Gaza still whispers the talbiyah in its own way.

It rises from mothers baking what little bread they can over firewood. From fathers trying to buy second-hand clothes so their children can still feel Eid arriving. From displaced families gathering beneath tents to recite takbirat over the sound of drones. From survivors who continue praying over bodies pulled from rubble because there are no cemeteries left untouched.

This is what the world often fails to understand about Gaza: Palestinians are not only fighting for survival. They are fighting to preserve memory, faith and the right to remain human under conditions designed to strip all three away.

Endless Sacrifice

Eid al-Adha commemorates Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice what was most precious to him. But Gaza today has been forced into endless sacrifice without mercy, without relief and without end.

An entire population has sacrificed homes, families, safety, futures and now even the rituals meant to help endure grief itself.

Hajj teaches Muslims that no believer stands above another. Eid al-Adha teaches mercy, solidarity and the obligation to feed the hungry.

Yet as pilgrims circle the Kaaba and Muslims gather around tables heavy with food, Gaza remains sealed behind rubble, hunger and mass graves.

The contradiction should disturb the conscience of the world. Because what is unfolding in Gaza is not only the destruction of buildings and lives, but the forced isolation of an entire people from the collective rituals through which Muslims experience dignity, belonging and spiritual equality.

Still, Palestinians continue to pray. Continue to fast. Continue to whisper the talbiyah beneath drones and bombardment.

Not because life in Gaza is sacred to the world, but because it remains sacred to those forced to survive it.

And perhaps that is what Israel’s war has failed to destroy: the stubborn insistence of Palestinians on remaining human, faithful and visible even as everything around them disappears.

In an age of madness, war, and the rise of fascist and racist currents, the world’s need grows greater to know about inspiring individuals—people who dedicated their lives to spreading love, who possessed nothing but words and faith to resist oppression, and who left behind a legacy of light.

For this reason, I share the story of Rozan al-Najjar.

Rozan was a young Palestinian volunteer paramedic in Gaza. She worked tirelessly to save the lives of those injured by Israeli snipers during the Great March of Return. While trying to save others, she herself was killed by the Israeli soldiers, becoming an icon of that movement.

I tell Rozan’s story not only because it is inspiring, but because the world needs more people like her.

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In Gaza, I was among those who initiated the call for the Great March of Return in 2018. What began as an idea quickly turned into a mass movement, with more than one hundred thousand Palestinians participating in nonviolent demonstrations near the separation fence over nearly two years.

The protesters carried no weapons. Their tools were peaceful gathering, cultural activities, and collective presence. Their aim was to protest the slow suffocation imposed on Gaza and to demand the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Protest Days

On the evening of Friday, June 1, 2018, I returned home after participating in the demonstrations for the tenth consecutive Friday. The protests were held at five main locations along the separation fence.

That day, I had been at Malaka Square, east of Gaza City. As I headed home, I felt some relief. There had been no immediate reports of casualties, and the day seemed calmer than previous Fridays, which had often been marked by deadly repression by the Israeli occupation army.

But that feeling did not last.

When I opened social media, I was met with a flood of posts mourning Rozan. It was the first time I had heard her name. Yet people were not writing, “A nurse was killed.” They were writing, “Rozan was killed.” It was clear she was already deeply known.

That night, her words spread widely: “I am in the field to save the lives of my people. I began my journey here, and I will end it here. I work with courage and determination. I receive no salary, nor do I expect reward or thanks. It is enough that God rewards me.”

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In a previous interview, Rozan explained that she had been present in Khuzaʿa, east of Khan Younis, from the very first day of the Great March on March 30, 2018. She worked continuously from early morning until late evening, treating around 170 injuries in a single day—30 caused by live ammunition.

She described one of her hardest moments: treating two critically injured people at once. After saving one, she returned to the other—only to find that he had died before she could reach him.

Despite such experiences, she never left the field.

Relentless Courage

Rozan’s dedication was absolute. From the beginning of the protests, she remained in the field without interruption, driven by a deep sense of purpose.

In another interview, she said: “I fainted from tear gas. When I woke up in the ambulance, I panicked and begged them to let me go back. I did not come to be treated—I came to treat others.”

On that occasion, her wrist had been broken. Her colleagues tried to take her to the hospital so she could rest and receive treatment. She refused—even refusing to have her hand properly set—because she feared it would prevent her from continuing her work.

