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Scholasticide: Erasing Gaza's Past, Present and Future | Dr ...

2026-07-20T18:18:38Z

Scholasticide: Erasing Gaza's Past, Present and Future | Dr Abdel Razzaq Takriti

Gaza has long been recognised as one of the most educated and highly literate societies in the region, despite decades of Israeli occupation, blockade, repeated military assaults, and displacement. Palestinians, including those in Gaza, have often been described as among the world’s most highly educated refugee populations.

In this episode of Falasteeniya, Palestine Deep Dive’s Hala Hanina is joined by Dr Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Associate Professor of History and Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Arab Studies at Rice University, to examine the systematic destruction of Gaza’s education system. Together, they explore the impact of the devastation on Gaza’s universities, schools, libraries, archives, and cultural institutions, and consider what the future of education in Palestine may look like in its aftermath.

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While the West Seeks Shade, Gaza Burns Palestinian children ...

2026-07-06T09:30:45Z

While the West Seeks Shade, Gaza Burns

Palestinian children collect water in Gaza. (Photo: OCHA)

As Europe swelters under another record-breaking summer, Western headlines are dominated by a familiar genre of climate anxiety. Media outlets fill their pages with practical advice: how to transition to remote work during peak hours, how to stay hydrated, and which air conditioning units offer the best energy efficiency.

For millions living in the north of the globe, where every comfort of modern infrastructure is readily available, extreme heat is an environmental crisis managed by functional safety nets.

It is a seasonal hardship met with resources. But as Westerners seek shade, fill their glasses with clean, cold water, and plug in affordable fans, a chilling question must be asked: Has anyone stopped to think about the people of Gaza who are enduring this same Mediterranean heat without a single basic means to survive it?

Just a short distance across the Mediterranean, in the ruined landscape of the Gaza Strip, heat is not a mere weather forecast. It does not invite lifestyle adjustments. After more than 1,000 days of a cruel, systematised genocidal war, the scorching summer heat has been weaponised. It has transformed into a silent, suffocating mechanism of confinement, compounding a man-made catastrophe where even a breath of cool air is a rationed, blocked commodity.

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This is our third consecutive summer under the assault. For the vast majority of Gaza’s population, it is a summer spent trapped inside the exact same worn-out, torn plastic and canvas tents that have served as makeshift shelters for years. Over time, under the relentless sun, these materials have degraded, yet they remain the only barrier between displaced families and the sky.

According to recent reports documented on the ground by local journalists in Gaza, these plastic structures function as literal greenhouses. They trap the ambient heat, multiplying the external temperature until the air inside becomes thick, stagnant, and unbearably hot during the day.

### Air Denied

With the electricity grid completely demolished, survivors are left with no conventional means to cool themselves. In any normal corner of the world, a simple, battery-powered desk fan is a cheap, mundane appliance, costing no more than $20. In Gaza today, because of strict Israeli restrictions on the entry of basic electrical goods and batteries, that same $20 fan has been artificially driven into a state of extreme scarcity. Its price has skyrocketed to over $500, while a functional battery to operate it can cost upwards of $1,000. A fundamental tool for human survival has been rendered an unattainable luxury, leaving millions to bake in the dark.

In the vocabulary of this war, I am considered one of the lucky ones. When the heavy bombardment began, my family and I lost our [home][2] in the initial waves of destruction, in February 2024. After months of uncertainty, we eventually managed to secure a rented, damaged house in al-Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City—which, despite being damaged, at least gives us solid walls and a roof over our heads. Yet, for over a month now, sleep has become an impossibility for me.

Every night follows the exact same agonising rhythm. Fifteen minutes after I lay my head down on my worn cushion, the heat catches up with me. My skin begins to prickle, and within moments, I am drenched in sweat. The moisture quickly soaks through my clothes and saturates the thin floor mattress beneath me, rendering it hot and damp. Sleep cannot exist in these conditions. I am forced to get up from the floor and walk over to the living room window, pressing my face near the opening, desperately searching for a stray, moving breeze from the sea. Most of the time, the air outside remains flat, heavy, and warm.

So, I sit by the window for hours, staring out into the pitch-black silence of al-Rimal, waiting for the night to end. But I am never alone in this vigil. Looking down into the dark streets, I can see the silhouettes of men and young people emerging from what remains of the surrounding buildings and nearby tent clusters. Driven out by the suffocating, oven-like heat of their indoor shelters, and unable to bear the restless cries of their sweltering wives and infants, they retreat to the edges of the dirt roads. They sit on the pavements in the dead of night, staring into nothingness. It is a profound, communal silence—a gathering of fathers and brothers bound together by the crushing weight of total helplessness, unable to provide even a gust of cool air to the people they love.

We wait together for the Adhan, the call to dawn prayer. When the voice finally echoes through the ruins, people stream out toward al-Kinz Mosque, a makeshift, open-air mosque that has been set up among the debris. This dawn hour is the only fragment of the day when the temperature drops slightly, and the air feels remotely breathable.

### Dawn Vigil

The moment the prayer concludes, the spiritual quiet dissolves into the heavy prose of survival. The conversation among neighbours never varies; everyone recounts, with exhausting detail, how they managed to endure the furnace of the previous night. My heart aches the most during these morning gatherings when I look at the elderly. Their frail bodies, already weakened by years of malnutrition, psychological trauma, and lack of medical care, can barely withstand the physical stress of this seasonal torment.

By 6am, the brief reprieve of the dawn is gone, and the sun begins its rapid ascent. This is when I usually run into the local children, including 13-year-old Kareem al-Shorafa. Kareem is bright, but his eyes carry the permanent shadows of chronic exhaustion. Every single morning, without fail, he greets me with the same update.

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He never tires of describing how he couldn’t sleep a single wink the night before. He tells me how the air inside his family’s tent felt like heavy steam, and how the mosquitoes and flies—unleashed in millions by the completely destroyed sewage networks and accumulated waste—swarmed their small living space. He shows me the angry, red welts left on his skin and tells me about the infants in the camp who cry continuously through the night, their small bodies covered in heat rashes and insect bites.

The desperate struggle to mitigate this heat dictates every hour of our daytime existence. Water, like air, has been weaponised. Whenever a freshwater filling truck manages to enter the district, the scene is immediate and frantic. Dozens of exhausted residents line up under the blinding sun, holding plastic jerrycans, waiting to secure just a few precious litres of drinking water.

### Stolen Relief

But the children do not just wait for water to drink. They crowd around the sides of the truck, looking up at the driver with flushed faces and sticky hair, begging him to splash a few drops of water directly over their heads. When the truck finally drives away, you can see the children lingering, laughing, and playing in the tiny mud puddles left behind on the scorched ground. It is a heartbreaking sight—watching children try to extract a fleeting moment of childhood and cooling relief from a patch of wet dirt.

When Western academics and policymakers discuss “climate injustice” or “environmental racism,” they often speak in abstract, future-oriented terms. They look at carbon footprints, rising sea levels projected for the next half-century, and international treaties. But if you want to understand the true, raw definition of climate injustice, you must look at Gaza.

The global climate crisis is real, and it is driving temperatures up across the Mediterranean basin. But in Gaza, this environmental reality is filtered through a brutal, man-made matrix of siege and destruction. The population of Gaza did not cause global warming; we do not have heavy carbon industries or sprawling factories. Yet, we are paying the highest price for a changing climate because a foreign military power has systematically stripped us of our infrastructure, our power grid, our roofs, and our civilian tools for adaptation.

When extreme heat hits London, Paris, or Berlin, it is a severe meteorological event that triggers state-funded cooling centres, public health interventions, and systemic adjustments. When that same heat hits the Gaza Strip, it serves as an amplifier of an ongoing genocide. It turns tents into kilns, deprives the vulnerable of sleep, accelerates the spread of disease through stagnant waste, and turns the simple act of breathing into a daily battle for survival. The world must realise that the siege does not only stop food, medicine, and building materials from entering Gaza; it stops the air itself.

