Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip — As we bid farewell to 2023 and welcome 2024, the tragic scenes of the ongoing war persist in Gaza.
Who could have predicted such vast devastation, loss of life, pain and tears? Who could have foreseen the displacement, expulsion, intimidation and suffering? Who could have predicted hunger, thirst, poverty and drought?
Since the start of the war on October 7, all the horrors and nightmares seem to have converged on our lives in the Gaza Strip.
Every day, while reporting from Al-Aqsa Hospital alongside my brother who accompanies me, we struggled to find appropriate names for this war amid the countless harrowing stories we encountered.
However, no descriptor seems adequate. An unprecedented war? A shameless war? A war against infants, hospitals and places of worship? Amid daily horrors, we agree on one term: genocide.
As we welcome the new year, like many Palestinians in Gaza, I find myself homeless, displaced with my family south, along with hundreds of thousands of others, grappling with the constant threat of further forced displacement. bigger.
At the start of the war, my apartment and the building I lived in were badly damaged by a nearby bombing. I moved into my parents’ house, which was later damaged by a nearby bombing. We then sought shelter in my husband’s family’s house, only to receive evacuation orders from the Israeli army to head south.
After going through periods of bombing, terror and relentless efforts to secure the essentials of life, our singular dream became survival and return to our homes in the North.
I clung to the hope that my damaged house would remain standing and resilient, simply in need of repairs and rebuilding so that I could inhabit it again.
However, a few days ago, on December 21, Israel declared the complete demolition of the Palestine Mosque Square, where my little house stood. Seeing the images, it was time to accept the painful truth: our entire residential building had been reduced to rubble.
It was a heartbreaking moment. We cannot cry over simple stones in the midst of the larger tragedy of the victims, the deceased, the destroyed families and the charred bodies of children. Yet, as a human being with emotions, I mourn the years of effort and the life I built – all gone.
Like millions of other Palestinians in Gaza, if we ever return to the north, we will return homeless.
My cozy apartment, my children’s memories, my belongings, all crushed under the rubble.
How many times do we have to start our lives from scratch? Who will compensate for the years lost and the efforts devoted to securing the basics of life?
The war has made us regard our siege as a paradise, the deterioration of our living conditions as a happiness of the past, and the restrictions imposed on our lives as a dream to which we aspire.
We wrote about the Nakba, without ever imagining that we would experience it. Today we experience harsher conditions than those described by our ancestors.
Sleeping on the streets and in tents, queuing for flour and water, living in darkness without electricity, hot water or basic amenities: we thirst for salt, sugar, rice and clean water.
My daughter craves chocolates, crisps and sweets, while we browse the empty supermarket shelves.
The search for infant formula has become a futile quest. We change the type of milk for our children, with tears in our eyes, as we cry to have what we need. Infants born in tents are given water and sugar due to lack of milk.
In the midst of this struggle for the details of life, war has humbled us. It has stripped us of our humanity, our dignity and our self-esteem. We find ourselves homeless, barefoot and exposed on the streets and in tents.
In the face of such adversity, we find ourselves alone, witnesses to a fight that we cannot match. Gaza lacks the resources of a superpower, unable to withstand the onslaught of massive US-funded military equipment.
I have seen extravagance in life, luxury and spending of money, but I did not expect to see extravagance in the use of weapons that destroy stones and people.
The abundant use of American weapons in Gaza – artillery, planes, tanks, quadcopters, military boats – comes at the cost of innocent lives, the majority of which are women and children.
As we close the year, nursing wounds and bidding farewell to our loved ones, there is no time for real goodbyes or tears.
Three weeks ago, my aunt, her family and her grandchildren were killed in the bombing of their six-story home. Forty-five people were killed and their bodies remained trapped under the rubble for days.
My father and I cried while offering our condolences to my only surviving cousin, who was displaced with her husband to Deir el-Balah.
She told us that no one was able to get them out because of the presence of tanks and snipers nearby. Neighbors told them they heard some of them alive screaming and pleading for help under the rubble, but they were unable to help them. Then these voices ended up fading after a few days.
This is how lives end in Gaza. This is how people are killed. They are bombed in houses, left to bleed to death under the rubble, without help. Pain gnaws at the hearts of their loved ones who helplessly watch their death.
The entire world’s failure to stop this situation shows how little our lives are valued. Our death and our murder, our shedding of blood, have become permissible.
Last night, as the world was lit up to celebrate the New Year, I lit a candle for my five-month-old child, in the darkness of continued bombing.
Our only wish is survival, an end to the war. Farewell to a sad and painful year. Long live Gaza.