She summarised her mission in one powerful sentence: “Without weapons, we can do anything.” These words captured the spirit of the movement—and her own belief in nonviolent resistance.

The day after her killing, I attended her funeral and visited her family home in Khan Younis. Her mother stood before cameras holding Rozan’s bloodstained medical vest and said: “This is Rozan’s weapon—the one she carried, and for which Israel killed her.”

Rozan came from a poor refugee family originally from the village of Salama, from which they were forcibly displaced by Zionist militias in 1948. Her dream was to return there one day, and this dream was one of the motivations behind her participation in the March of Return.

From childhood, she dreamed of becoming a doctor. Poverty prevented her from achieving this dream, but her determination to help others never faded.

She enrolled in a first aid course and saved her small allowance until she could buy a medical kit. Once she had it, she went directly to the field to help the wounded.

Her compassion was evident from a young age. She constantly thought about the poor and the marginalised. She once told her mother that she wished she had enough money so that no one would be in need—that she could make all poor people happy.

She would cry during holidays, upset that some families could afford multiple outfits while others could not afford even one.

Her sense of justice developed early. While watching a historical film, she was deeply affected by a scene showing the torture of Bilal. She asked her mother whether he was being tortured because of his faith or because he was Black—revealing a deep awareness of injustice.

Her mother once asked her, half-jokingly, if she intended to solve all the world’s problems alone. Rozan replied: “Aren’t these poor people human beings just like us?”

Enduring Legacy

Rozan’s kindness extended into every aspect of her life. She shared everything she had. If she ate something outside the home, she would save part of it to bring back to her family.

She cared for her younger siblings as if she were their mother—watching over them at the beach, giving up her own enjoyment to ensure their safety, and covering them at night while they slept.

One day, as a child, she overheard her father saying he had no money to feed the family. She began to cry and then offered him her small savings—just a few dollars—insisting he take it to help support the household.

She rejected gossip and judgment. If anyone spoke badly about others, she would object strongly, asking: “Are you gods to judge people?”

She also avoided attention. Her mother recalled that she would cut interviews short and run back toward the sound of gunfire if she thought someone might need help. She used to say:
“I do not want people to know me. I want God to know me.”

After her death, I visited her Facebook page, reading her posts to understand her spirit. Her writing was sincere, sensitive, and deeply aligned with justice. She consistently expressed solidarity with the poor and rejected injustice.

Her final post, written on May 31—just hours before she was killed—read: “Your conscience will be comforted as long as God knows your intention. Be good.”

Deep Loss

Her loss deeply affected people. Even months later, her story continued to resonate.

Investigations, including one by The New York Times in collaboration with Forensic Architecture, concluded that she was shot by an Israeli sniper while clearly identifiable as a medic and that neither she nor those around her posed any threat.

Yet even without such investigations, Palestinians know this reality intimately, having lived under decades of violence and loss.

In 2019, while I was visiting the United States, I stayed with an American Jewish woman. I arranged a phone call between her and Rozan’s mother. During the call, the woman broke down in tears and asked: “Why does Israel commit these acts in our name?”

Rozan’s life raises painful questions—but also offers a powerful answer. She lived a short life, but one filled with meaning. She devoted herself entirely to helping others, embodying compassion, dignity, and selflessness. She was present in this world, yet carried a spirit that seemed beyond it.

Rozan is an icon of beauty and purity. Israel hates beauty because it reminds it of its ugliness. There is nothing uglier than establishing a murderous, racist, colonial regime. She showed us that even in a world torn apart by violence, injustice, and hatred, it is still possible to choose love. And in doing so, she left behind something enduring: Proof that without weapons, we can still change the world.

On March 30, 2026, Israel’s Knesset passed a law allowing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. This moment forces a critical question: Does international law still apply in Palestine? Increasingly, it feels as though the answer is no.

As many hoped for international pressure to prevent such a decision, the Knesset passed the bill by 62 votes to 48. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally attended the vote, while far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated its passage. For Palestinian prisoners and their families, this vote did not mark a new beginning: it felt like an irreversible continuation of suffering.

I am not shocked that Palestinians continue to be killed; they have been targeted for years. Children have died in hospitals, journalists have been killed while doing their work, and even as I write this, I receive another notification: a Palestinian woman named Rawan has been killed in central Gaza. Palestinians have been killed in their homes, in the streets, in hospitals, and in schools. And now, it seems, they will also be killed in prisons.