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[2]: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-city-invasion-israel-abuse/
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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/while-the-west-seeks-shade-gaza-burns

Who Are the Palestinians? | Deep Dive with William Dalrymple What ...

2026-07-05T13:02:37Z

Who Are the Palestinians? | Deep Dive with William Dalrymple

What do historical records, ancient texts, archaeology, and DNA research actually tell us about Palestinians?

In this episode of The Deep Dive, Ahmed Alnaouq is joined by historian and bestselling author William Dalrymple to explore the deep history of the Palestinian people, which he argues have too often been erased from mainstream narratives and the documented history of Palestine.

Together, they discuss how history is taught in Britain, the origins of the name Palestine, the continuity of the people who have lived on the land for thousands of years, and why understanding the past is essential to understanding the present.

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How Palestine Mainstreamed Alternative Media Ahmed Alnaouq and ...

2026-07-01T18:50:29Z

How Palestine Mainstreamed Alternative Media

Ahmed Alnaouq and Hala Hanina are joined in the studio by Richard Sanders of Double Down News, an independent media platform founded in 2017 and known for its in-depth reporting, political analysis, and commitment to telling stories that often don’t make it into the mainstream. They are also joined by Gaza-born journalist Jehan Alfarra, the new Executive Director of Palestine Deep Dive.

They discuss the role of alternative media, how narratives around Palestine are shaped and challenged, the pressures on those reporting in this space, and what it means to build platforms committed to context, humanity and accountability while navigating the media and political landscape in Britain and the wider West.

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Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan’s Life Was Devoted to Gaza. His Legacy ...

2026-07-01T10:09:18Z

Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan’s Life Was Devoted to Gaza. His Legacy Still Guides Us

Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza, who was assassinated by Israeli occupation forces on 2 July 2025

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.

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When the Healers Become Survivors Aliyah Abu-Taqia, 2-years-old, ...

2026-06-30T10:39:48Z

When the Healers Become Survivors

Aliyah Abu-Taqia, 2-years-old, killed by Israeli occupation forces in Rafah on 3 February 2024. Her mother still carries Aliyah’s glasses with her.

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/when-the-healers-become-survivors

Faith Beyond Trauma: What Western Psychology Misses in Gaza ...

2026-06-29T08:33:36Z

Faith Beyond Trauma: What Western Psychology Misses in Gaza

Palestinian mourners pray near the bodies of 43 victims killed in an Israeli airstrike on a UN school in Gaza. (Photo: UNRWA)

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.

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How Palestine Action Shook Britain: Co-Founder Huda Ammori Goes ...

2026-06-24T18:04:14Z

How Palestine Action Shook Britain: Co-Founder Huda Ammori Goes On the Record

In this exclusive conversation, Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori sits down for her first in-person interview in two years.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Speaking to Matt Kennard of Palestine Deep Dive, Ammori reflects on the extraordinary journey of the direct action movement she launched in 2020, from its campaign against Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems to its proscription by the UK government in 2025.

Ammori discusses the events leading up to the ban, the targeting of RAF Brize Norton, the government’s use of terrorism legislation, and why she believes the attempt to suppress Palestine Action has instead generated unprecedented public support and drawn greater attention to Britain’s role in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Although the High Court ruled in February 2026 that the Palestine Action ban had breached the right to protest and had been incorrectly taken by ministers, the Court of Appeal earlier this month upheld the proscription which Ammori says she intends to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. As legal challenges continue and new groups emerge to carry forward similar tactics, Ammori argues that the movement’s core message has reached further than ever before.

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Thirst in Gaza: A Basic Necessity Turned Daily Struggle A ...

2026-06-24T10:27:10Z

Thirst in Gaza: A Basic Necessity Turned Daily Struggle

A Palestinian child drinks water in Gaza. (Photo: UNICEF)

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.

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Living in Exile Without Leaving Home Displaced Palestinians in ...

2026-06-23T08:33:20Z

Living in Exile Without Leaving Home

Displaced Palestinians in Gaza during the genocide. (Photo: Creative Commons)

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.

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My Heart Never Left Al-Shujaiya Palestinians flee al-Shujaiya ...

2026-06-22T08:30:49Z

My Heart Never Left Al-Shujaiya

Palestinians flee al-Shujaiya neighborhood amid Israeli threats. (Photo: WAFA)

**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.

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Jewish Anti-Zionist Movement Founded in Vienna Builds Momentum ...

2026-06-21T15:05:51Z

Jewish Anti-Zionist Movement Founded in Vienna Builds Momentum Across Europe

The second Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress is set to take place in Dublin, Ireland later this week.

The 2026 iteration builds on last year’s inaugural gathering held in Vienna, the birthplace of political Zionism, where the movement was formally launched. It was in that very city that Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat in February 1896, the seminal work that laid the foundations for modern political Zionism and helped give rise to the Zionist movement.

Organisers of the Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress view the establishment of their organisation in Vienna as a symbolic reversal of that history, arguing that the same city that witnessed the birth of political Zionism is now hosting a growing Jewish movement opposed to Zionism and supportive of Palestinian liberation, equality, and self-determination.

“Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust,” activist and author Andrew Feinstein, who is a member of the organisation, tells Palestine Deep Dive. “But it is Palestinians who have suffered the consequences of the establishment, creation, and extreme militarisation of the state of Israel,” he says.

The upcoming three-day conference brings together a range of participants including academics, journalists, politicians, and activists to discuss the evolving landscape of Jewish anti-Zionist thought and its role in contemporary political discourse. Organisers describe this year’s theme as a shift “from words into action”, focusing on practical resistance to Zionist settler-colonialism.

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“A Ticking Time Bomb”: Matt Kennard Exposes How Neo-Nazis ...

2026-06-19T18:04:09Z

“A Ticking Time Bomb”: Matt Kennard Exposes How Neo-Nazis Infiltrated the US Military

In this episode of The Deep Dive, Ahmed Alnaouq sits down with investigative journalist and author Matt Kennard to discuss his book [Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, Criminals. ][1]

Drawing on years of reporting, interviews with military insiders, extremist veterans, and whistleblowers, Kennard examines how recruitment policies during the War on Terror opened the door to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, gang members, and convicted criminals entering the ranks of the US military.

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No Investigations For 2000+ Britons Serving In Israel's ...

2026-06-17T18:16:53Z

No Investigations For 2000+ Britons Serving In Israel's Genocide

Declassified UK and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) have recently launched a major campaign to demand the end of impunity for the approximately 2,000 British nationals who have served in the Israeli military and who may have been involved in war crimes in Gaza.

This comes at a time when supporting Palestine in the UK and taking action to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza can be a chargeable offence under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Ahmed Al-Naouq and Hala Hanina are joined in the studio by John McEvoy, investigative journalist and chief reporter at Declassified UK, and Shaima Dallali, a legal rsearcher with the ICJP, to discuss the campaign and examine the broader state of civil liberties and the rule of law in Britain. They look at the case of the Filton 4, the Palestine-Action linked activists sentenced as terrorists last week despite not being charged or convicted of terrorist offences, as well as the Court of Appeal’s decision to uphold the UK government’s ban on Palestine Action.

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From Nasser to Sisi: Egypt, Palestine and the Counterrevolution ...

2026-06-16T18:03:34Z

From Nasser to Sisi: Egypt, Palestine and the Counterrevolution

In this episode of Fronts + Faultlines, hosts Jeanine and Nihal are joined by Hossam El-Hamalawy, journalist, scholar, and one of the organisers of the 2011 Egyptian uprising. His new book Counterrevolution in Egypt: Sisi's New Republic, published by Verso this year, is a comprehensive account of how Egypt's military, police and intelligence services forged an unprecedented alliance against the Egyptian people's revolutionary aspirations, and built the system that governs Egypt today.

They discuss what Egypt lost in 1967 and what was foreclosed at Camp David; how the 2011 revolution and the 2013 coup connect to that longer history; how Egypt's accommodation with Israel set the parameters for the entire region's relationship to Palestinian liberation; and where there are still possibilities for positive change.

