We, the inhabitants of Gaza have been threatened several times. We were threatened to be “cleaned”, with mass death, with “all the hell that stands out” on us.
The fact is that we have already crossed hell. Like two million other Palestinians from Gaza, I survived the genocidal hell from October 7, 2023 to January 19, 2025.
If I have to be honest, I have not survived life. No, I survived by abandoning the “F” in life and clinging to “lie”.
The more I led, the more I supported my fragile existence.
I still remember the first lie that I said to myself. It was long before the genocide.
I remember saying to me after the Israeli aggression 2008-2009 against Gaza that I would never show something again like this war. It was a naive little lie. I witnessed the war again in 2012, and again in 2014, and again in 2021, and again in May 2023.
In the evening of October 7, 2023, I tightened my mother in her arms when she broke out crying while Israeli hunters jets pounding without discrimination the set of Gaza.
I chose to tell him that the truth: that it would be the last episode of our miserable life. I felt that we were going to die in one way or another in what was going to follow. She felt the same thing; That’s why she was crying.
But how can we exist in the total acceptance of imminent death? Human beings by nature want to live. So I started lying again.
Shortly after, when Israel bombed the Baptist hospital on October 17, killing hundreds of people, I lied. I told myself that the world would rise for Gaza and that the sun would not shine on Israeli fighter planes that bomb Gaza. It was a short -term lie. The Israeli bombing has only intensified, reaching genocidal rates.
When Israel moved me by force in December of the same year, I told myself that it would only be a few days and I would come back. When I returned in May 2024, I told myself that I would not be moved.
When I returned home after my seventh forced trip in September 2024, Israel had strongly restricted a help entry to Gaza, and I thought that the world would not let them starve. But it did. For weeks, my family and I survived the bread, the zaatar and a few cans of tuna that we had saved from our time moved to Al-Mawasi.
But by far the worst lie, I told myself that phase one in the ceasefire has entered into force. “That’s it,” I said. “The military version of the genocide is over, because what can Israel have that it has not already done?”
But basically, I knew I was lying.
I knew, like so many people in Gaza, that it was a question of knowing when and how for Israel to take over the genocide.
It did not take long before we had an indication that it was going to happen. Shortly after the start of Ramadan, Israel interrupted the entrance to all the help, triggering another famine. Two weeks later, instead of the call to Suhoor, we were awakened by the sound of a massive bombardment.
More than 400 people, including at least 100 children, were massacred in a few hours.
So now the question of knowing when answered, but that of how – remains. How many additional children will Israel kill to achieve his so-called “total” victory? How long will it take them this time to “finish work”? How much horror and misery should we endure? And how will it end this time?
Despite the life of 15 months of the genocidal war of Israel, I have no answer to these questions, because Israel surprises me with the quantity of evil in reserve. I mean, right? The last stage of the genocide? Resum of the assault while blocking all the aids and cutting water and electricity? I am afraid that Israel can still go further.
The Israeli government says that this series of attacks will continue until it recovers its captives. If that was, then what was the ceasefire for? A rest for killers of all murders?
Meanwhile, the world again issues empty condemnations and takes no measure. It failed us so many times that I have stopped counting. The least he can do is not to hold our pain and our misery for acquired, as if we were born there, as if we were programmed to suffer all the time.
I was raised in the middle of wars and I survived at 15 months of genocide, and yet I am surprised not to have developed an immunity to be feared, given the great torment that I experienced. I’m always afraid of what is to come.
While I face death once again, I want to be honest towards myself. I mean that I deserve much better life than that of Israel has imposed on me in an oppressed way. I deserve a boring life, without incident and secure, free from bombs, famine and unimaginable loss.
I don’t want to lie anymore, I want to live.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.