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Israel currently holds approximately 9,500 Palestinian prisoners, about half of whom are detained without charge. Among them are between 53 and 75 women and roughly 350 to 450 children. Since October 2023, following Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the number of detainees has risen significantly, with men arrested at checkpoints, in hospitals, and from their homes.

Human Stories

I feel sorrowful even mentioning prisoners as numbers, because each one carries a story, a life interrupted. Palestinian prisoners have spent years waiting to embrace freedom, to return to their families, their children, and their land. Yet this law replaces that hope with the threat of punishment and death.

Since the announcement, I have found myself thinking constantly of the prisoners and their families. How do they feel? Are they afraid, or have years of imprisonment dulled their sense of fear? Has death become easier to face than life under constant control?

I have written before about conditions inside Israeli prisons. I once spoke with a relative who endured months of detention, and through his account, I began to understand the reality inside: the darkness, the hunger, the deprivation of basic human needs. His story is only one among many. He is free now, but countless others remain—elderly men, women, children—living unseen lives behind prison walls, their stories unheard.

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Perhaps this decision was expected—those capable of genocide seem capable of anything—but its reality is still overwhelming. Unbelievable. Unbearable. How can someone wait years to reunite with loved ones, only to face the possibility of execution? How can the human mind absorb such a shock?

If this law is implemented, it will mark not only a legal shift but a profound failure of international law. It will send a message that human rights do not apply in Palestine: that Palestinians are excluded from protections meant for all humanity. Justice, in this context, appears to depend not on law, but on identity.

I still remember when Al-Ahli Arab Hospital was targeted in 2024. I told my mother, “The world will stop this—they cannot violate international law like this.” But what followed proved how wrong I was. In that moment, I understood something devastating: we exist outside the protections of human rights, as if those rights were never meant for us.

Legal Framework

The Third Geneva Convention establishes clear legal standards: prisoners of war must be treated humanely at all times and cannot be punished without fair and lawful trials. Articles 13, 14, 17, 87, and 99 to 108 reinforce these protections, making it evident that imposing the death penalty in such contexts is neither lawful nor acceptable.

Yet despite these clear rules, reality suggests otherwise. The law itself states that the death penalty applies to those who cause the death of an Israeli citizen out of hateful motives or intent to harm Israel. But this raises an unavoidable question: why does this not apply equally to Israelis who kill Palestinians?

If such a law exists, why are soldiers who have admitted to killing children—such as Hind Rajab—not subject to the same consequences?

Following the vote, Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrated with champagne, declaring that anyone who takes a life would have theirs taken in return. His words framed the law as justice—but for many, it reflects something else entirely.

I spent that night watching the news and scrolling through endless discussions online. My thoughts kept returning to my cousin and her young son. After much hesitation, I sent her a message, trying to reassure her: “Be strong, your husband will be okay.”

She is only 22 years old. She was married just months before the war began. Her son is about to turn three. Her husband was detained in 2024 at Al-Ouda Hospital and later transferred to Ofer Prison, one of the harshest facilities since October 2023.

Waiting Life

She counts the days until she can see him again, holding onto hope alone. When a ceasefire was announced, she told me, “I will prepare a tent for us to live together.” She shows her husband’s photo to her son, trying to keep his memory alive.

“My heart breaks when my son sees other children with their fathers—he thinks he doesn’t have one,” she told me.

For nearly two years, she has lived between hope and despair, waiting for his return. Now, this law threatens to take even that hope away. Her story is just one among thousands—9,500 lives suspended in uncertainty.

Voices Heard

“I embrace from the womb of death, from the heart of suffering,” said Naji Al-Jafarawi, who was released in October 2025. Speaking from experience, he described the harsh reality of prison life and warned of the devastating consequences this law could bring.

What deepens the sorrow is the awareness that the world may react briefly—speaking, sharing, mourning—but ultimately allowing such policies to proceed.

Awareness alone is no longer enough. The world must act—must speak, protect, and take concrete measures. The law may have passed, but the prisoners, their dreams, and their families must not be silenced.

Through this article, I call on countries across Europe and beyond to take action. Raise your voices, take to the streets, and demand that this law not be enforced. Justice and human rights must not be selective—they must be universal. For the sake of humanity, they must apply to all.