Fronts + Faultlines, is a new podcast on Palestine Deep Dive developed by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), an organisation of Palestinian and Arab youth in diaspora struggling for the liberation of our land and people. It offers sharp analysis on the Arab and Iranian region and what it means for us in Britain.

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The Quiet Killer in Gaza Ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital, destroyed by ...

2026-06-15T08:53:30Z

The Quiet Killer in Gaza

Ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital, destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces. (Photo: Creative Commons)

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-quiet-killer-in-gaza

‘Israel tried to assassinate me’: The Man Behind Gaza’s ...

2026-06-13T18:03:46Z

‘Israel tried to assassinate me’: The Man Behind Gaza’s Biggest Peaceful Protest Movement

Ahmed Alnaouq is joined by Ahmed Abu Artema, a Palestinian writer, intellectual and leading advocate of non-violent resistance. Abu Artema's vision helped spark the Great March of Return, Gaza’s historic mass protest movement of 2018–2019.

In this episode of The Deep Dive, Abu Artema reflects on his enduring belief in peaceful popular resistance as a path toward Palestinian liberation. He revisits the origins of the Great March of Return, the movement’s impact on political consciousness in Gaza, and the hope it inspired among millions of Palestinians demanding freedom and return.

He also shares the deeply personal story of surviving more than 690 days of genocide in Gaza, including an Israeli attempt on his life, and the devastating loss of numerous family members. Abu Artema recounts the painful journey that ultimately forced him into exile in the Netherlands, where he now lives separated from his children, family and homeland.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/israel-tried-to-assassinate-me-the

The Heroic Doctor Who Refused to Leave His Patients Dr. Hussam ...

2026-06-11T08:36:08Z

The Heroic Doctor Who Refused to Leave His Patients

Dr. Hussam Abu Sayiya, paediatric doctor and director of Kamal Adwan hospital, who has been imprisoned by Israel since December 2024.

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-heroic-doctor-who-refused-to

"Every US counterterrorism law traces back to criminalising ...

2026-06-10T18:04:05Z

"Every US counterterrorism law traces back to criminalising dissent on Palestine" | Drop Site

When journalists, activists and commentators are being silenced, independent reporting matters more than ever.

In this episode of Palestine Deep Dive, Ahmed Al-Naouq and Hala Hanina are joined by journalists Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous of Drop Site News to discuss independent reporting on Gaza, Trump’s Gaza “Peace Plan” and the intensifying crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech in the West.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/every-us-counterterrorism-law-traces

There Is No Ceasefire in Gaza. The Genocide Continues Every Day A ...

2026-06-10T09:21:52Z

There Is No Ceasefire in Gaza. The Genocide Continues Every Day

A Palestinian refugee carries his injured grandchildren after an Israeli bombing at Nuseirat Camp, Gaza Strip. (Photo: UNRWA)

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.

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Umer Khalid & The Brize Norton Five: A Mother's Story ...

2026-06-09T18:04:34Z

Umer Khalid & The Brize Norton Five: A Mother's Story

Muhammad Umer Khalid is a 22-year-old political activist from Stockport currently held on remand at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in London. He is one of the defendants known as the "Brize Norton 6" facing charges related to a break-in at the UK's largest airbase, RAF Brize Norton.

Following his detention and the British government's subsequent proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, Khalid became a prominent figure in prison protests.

Palestine Deep Dive travels to meet his mother, Shabana Khalid, who reflects on Umer's childhood, his unwavering sense of justice, and the values that shaped him into the person he is today. She also recounts the challenges her family has faced during Umer's imprisonment, including concerns about his health, restrictions on communication, and the pain that comes with prolonged separation.

Producers: Pablo Navarrete & Dhruv Haria
Journalist: Matt Kennard
DOP / Cameraman: Sean Lovell
Editor: Dhruv Haria

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/umer-khalid-and-the-brize-norton

For Gaza, Refaat Alareer Was More Than a Writer Refaat Alareer in ...

2026-06-09T10:22:56Z

For Gaza, Refaat Alareer Was More Than a Writer

Refaat Alareer in 2014.

**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.*

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'The Phoenix Cohort': When a Graduation Became an Act of ...

2026-06-08T08:59:30Z

'The Phoenix Cohort': When a Graduation Became an Act of Resistance

Medics graduate at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. (Photo: Creative Commons)

**By Ohood Nassar**

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][1]. 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][3] 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][4] 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][6] 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.

*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.*

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[3]: https://www.instagram.com/p/DTSbUzajIHC/
[4]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAEe_7EOOia/
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[6]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTGMYG-jH1G/
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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-phoenix-cohort-when-a-graduation

‘The Most Evil Enemy of the Jewish Proletariat’: The Bundist ...

2026-06-03T18:30:42Z

‘The Most Evil Enemy of the Jewish Proletariat’: The Bundist Case Against Zionism

Palestine Deep Dive’s Ahmed Al-Naouq and Hala Hanina pose the question: Was the creation of a Jewish ethno-nationalist state at the expense of Palestinians inevitable? And what other Jewish futures once existed before the creation of Israel?

To answer these questions, they are joined by Palestinian cultural historian, educator and editor Hazem Jamjoum and Molly Crabapple, an artist, writer and author of ‘Here Where We Live Is Our Country.’ Her book is a remarkable exploration of the Jewish Bund, a secular, socialist, anti-Zionist movement that once represented a completely different Jewish political future.

[Subscribe now][1]

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-most-evil-enemy-of-the-jewish

They Dug His Grave. Then He Opened His Eyes. Buildings in Gaza ...

2026-06-03T08:38:18Z

They Dug His Grave. Then He Opened His Eyes.

Buildings in Gaza destroyed Israeli airstrikes. (Photo: Creative Commons)

**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.

[Subscribe now][2]

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.*

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/they-dug-his-grave-then-he-opened

The Last Day of School Ritaj Raihan, 9 year old killed by Israel ...

2026-06-02T08:47:05Z

The Last Day of School

Ritaj Raihan, 9 year old killed by Israel in a learning tent in Beit Lahia, Gaza on 9 April 2026.

**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.*

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-last-day-of-school

Bint Mbareh, Live At Palestine Deep Dive In this exclusive ...

2026-06-01T17:04:11Z

Bint Mbareh, Live At Palestine Deep Dive

In this exclusive performance for Palestine Deep Dive, we enter the sonic world of musician and sound researcher Bint Mbareh.

Recorded live at the Palestine Deep Dive Studio.

BINT Mbareh is a sound researcher with a focus on water in Palestine. Her interest in the physical parallel between the water wave and the sound wave leads her into questions of border dissolutions (between bodies, between states, between tenses), and into the possibility of being enveloped by the voice, by sounding communally similarly to being enveloped by a water body. She challenges Settler colonial epistemology by taking seriously Palestinian ways of knowing, from rain-summoning music to shrine pilgrimage as an instigator to political revolution.

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Sami El-Enany is an artist who works with sound, fraying the edges of modern classical, electronica and found sound. His work spans multichannel installation, composition, sound design, record production, radio art, filmmaking and image-sound collaboration. Through his practice, he seeks to trace the sonics of solidarity, exploring sound as resonance for union.

Watch the interview-performance here!

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/bint-mbareh-live-at-palestine-deep

Gaza Is Not a Blank Slate A young boy reads amid the ruins of the ...

2026-06-01T09:33:34Z

Gaza Is Not a Blank Slate

A young boy reads amid the ruins of the al-Omari Mosque in the Old City of Gaza. (Photo: Creative Commons)

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][1] approximately 61 million tonnes of rubble across the Gaza Strip. UNOSAT satellite imagery [shows][2] 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][3] 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][5] for rebuilding Gaza “not as it was but as it could and should be.” Jared Kushner [has framed][6] Gaza’s reconstruction as an economic opportunity, describing it as “a hope, a destination” where industry, commerce, and employment could thrive. The [“Project Sunrise”][7] 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][8],” 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][9] 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.

[Subscribe now][10]

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][11] 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.

