PALESTINE — Since October 2023, every morning, when I wake up, I do something that is harmful to my mental health, but essential. I grab my phone and open social media groups I have from Gaza. I read the breaking news from the night before.
The news is filled with horror: reports of families being killed in Gaza, tents being targeted, carpet bombardments, sometimes accompanied by graphic images and video. Often, I read the names of streets I’ve walked on and buildings I’ve passed by, and I see images of people who were once my neighbors or classmates.
This has been my routine, every day, since October 7, 2023. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I check the news again before going back to sleep.
When I read about an Israeli airstrike near my family, my heart freezes. I text family members and feel better if the message goes through. When it doesn’t, I worry until they write back. More than once, they’ve never written back.
The aid distribution sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an American foundation backed and funded by both Israel and the United States, have become known as “kill zones” in Gaza. When I learn anyone in my family goes to one, my heart freezes again, until they return. At these “kill zones,” Israeli soldiers or contractors use loudspeakers or quadcopters to give instructions on how and where to move. Then, almost every day, Israeli forces open fire at Palestinians trying to get aid, killing dozens. In August alone, 2,615 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip; according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, 1,117 of them were lining up for aid.
The Israeli military says it is planning more sites in the south of Gaza.
While a nightmare continues daily for Palestinians in Gaza, life around Palestinians living abroad goes on. We must go to work, attend to our families, run daily errands. Sometimes a random person will ask where me and my friends are from. Once they know we are from Gaza, they express rage at what is happening. Their words are another reminder of the nightmare, that I have family facing genocide. Then, they go back to their lives.
As Israel prepares to invade and destroy what remains of Gaza City, we witness the destruction of our memories of Gaza. The Israeli military is destroying every stone.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have left Gaza, but most are still there. They can’t afford to be displaced. The prices for everything needed to move and settle in the central area of Gaza or the western part of Khan Younis and survive — a car, a tent, food— have skyrocketed and fluctuated. Diesel gas was $36 a liter in late July, compared to less than $2 before Oct. 7, 2023, for example, and 40 diapers at the time cost almost $150, compared to $8.61 before the genocide began. Then, there is the fatigue and hunger from two years of Israeli bombardment and starvation.
Israel has turned our city into rubble, our beautiful memories of family gatherings into tragic ones.
My sister was murdered on August 7, along with her family. Her surviving child, Noor, 14, shared a photo of herself with her mother, father and two sisters at the beach. Now, she has fractures in her hand from the explosion that killed her family. Her life, like the lives of everyone in Gaza, has changed forever. The sea, once a place of solace, is now another reminder of a life that isn’t.
The amount of trauma we carry is too heavy to explain. Our steps feel too heavy to carry us. The people of Gaza have been through too much for any human to handle. This trauma has accumulated over 77 years of Israeli brutality. Gaza is becoming a graveyard without the luxury of graves.
At the end of August, I saw video of Palestinians who had been shot dead lying lifeless under the Gaza Valley Bridge, which connects Gaza City to central Gaza. The day before, I read about a group of young Palestinian men who had been besieged by Israeli forces who after beating them, executed them. I wondered if this was them. They were executed while trying to get aid. Their identities are now referred to as “unknown,” but they were known to their families, who had hoped they would return, with or without food.
Recently, I called my brother, Ismail, in Gaza. He answered on the fifth try. The area around him was dark; there has been no electricity in Gaza for 22 months. Gaza used to get its electricity from Egypt and Israel, in addition to the Gaza Power Plant, which Israel bombed multiple times. On October 7, 2023, per the instructions of Israel’s energy Minister Israel Katz, Israel stopped allowing fuel shipments into Gaza for the power plant. Palestinians have become dependent on solar cells for electricity.
My brother looks exhausted and gaunt. I tr y to make him laugh. Despite the horrible conditions, it is still easy to make him laugh. If he, like my other siblings, disappears, then our last memory will be laughter.
Every international humanitarian law and institution is failing.
It seems as if every family in Gaza is waiting in line for their own death.
We believe everyone in Gaza will lose their lives and that every home will be reduced to rubble. For two years, we have screamed.
Yousef Aljamal is Gaza Coordinator at the Palestine Activism Program at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Aljamal holds a doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies, is a Palestinian refugee from Gaza and is a senior non-resident scholar at the Hashim Sani Center for Palestine Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia. He has contributed to a number of books on Palestine, including Gaza Writes Back and Light in Gaza.
