I had my first nightmare about Gaza six weeks after my first deployment with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) ended in February. I dreamed that I was in the OCHA guesthouse, the walls collapsing before my eyes from the constant explosions. The smoke from the explosions filled my throat as I shouted into my laptop microphone during a coordination meeting. We were all going about our business as if nothing was happening.
When I woke up, I felt like the smoke was still choking me. I felt helpless, angry and guilty for having left Gaza. I have had many more nightmares since then, but none of them match the heartbreaking reality that the people of Gaza are experiencing.
Since October 7, more than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 87,000 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Many have suffered life-altering injuries. Some 1.9 million people, or 90 percent of the population, have been displaced; many have been displaced multiple times, as there is no safe place in Gaza.
It seems absurd to use the term “living conditions” to describe the appalling conditions faced by Palestinians in Gaza. People are not “living,” they are barely surviving. Many are forced to reside in overcrowded shelters, in ever-shrinking spaces where they are allowed to seek refuge. I have seen tents where up to five families live together under plastic sheeting or torn blankets supported by a rickety frame.
The vast majority of Gaza residents lack the most basic necessities of life, including food, water, medicine and hygiene products. Digging pits near one’s tent has become increasingly common to avoid having to search and wait for communal latrines, which are now extremely rare.
With the health system decimated, diseases, including hepatitis A, have reached unprecedented levels. The few remaining, partially functioning hospitals are receiving trauma patients on a daily basis. All the hospitals I visited were overwhelmed with wounded people, many of them children, with horrific injuries, including amputated limbs.
When I returned in April for my second deployment, the scale of the destruction seemed to have doubled since the last time I was there. I found Khan Younis virtually flattened and other mountains of rubble in the north. The bombing was relentless.
I was relieved to hear that my friends in Gaza were all doing well, although they all seemed to have aged and some had moved several times since February.
Khaled, my best friend in Gaza and a brilliant chef, visited me as soon as I told him I was coming back. I have known him for over a decade and he has always been surprisingly strong and resilient, despite multiple wars, repeated displacements and the loss of loved ones.
During this war, Khaled has already been displaced seven times. But like most Gazans, he refuses to feel sorry for himself. “I want to be the leader of Gaza,” he told me. “To make sure no one goes hungry.”
He was well on his way to realizing that dream, having set up a community kitchen in Khan Younis that was feeding thousands of people every day when an Israeli bomb flattened the city in April. I had just returned from a mission in northern Gaza when Khaled texted me what had happened and sent me a video of the area that had been hit. A little girl, bleeding, covered in debris and dust, was being carried to an ambulance. It was an unconscionable scene that had become all too common in Gaza.
In early May, Khaled’s first daughter, Aileen, celebrated her first birthday amid the deafening noise of bombs and drones. I asked Khaled if Aileen was afraid of the explosions. He laughed. “She has no idea what’s going on,” he said. Lucky little girl!
Children make up half of Gaza’s population. Since October 7, thousands have been killed and thousands more injured. Many more will forever bear the physical and mental scars of the conflict.
In al-Mawasi, where living conditions in shelters are dire, I met little Sama as she searched for clean water for her family. Finding water – like finding food – is a herculean task. There simply isn’t enough.
At least half of Gaza’s water and sanitation facilities have been damaged or destroyed during the conflict, and fuel shortages have put most wells out of service. Residents must walk several kilometres to reach a distribution point and wait for hours in the blazing sun to fill a container with clean water.
Food is scarce, with humanitarian aid entering Gaza reduced to a trickle. Any aid that does make it through is distributed in extreme insecurity. If aid is distributed at all, that is, in a context of great insecurity. Too often, humanitarian aid convoys are hindered or even blocked altogether.
Sama’s mother, Reem, and her grandparents were killed in an Israeli airstrike, leaving her father Mahmoud to care for Sama and her little brother alone.
When I met Mahmoud, he was carrying little Hassan in one arm, cradling his small body as if to protect him from danger. He held their few belongings in the other, while Sama walked a few steps ahead, carrying a jerrycan.
Recently displaced from Rafah, they had been searching for hours for a place to stay in al-Mawasi, under a blazing sun. Turned away from two shelters because there was simply no more room, they continued on their way. Where would they sleep tonight? Would they sleep? Would there be anything to eat? What would tomorrow bring them? Would there be a tomorrow? No one seemed to know.
After the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders in the south in May, Salah al-Din Street, which runs through most of the Gaza Strip, became a sea of people on the move. They moved by car, on donkey carts or simply on foot. In just one week, the streets of Rafah emptied, as quickly as they had filled up in the first weeks of the war, after the first evacuation orders pushed people south.
I left Gaza in late May, filled with anxiety and a crippling sense of guilt. Since then, I have been checking my phone obsessively, fearing the worst every time my text messages to Gaza fail to reach their destination.
Today, the fate of Gaza and its people is more uncertain than ever. Yet aid workers continue to work against all odds, day after day, in impossible conditions. And when the second check mark finally appears in my WhatsApp message, my dear friend Khaled reassures me that his work will continue, too. “I will be fine,” he says. “And I will feed people. We will rebuild our country after the war is over.”
His words remind me of the dream I had: all around us, Gaza is burning. But we keep moving forward, because it is the only choice we have.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.