[1]: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/environmental-damage-gaza-strip-harming-human-health-threatening
[2]: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unosat-gaza-strip-damage-assessment-31oct25/
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/14/a-cultural-genocide-which-of-gazas-heritage-sites-have-been-destroyed
[4]: https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/subscribe?
[5]: https://news.sky.com/story/tony-blair-to-oversee-gazas-future-as-part-of-trumps-greatest-and-most-prestigious-board-of-peace-13495223
[6]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2026/01/23/jared-kushner-gaza-development-plan-skyscrapers/88317327007/
[7]: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-pitches-project-sunrise-plan-to-turn-gaza-into-high-tech-metropolis-ebbd96ae?mod=middle-east_news_article_pos3
[8]: https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jq-articles/toward_spacio__JQ_67_0.pdf
[9]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVRQd_riFMX/?igsh=MWJnaHRtMXh1ajdxZA==
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[11]: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/10/gaza-heritage-experts-huge-reconstruction-effort

https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/gaza-is-not-a-blank-slate

Gaza’s Education Crisis Forced Me to Leave University Behind ...

2026-06-01T09:18:06Z

Gaza’s Education Crisis Forced Me to Leave University Behind

Northern entrance of the Islamic University of Gaza main campus before the genocide. (Photo: Creative Commons)

**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.

[Subscribe now][2]

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/gazas-education-crisis-forced-me

Legalising the Noose: Israel’s Death Penalty and Its ...

2026-06-01T08:38:53Z

Legalising the Noose: Israel’s Death Penalty and Its Implications for Palestinians

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security, has been a big proponent of the death penalty law. (Photo: Creative Commons)

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.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/legalising-the-noose-israels-death

'Voices Together' with Bint Mbareh In this special ...

2026-05-31T12:18:29Z

'Voices Together' with Bint Mbareh

In this special performance-interview episode of Soundtrack of Resistance, we enter the sonic world of musician and sound researcher Bint Mbareh. Recorded live at the Palestine Deep Dive Studio, her exclusive performance flows directly into a conversation with composer Sami El-Enany. Together, their exploratory conversation touches on what shapes their art, the power of the voice, and an interrogation of what it means to resist as an artist.

BINT Mbareh is a sound researcher with a focus on water in Palestine. Her interest in the physical parallel between the water wave and the sound wave leads her into questions of border dissolutions (between bodies, between states, between tenses), and into the possibility of being enveloped by the voice, by sounding communally similarly to being enveloped by a water body. She challenges Settler colonial epistemology by taking seriously Palestinian ways of knowing, from rain-summoning music to shrine pilgrimage as an instigator to political revolution.

Sami El-Enany is an artist who works with sound, fraying the edges of modern classical, electronica and found sound. His work spans multichannel installation, composition, sound design, record production, radio art, filmmaking and image-sound collaboration. Through his practice, he seeks to trace the sonics of solidarity, exploring sound as resonance for union.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/voices-together-with-bint-mbareh

NEW: Arsenal Fired Me Over Palestine – Now I’m Suing ...

2026-05-27T18:04:06Z

NEW: Arsenal Fired Me Over Palestine – Now I’m Suing

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Former Arsenal kit manager Mark Bonnick describes his ordeal after being sacked by Arsenal following 22 years at the club, after pro-Israel campaigners accused him of antisemitism despite the Football Association reportedly informing Arsenal that he had not breached any FA rules.

Mark is joined by his legal representative, the human rights barrister at Garden Court Chambers, Franck Magennis.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/new-arsenal-fired-me-over-palestine

Survival outside Gaza was a lie Abubaker Abed in Dublin, Ireland. ...

2026-05-26T15:41:34Z

Survival outside Gaza was a lie

Abubaker Abed in Dublin, Ireland.

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 tortuous. 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, are 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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/survival-outside-gaza-was-a-lie

Eid Beneath the Rubble Women gather outdoors for prayer in Gaza. ...

2026-05-26T14:46:59Z

Eid Beneath the Rubble

Women gather outdoors for prayer in Gaza. (Photo: Creative Commons)

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/eid-beneath-the-rubble

In Bed with Israel? Tommy Robinson and the Rise of the Far Right ...

2026-05-20T18:20:12Z

In Bed with Israel? Tommy Robinson and the Rise of the Far Right

Ahmed Alnaouq and Hala Hanina are joined by hip hop artist, activist and journalist Lowkey and author and investigative journalist from the Electronic Intifada, Asa Winstanley.

They discuss the rise of the far right in the UK and its connections to Israel, the unprecedented legal proceedings facing direct action activists and the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/in-bed-with-israel-tommy-robinson

“Without weapons, we can do anything”: The story of Rozan ...

2026-05-18T15:31:17Z

“Without weapons, we can do anything”: The story of Rozan al-Najjar

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.”

Photograph: Middle East Eye/Mohammed Asad

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/without-weapons-we-can-do-anything

OUTRAGE: Israel’s Execution Bill For Palestinian Prisoners ...

2026-05-17T11:04:40Z

OUTRAGE: Israel’s Execution Bill For Palestinian Prisoners Passes

In the wake of Prisoners’ Day and in the shadow of the execution bill they are joined by Dr Nimer Sultany who is a leading scholar of constitutional and comparative law, who has written extensively on Israeli law’s legitimating function, the legal architecture of occupation, and the relationship between law and colonial power.

Jeanine and Nihal from Palestinian Youth Movement discuss with Dr Nimer Sultany how understanding the execution bill requires tracing the legal genealogy of Israeli incarceration back through its British Mandate inheritance; the emergency regulations, the military ordinances, the administrative detention frameworks that Britain constructed across Ireland, India, and Palestine, and which the Israeli state absorbed and expanded after 1948.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/outrage-israels-execution-bill-for

Justice Denied: A Law Beyond Humanity Syrians protest near the ...

2026-05-14T17:24:49Z

Justice Denied: A Law Beyond Humanity

Syrians protest near the Israeli border, denouncing an Israeli law that permits the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. Mohammad Bash / Shutterstock.com

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.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/justice-denied-a-law-beyond-humanity

Habibi, Your Future is Being Tested in Gaza Gaza genocide ...

2026-05-13T20:42:36Z

Habibi, Your Future is Being Tested in Gaza

Gaza genocide survivors Haia Mohammed and Danah Bseiso speak out about Israel’s destruction of Gaza, the ongoing Nakba and the realities of surviving Israeli genocide in real time.

From airstrikes and forced displacement to starvation, exile and the psychological trauma of losing home and family, they describe what life under Israeli siege and bombardment means for Palestinians and humanity at large.

Danah Bseiso is a Palestinian law student specialising in Public International Law, a writer with We Are Not Numbers and part of Leiden University’s Picturing Scholasticide project d

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ocumenting Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s education system.

Haia Mohammed is a Palestinian poet and artist whose work explores memory, resistance, grief and displacement.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/habibi-your-future-is-being-tested

What Connects the World to Palestine Thousands of protesters in ...

2026-04-19T12:14:40Z

What Connects the World to Palestine

Thousands of protesters in Madrid, Spain. Photo: Barcex (CC BY-SA 4.0)

I often wonder why people who have never been to Gaza—who may not know its geography or history—feel compelled to march, to chant, and to carry its flag in cities oceans away. What drives them? What meaning does Palestine hold for them personally?

To understand, I reached out to individuals across the world—from Spain to England and the United States—who have joined pro-Palestine demonstrations. I wanted to listen, to ask, and to understand what connects them to a place they have never seen.

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Ester Garcia, a 27-year-old Spanish teacher, recalls her first vivid memory of demonstrations for Palestine: “I remember it was last year when our president, Pedro Sánchez, recognised the State of Palestine in May 2024.”

When asked what motivated her to participate, Ester explains, “Most of my students are from Palestine. They talk a lot about their country. I also watch and read the news regularly, and the situation in Palestine deeply moves me.”

Although Ester has never visited Gaza or the West Bank, she feels a strong personal connection to the Palestinian cause. “My students show me the wounds inflicted by the Israeli army and share videos of their neighbourhoods, whether occupied or destroyed. I feel empathy. I put myself in their shoes, and it breaks my heart,” she says.

Ester follows the news closely: “I get information through my country’s digital newspapers, like *El País* or *El Diario*, or on television, and to a lesser extent, social media.” She trusts firsthand accounts from her students and their families the most, then balances that with official news, carefully considering the ideologies behind each source.

Looking forward, she hopes to visit Palestine one day. “I would like to visit the cities of my students, Ramallah and Nablus, because they have spoken to me with so much love for their country. I would also love to try authentic Palestinian falafel and learn to dance dabke,” she says.

When asked about her long-term plans for activism, Ester concludes, “I hope I don’t have to keep going to protests. That would mean Palestine is free.”

## *Moral Responsibility*

Jackie is a 41-year-old activist from the United States. Her connection to the Palestinian cause is rooted in human empathy and personal conviction. “I feel connected to Palestine because we are all humans, and our safety and survival are ultimately linked. We have a responsibility to protect and care for each other,” Jackie says.

She adds that her connection is also shaped by accountability: “I don’t want this harm done in my name, with my tax dollars, or enabled by my representatives.”

Jackie recalls first learning about Palestine after Rachel Corrie, an activist from her country, was killed by the Israeli army. “I knew I had to go there to learn the truth because our government and media would never willingly share it. That’s why I went in 2011,” she explains.

Fourteen years ago, she lived in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, with five Palestinian women and volunteered with students in a summer program. These experiences shaped her understanding and deepened her commitment.

“I have good friends from Palestine from my time there. One of my dearest friends was actually from Gaza. Mohammed and I met online many years ago and kept in touch for a decade. He passed away in the summer of 2022 while working as a doctor in Chile, and I miss him every day. Supporting Palestine feels like one way I can honour his memory and his life,” she says.

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Patricia, a 33-year-old activist from New York, has participated in demonstrations for Palestine since childhood. Her motivation stems from a lifelong commitment to resisting human rights abuses, colonisation, genocide, imperialism, and war.

Her personal connection to Palestine is deeply rooted in family stories and heritage. “I have extended family who are Palestinian by marriage. Growing up, I heard my cousin explain how Jewish settlers stole their homes, forcing her family to leave the region entirely and come to the United States,” she says.

Additionally, as a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, Patricia feels a profound kinship with those experiencing displacement and atrocities. “It’s impossible for me to witness acts of genocide without feeling sickened in my spirit and motivated to act, even if what I can do is insufficient,” she notes.

Patricia would love to visit Palestine and meet those she has connected with virtually, to explore the Armenian Quarter, to enjoy Palestinian food, listen to music, and experience the natural beauty of the land. Most importantly, she wants to support people however she can.

## *Identity Dissent*

Eva, a 30-year-old activist from the United States, began participating in demonstrations for Palestine in early 2024, following the recent wave of Israeli violence.

Eva’s motivation is deeply tied to her Jewish identity and upbringing. “I come from a Jewish family, but I am not Israeli. Many of the first protests I joined were organised by Jewish anti-Zionist groups who oppose violence carried out in our name,” she explains.

Working as a mentor with writers from the *We Are Not Numbers* initiative for several years strengthened her connection to the Palestinian cause.

Growing up in an anti-Zionist household, Eva later became aware of how most Jewish Americans are educated about Palestine and Israel, which she describes as “eye-opening and horrifying.” She also gathers information from social media platforms, progressive news outlets, international news in Spanish and British media, and the work of Palestinian writers and organisations.

Eva would love to travel to Palestine to meet her mentees and see their environment firsthand. “I would want to go through a checkpoint to understand what that experience means. I would want to witness both the harsh realities and the beautiful aspects of Palestine,” she says.

As a professor of writing in the US, she integrates education about Palestine into her teaching, despite increasing crackdowns on pro-Palestine speech in universities. “I will continue teaching about Palestine, educating my students, and speaking out without backing down. This is a lifelong commitment for me,” she concludes.

## *Outsider*

Sylvia, a long-time activist based in London, recalls that demonstrations for Palestine in the UK date back to at least the 1990s, though her own involvement began in 2004.

Her motivation stems from a deep sense of anger at injustice and moral responsibility. As a Jewish woman, she rejects Zionism and emphasises that Israeli actions are not carried out in her name.

She connects her political awakening to witnessing the situation firsthand: during her visit to Israel in 1966, she was struck by the reality that “the country was populated by Arabs who clearly belonged there,” while many Jewish newcomers “felt like outsiders.” That early encounter shaped her lifelong disapproval of the occupation.

Sylvia has visited Palestine several times, though never Gaza, and has built close friendships with Palestinian families, including one from Gaza whose members have suffered immense loss in recent years. These relationships have strengthened her emotional and ethical commitment to the cause.

Her solidarity developed through personal experience—meeting people, attending lectures, reading extensively, and engaging with Palestinian friends—rather than through social media. She rarely reads Western mainstream news, preferring trusted writers and solidarity networks, though occasionally checks major outlets to understand dominant narratives.

Sylvia stresses that many activists in the UK go beyond protest—boycotting Israeli goods, cutting ties with Israeli institutions, and disrupting arms manufacturing and trade.

If she could visit Palestine freely, she dreams of arriving by sea or plane through normal passport control, meeting her friends, attending cultural events, eating makloubeh, and painting with children again.

Her commitment is lifelong: “It will be until Palestinians can live in their own land in peace and with the same rights as others—or until I die, whichever comes sooner.”

***

*Taqwa Ahmed Alwawi (born 2006) is a Palestinian writer, poet, and editor based in Gaza. She studied English Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. As a dedicated chronicler and custodian of her people’s memory, she amplifies Gaza’s voice, illuminating stories that are often overlooked or silenced. Her work has been featured on more than 30 leading international platforms and prestigious publications, and she currently serves as an editor at Baladi Magazine. Her Portfolio: https://tqwaportfolio-project.netlify.app/*

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/what-connects-the-world-to-palestine

Shattered Map, Unbroken Faith: A Gazan’s Longing for Al-Aqsa In ...

2026-04-15T11:04:21Z

Shattered Map, Unbroken Faith: A Gazan’s Longing for Al-Aqsa

In the quietest corner of my room in Gaza City, a small object stands as a silent witness to a decade of my life. It is a bronze-toned carved map of Palestine, its surface marked by an embossed silhouette of al-Aqsa Mosque at its heart. It was a gift from my Arabic teacher, Husam Thabet, eleven years ago, a reward for a boy who found refuge in the rhythm of words.

Today, as an English literature student, I keep this map perched atop Adele Geras’s *Lizzie’s Wish*, Holly Webb’s *Izzy’s River*, and David Colbert’s *The Magical Worlds of Narnia*. It is more than a souvenir; it is the physical bridge between the Western canon I study and the Eastern soul I inhabit.

During the heavy bombardment on Gaza City, the very foundations of the small [house][1] my family rented after our return from the south in March 2025 shook with a violence that words struggle to capture. The low, guttural hum of missiles caused the bronze-toned map to plunge from its shelf, shattering into jagged shards on the dusty floor. I remember gathering those pieces with a trembling hand, feeling as though I were picking up the broken limbs of my own identity.

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I spent weeks painstakingly glueing it back together, piece by piece. The cracks remain—visible white seams running through the northern side of the map, but the Dome in the centre stands intact. For a Gazan, al-Aqsa is exactly like that broken map: scarred by occupation, but yet stubbornly held together by the glue of our collective yearning.

The world consumes news of al-Aqsa through sanitised, clinical headlines of “security restrictions.” But for us, the total closure of the Mosque [throughout][3] this past Ramadan was more than a restriction; it was a form of spiritual suffocation that defined our existence.

## *Geometry Exile*

As the iron chains tighten on the gates of Jerusalem’s Old City during the last forty days, I felt them tightening around my own wrists. This is why I call it the “geometry of exile” — a deliberate strategy to prove that we are mere numbers without a geographical or spiritual centre. It is an attempt to convince a people that their holy sites can be turned into silent museums while the indigenous owners are caged behind concrete walls and drone-filled skies.

This is a war of erasure. While the Israeli occupation forces prevented us from reaching our heart in Jerusalem, they were systematically levelling our spiritual landmarks in Gaza. To date, over 1,160 mosques in the Strip—approximately 95% of our worship of places—have been bombed.

I find myself constantly returning to this specific loss. In a previous report on the systematic destruction of our places of worship, I [described][4] the soul-reviving sight of residents praying in the ruins of a destroyed mosque, their foreheads touching the rubble.

But a haunting question remains: How do you restore a connection to a place you are forbidden to touch? How do you heal a wound that is kept open by a military order?

## *Fading Light*

This year, as we entered the second week of Ramadan and began preparing our hearts for the final ten days, the skyline of Gaza was crowded with the weary silhouettes of tents: their frayed fabric flapping like broken wings in the wind.

I went to great lengths to secure a stable internet connection for my 66-year-old grandmother, Hanan. In a city where connectivity is a luxury and a target, I wanted to give her a window to al-Aqsa courtyards. I wanted her to hear the Taraweeh prayers from her scarred living room, to find a moment of peace amidst the genocide.

But on the 11th of Ramadan, that window was slammed shut. The total closure of the mosque hit us like a physical blow. I watched the light fade from my grandmother’s eyes, a reflection of the darkness that had fallen over the Holy Sanctuary.

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That night, I retreated to the thin mattress I sleep on every night amidst the chaos. I lay there, consumed by a heavy-hearted dejection, staring into the dark until my eyes finally closed in exhaustion. For over a month, we lived in this state of enforced spiritual starvation.

“I used to go with my father,” my grandmother whispered to me recently, her fingers tracing the air as if she could still feel the cool, ancient limestone of the Old City. To her, the Mosque is a vivid, sensory memory. To me, it is a myth—a celestial city I can only visit through a screen that often goes black.

It is a soul-crushing realisation that a tourist from London or New York can walk the ancient stones of the Old City, while I, whose ancestors’ bones are buried in this soil, am kept in a cage.

## *Final Wish*

This sense of being shut out from life itself reached its peak when I spoke with my cousin, Dunia. We chose to stay in Gaza City, refusing the IOF orders to head south in October 2025, clinging to the ruins of our neighbourhood. “Ali,” she asked, “If we are destined to be killed by an air strike in the coming hours, what is the one thing you want to do before you die?” I didn’t hesitate: “I want to spend one day in al-Aqsa. I want to see the Green of the Dome not on a digital pixel, but as a sun-drenched reality.” It is a simple wish that, in the logic of the occupation, is treated as a security threat.

In those long, dark nights, I began to write my will. Not a list of possessions, for we have little left, but a will in the form of a [poem][6] titled “If I Don’t Make It to Jerusalem”. I wrote it because I know that our love for the Mosque is what they fear most; it is the thread they cannot cut, the memory they cannot bomb.

As news reached us yesterday of the gates finally reopening, the irony was not lost on us in Gaza. A physical gate may swing open in Jerusalem, but the road remains blocked by more than just iron bars. For those of us living amidst the rubble of 1,160 destroyed mosques, the opening of a door we cannot reach is a cruel reminder of our immobilisation.

The occupation tries to distract the world with new horrors every day—laws to execute the Palestinian prisoners or the expansion of the Yellow Line—hoping we will be too busy mourning our children to remember our sanctuary. But they fail to understand that for a Palestinian, al-Aqsa Mosque and family are the same. Both are sacred, both are besieged.

## *Sense of Place*

My study in English literature has taught me about the sense of place, in the works of the greats, but no novel could prepare me for the loss of place we experience daily. When I read Dickens’ descriptions of London’s fog, I think of the white phosphorus clouds over Gaza. When I study Hardy’s tragic characters tied to their land, I think of my grandmother, Hanan, and her invisible tether to Jerusalem.

Our tragedy is that we are forced to live as ghosts in our own geography, watching through a glass wall as our history is rewritten by those who hold the keys to the gates.

Every morning, the first light of Gaza’s sun hits the repaired carved map in my room. I look at the cracks I mended with my own hands and I see the map of my people’s history. We have been shattered by the vibrations of war, yes. We have been kept from our holy sites for over a month of enforced silence, yes. But we are people who refuse to stay broken. The act of glueing that map back together was not just a hobby; it was an act of resistance. It was a statement that even if they shatter our homes and lock our mosques, the internal map remains unchanged.

The closure of al-Aqsa and the levelling of Gaza’s mosques are two sides of the same coin: a systematic attempt to make us feel like numbers floating in a void, disconnected from our past and our God. But as I look at that carved map, I am reminded that even a shattered piece of stone still dictates the shape of the land. They can chain the gates and level the minarets, but they cannot stop the sunrise from hitting the green and golden domes.

I will continue to write until the distance between my room and the Mosque is measured in footsteps, not in shards of memory. We are not just numbers; we are the keepers of the gate, even when the gate is closed. Our prayers, though forbidden in the courtyards of Jerusalem, rise from the rubble of Gaza, solid and loud. In the end, it is not the gates that define the sanctuary, but the hearts of those who wait outside them.

[1]: https://electronicintifada.net/content/nightmares-asleep-nightmares-awake/50973
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[3]: https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/168954
[4]: https://electronicintifada.net/content/restoring-our-mosque-revived-my-soul/51294
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[6]: https://illuminatedcities.org/poems/ali/ifidontmakeittojerusalem

https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/shattered-map-unbroken-faith-a-gazans

Israel’s Genocidal Expansion: Lebanon and the Future of ...

2026-04-13T18:44:27Z

Israel’s Genocidal Expansion: Lebanon and the Future of Regional Resistance

Fronts + Fault Lines, is a new podcast on Palestine Deep Dive developed by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), an organisation of Palestinian and Arab youth in diaspora struggling for the liberation of our land and people.

Hosted by, Jeanine and Nihal, organisers with PYM in Britain - this new podcast series in collaboration with the Palestinian Youth Movement, offering sharp analysis on the Arab and Iranian region and what it means for us in Britain.

Support us by becoming a paid subscriber from as little as £1 a month. Your support helps us build independent Palestinian-led media in a world which has never needed it more urgently:

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In this episode, they are joined by Nathaniel George, lecturer in Politics and the Middle East at SOAS, University of London, whose work focuses on Lebanese politics, Hezbollah, and the regional dimensions of the Palestinian struggle. They’ll be discussing the escalating destruction in Lebanon — how the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel is unfolding in the context of a wider regional war, what it tells us about the limits and possibilities of armed resistance, and what the future of Lebanon looks like inside an order that is being remade by force.

This content is provided for educational and journalistic purposes only. References to proscribed organisations are made solely within the scope of analysis and reporting.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/israels-genocidal-expansion-lebanon

The People Gaza Cannot Rebuild Photograph: Hosny Salah What is ...

2026-04-03T16:43:46Z

The People Gaza Cannot Rebuild

Photograph: Hosny Salah

What is Gaza’s most irreplaceable capital?

It is the people it has lost: doctors, academics, scholars, engineers, journalists, imams, physicians, artists, writers, literary figures, and teachers.

In Gaza, devastation is often measured in concrete—the number of homes flattened, hospitals crippled, universities reduced to rubble. Satellites document the destruction with clinical precision, while reconstruction is discussed in the language of costs, timelines, and materials. Plans for rebuilding revolve around cement, steel, and budgets.

Yet the deepest loss unfolding in Gaza cannot be rebuilt through architecture.

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What is being erased is human in its fullest sense, and that loss will last far longer than the genocide itself.

When Gaza bleeds, it is not only stone that cracks. It is minds, skills, memory, and moral infrastructure that are struck. A gradual draining is taking place: the loss of those who carried generations of accumulated knowledge. This includes doctors shaped by siege, professors teaching under impossible conditions, journalists documenting devastation while living inside it, and artists insisting on beauty amid ruin.

This is a destruction that does not end with a ceasefire. It strikes at the very capacities that allow a society to recover and endure.

## *Knowledge erased*

At the entrance of the Islamic University of Gaza—now bombed, charred, and surrounded by tents sheltering displaced families—a haunting question emerges: what does it mean to obliterate a university in a place already deprived of opportunity?

Universities are not merely structures of concrete and steel; they are living ecosystems of thought. When lecture halls, laboratories, and libraries are destroyed, it is not simply infrastructure that disappears. It is the future intellectual capacity of an entire population.

Gaza has lost academics who cannot easily be replaced, including specialists in medicine, engineering, literature, and law who studied abroad and chose to return despite the blockade. They came back to build rather than flee.

Some were killed in airstrikes. Others were forced into displacement, exile, or silence.

Their absence creates a vacuum that no one can easily fill. Knowledge, like trust, takes years—often decades—to grow.

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According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, more than 193 scientists, academics, and researchers have been killed since October 2023, along with more than 830 teachers and educational staff. The destruction of Gaza’s intellectual class has created an atmosphere of fear that pushes scholars and professionals toward exile while hollowing out the institutions meant to sustain society.

Among those killed was Professor Sufian Tayeh, a physicist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza. So too was Dr. Refaat Alareer, an academic, writer, and English-language poet whose work connected Gaza to the world beyond it. Through his teaching, Alareer helped generations of students learn how to narrate their own lives.

Others were engineers and builders of Gaza’s urban landscape, such as Ahmed Shamiya, whose quiet technical expertise sustained daily life under blockade.

Their deaths are not just individual tragedies. They are ruptures in the chain of knowledge that binds generations together.

## *Healers lost*

The same devastation has struck Gaza’s medical community.

The war has not only overwhelmed hospitals; it has decimated the people who kept them alive. Surgeons operating without anaesthesia, paediatricians confronting malnutrition that erases years of progress, nurses sleeping in hospitals while their families are displaced or killed—many of these professionals are now dead, injured, detained, or psychologically shattered.

More than 1,700 healthcare workers—including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and technicians—have been killed. That is an average of more than two medical workers every day.

Ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza. Photo: Jaber Jehad Badwan / Wikimedia.

Among them was Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian orthopaedic surgeon and former head of orthopaedics at Al-Shifa Medical Complex. He was killed while detained in Israeli prisons, marking the loss of one of Gaza’s most experienced surgeons.

Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, an internal medicine and cardiology consultant and director of the Indonesian Hospital, was another pillar of Gaza’s collapsing health system. Dr. Omar Farwana, a gynaecologist and assistant professor at the Faculty of Medicine at the Islamic University of Gaza who later became its dean, was also killed.

Dr. Medhat Saidam, one of Gaza’s most prominent surgeons and a founding figure of the burns unit at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, was another loss. Young Dr. Maysara Al-Rayyes, who completed his medical degree at King’s College London at the age of 30 before returning to Gaza, was also killed.

Even survival has become unbearable for some of those who remain.

Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, a paediatrician, lost nine of her children and her husband when an airstrike hit her family home in southern Khan Younis.

At least 350 medical personnel have been detained, with approximately 120 still held in Israeli custody—including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who refused to abandon his patients during a military assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital.

A doctor is not simply someone with a degree.

A good doctor carries experience: thousands of cases, mistakes learned from, instincts sharpened under pressure. When Gaza loses a senior surgeon or an experienced paediatrician, it loses decades of accumulated human knowledge.

Training a replacement is not a matter of months.

It takes generations.

## *Voices silenced*

Journalists and photojournalists in Gaza have also been deliberately targeted, and their loss carries consequences far beyond individual lives.

These reporters were not transient outsiders. They were deeply rooted witnesses who understood the unspoken realities behind the headlines. They knew the families behind the statistics and the streets behind the destruction.

When a journalist dies, more than a voice is silenced. An archive disappears.

No foreign correspondent can fully replace a local reporter who has spent years documenting the rhythms and wounds of a community.

Without these voices, Gaza risks becoming a place that is discussed but not truly seen.

From Samer Abu Daqqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, and Roshdi Sarraj at the beginning of the genocide to Fadi Alwhidi—left paralysed by a bullet to his spine—Gaza’s journalists have faced relentless danger.

Ismail Al-Ghoul was killed while reporting, leaving his daughter Zina fatherless. Rami Al-Rifi suffered a similar fate. Hossam Shabat was killed for documenting the war, while Ahmad Mansour burned alive outside Nasser Hospital. Hassan Eslieh was killed by a direct airstrike while sleeping in a tent near the hospital grounds in Khan Younis.

Yahya Sobeih had celebrated his newborn daughter only hours earlier.

Names such as Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qraiqea, Maryam Abu Daqqa, Saleh Al-Jafarawi, and many others—around 228 journalists in total—have been killed while carrying out their work.

With every journalist lost, a part of Gaza’s memory disappears.

## *Human ruins*

The war has carved a quieter, less visible wound: the loss of teachers, writers, artists, and community leaders—the people who help a society make sense of suffering.

They are the ones who explain trauma to children, who reconstruct language amid rubble, who remind a wounded society that it is more than a humanitarian statistic.

This is why the language of “reconstruction” often feels hollow.

Homes can be rebuilt. People cannot.

Rebuilding buildings without rebuilding the people who give them meaning is not recovery. Even if every structure in Gaza were restored tomorrow, the society inside them would still bear the absence of those who are no longer there.

The damage is not only quantitative; it is qualitative.

Gaza is losing its experienced guides. Young people are growing up without professors to mentor them, without doctors to inspire them, without journalists to teach them how to speak truth under impossible conditions.

This absence will echo forward, shaping the kind of society Gaza is forced to become.

The systematic targeting of civilian professionals—medical workers, academics, journalists—creates a strategy of social collapse. It ensures that even if Gaza survives physically, it will struggle to survive intellectually.

It transforms survival into a prolonged emergency.

What remains is a society forced to mourn not only its dead, but also its unrealised futures.

This is the reconstruction Gaza truly needs: the rebuilding of the human being after the loss of an entire generation of elites.

But rebuilding human capital is not like rebuilding a road or a building. It takes decades, sometimes generations. Some losses cannot be replaced at all.

No reconstruction plan can recreate the people who should still be teaching, healing, building, writing, and guiding.

The deepest wound of this genocide is not only what it has destroyed.

It is what it has made impossible.

And that—more than rubble—is what the world must be forced to see.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-people-gaza-cannot-rebuild

When Land Becomes Witness Photograph: Huda Skaik Since I was a ...

2026-03-30T19:18:15Z

When Land Becomes Witness

Photograph: Huda Skaik

Since I was a child at school, Land Day was a date on the calendar that we always celebrated—a moment of commemoration, a lesson in Palestinian history, a reminder of resistance rooted in soil and in Palestinians’ hearts and minds. It marked the 1976 uprising of Palestinians inside Israel against land confiscation. We spoke of it as inheritance, as memory, as principle.

After more than two years of genocide and displacement in Gaza, I now understand what land truly means. For Palestinians, land is never just geography; it is memory made visible, heritage that breathes, and identity that cannot be rewritten. It is the first story we hear and the last truth we hold onto when everything else collapses.

Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, “We have on this earth what makes life worth living.” For years, those words were quoted as poetry. Today, they read like defiance carved into stone. What makes life worth living is not comfort, nor certainty—it is belonging. It is the stubborn insistence that we are of this land and that it is of us, no matter how violently that bond is tested.

Over these past years, displacement has taught us that land is not something you simply own—it is something you live through and within. When homes are erased, land becomes the last witness. When borders close, land becomes the only constant. When people are forced into tents, it is the land that absorbs grief, hunger, and endurance. It holds the weight of footsteps that refuse to disappear. It listens when the world turns away.

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Land Day is not about olive trees alone. It is about the refusal to be uprooted. It is about the quiet, unbreakable decision to remain, even when remaining seems impossible.

Ghassan Kanafani warned that the Palestinian cause is not merely a story of loss, but a struggle against erasure. In his vision, land was never nostalgia—it was responsibility. Something you either defend or lose entirely. After the genocide, that lesson is no longer philosophical. It is immediate, brutal, and undeniable.

What we are living through has made one truth unmistakably clear: the attempt has never been only to control land, but to sever people from it—emotionally, historically, and physically. To make us forget. To make the land feel distant, foreign, unreachable. Genocide accelerates this severance: displacement without return, destruction without rebuilding, death without mourning.

And yet, despite everything, Palestinians remain tethered.

There is something almost sacred in this tethering. It is not fragile. It does not weaken under pressure. It hardens. It sharpens. It becomes clearer with every attempt to erase it. The more destruction unfolds, the more the connection deepens—not as an abstract idea, but as a lived truth that pulses through daily survival.

Land Day now feels less like remembrance and more like testimony. We are no longer only remembering what was taken—we are bearing witness to what is still being taken, and to those who refuse to let go. We testify that land remembers us even when the world does not. That rubble still carries names. That streets flattened into dust still echo with laughter, footsteps, and life.

We testify that displacement does not dissolve attachment—it intensifies it.

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If the lions do not have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunters. It will celebrate those who conquer, who occupy, who erase, while silencing those who endure. This is why storytelling becomes an act of resistance. Not a luxury, not a choice—but a necessity, as Dr. Refaat Alareer said.

Because when we tell the story of our homeland, we are not only preserving memory—we are asserting existence.

We love the story because it is about our homeland. And we love our homeland even more because of the story. The two are inseparable. One feeds the other. One protects the other. In every retelling, we rebuild what has been destroyed. In every word, we return—if not physically, then spiritually, emotionally, collectively.

And this is what frightens those who seek erasure the most: that even in exile, even in displacement, even under unimaginable destruction, the story does not end.

It multiplies.

It passes from one voice to another, from one generation to the next, refusing silence. It lives in the details—the names of villages, the taste of bread, the smell of the sea, the shape of streets that may no longer exist but are still mapped in memory with painful precision.

This is the new meaning of Land Day.

It is no longer confined to a single historical moment. It is not just 1976. It is now. It is every day that a person refuses to forget where they come from. Every day that someone speaks the name of a place that others try to erase. Every day that survival itself becomes a form of resistance.

Land Day has become a language.

A language spoken in resilience, in memory, in refusal. A language that does not require translation because it is understood through experience, through loss, through the unyielding will to remain connected.

After the genocide, Land Day is no longer about land taken in the past. It is about land still being taken—and people still refusing to be uprooted.

It is about the certainty that no matter how much is destroyed, something remains. And that something is enough to begin again.

Because as long as there are those who remember, who speak, who insist, the land is not lost.

It is waiting.

And we are still here.

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After Area C, Israeli Settlers Expand Into PA-Controlled Area B ...

2026-03-28T10:55:07Z

After Area C, Israeli Settlers Expand Into PA-Controlled Area B

Houses under construction at the illegal Israeli settlement of Kfar Eldad, south of Bethlehem, occupied West Bank. Photo: Garry Walsh/Trócaire (CC BY 2.0)

On the morning of 13 February 2026, more than 30 masked settlers, brandishing machetes and throwing stones, stormed the village of Talfit in the occupied West Bank.

They fired live ammunition at residents, their homes, vehicles, and even the town mosque. Several villagers were beaten and stabbed, and a 19-year-old man was shot in the shoulder.

“It’s the first time such a large attack has happened in the village,” said Yousef Abu Aisheh. During the assault, he sheltered in the centre of his home with his wife and seven young children, who screamed in fear as settlers pelted their windows with rocks.

The Israeli army was called to halt the rampage, but when soldiers arrived, they deployed tear gas at the community instead.

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Such attacks have become increasingly common in the West Bank, particularly in Israeli military-controlled Area C, where settlers have established more than 120 outposts and displaced 78 Palestinian communities. Talfit, however, lies in Area B, under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction and once considered off-limits to Israelis. The assault reflects a broader pattern of settlers expanding their foothold across the West Bank, encouraged by a government moving steadily toward full annexation of the territory.

## *A new foothold*

The settlers who attacked Talfit came from an outpost established on 21 January 2026 on Ras Ein Einiya, a hilltop overlooking Talfit and the Palestinian town of Qusra. Initially consisting of only a few settlers, the camp has tripled in size in less than a month.

The Israeli army dismantled the outpost at first, but settlers soon returned and rebuilt it just 100 meters away. While outposts are illegal under Israeli law, many receive state funding and military protection. Both settlements and outposts are considered illegal under international law.

Under the Oslo Accords, the interim peace agreement signed in the 1990s between the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Israel, the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B, and C. Area A, the most densely populated section, falls under Palestinian civil and security control. Area B is under Palestinian civil authority with shared Israeli-Palestinian security control. Area C, comprising 61% of the territory, remains under full Israeli military control. These divisions were intended to last five years, after which authority would transfer fully to the Palestinian Authority. That transition never occurred.

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According to Dror Etkes, founder of Kerem Navot, an Israeli civil society organisation monitoring land policy and settlement expansion, settlers have established one outpost in Area A and 20 in Area B over the past two years.

“This stems from a decades-long campaign aimed at undermining the Oslo Accords. That’s what [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu sought from the start of his first term,” Etkes said. “What we’re seeing on the ground is a continuation of Netanyahu and settler policies from 30 years ago — Palestinians under Israeli control, without political representation.”

## *Expansion into Area B*

Etkes emphasised that outposts represent only part of the broader expansion into Area B.

“Even when outposts are built in Area C along the border of Area B, violence and restrictions on access often spill into Areas A and B,” he said.

Suha Khteep has experienced this firsthand. Settlers who established an outpost in Area C, about one kilometre from the home her family is building between the villages of Jurish and Aqraba in Area B, have repeatedly blocked the family from reaching their property.

Tensions escalated to the point that on 13 February 2026, the Israeli army declared her home a closed military zone, barring the family from entering to complete construction. Meanwhile, settlers continue to raise the Israeli flag on the Khteep property.

“The settlers told us, ‘This is our land. This is our place. None of these houses belong to you. God gave us this land 3,000 years ago,’” Khteep said.

More than half of the new Area B outposts are located in the so-called “Agreed-Upon Reserve,” where the Palestinian Authority is responsible for planning and construction. In recent years, Israel has increasingly altered Oslo-era arrangements, expanding its authority in the West Bank to assert greater civilian control — steps critics say amount to formal annexation.

## *Legal shifts*

In 2024, the Israeli military granted civilian officials the power to demolish Palestinian construction in the Agreed-Upon Reserve. Last month, the Israeli Cabinet approved measures easing real estate transactions for settlers in the West Bank, including allowing individuals to purchase property directly rather than through registered companies. Another measure makes West Bank land registries — previously classified — publicly accessible, enabling anyone to view land ownership records.

The decision also broadens the military’s authority to carry out demolitions not only in Area C but in Areas A and B if construction is deemed harmful to heritage sites, archaeology, or environmental resources.

These moves have prompted Talfit residents — at least 500 of whom own land at Ras Ein Einiya — to gather their deeds to demonstrate that the outpost stands on their property.

“The presence of this outpost in Area B is a clear, physical sign of the government’s latest efforts,” said Qutabeh Msallam, a Ras Ein Einiya landowner and Talfit resident.

Since the outpost was established, landowners have been unable to access their groves or the spring at Ras Ein Einiya. Water continues to flow to the village, but residents fear settlers may eventually cut off the supply.

“I have fond memories of hiking and climbing the summit as a child,” said Aysar Shaheen, another landowner from Talfit, gesturing toward the hilltop.

Already barred from tending his olive orchards near another settlement, he now worries he could permanently lose ownership of his land at Ras Ein Einiya as well.

“We’re completely surrounded by settlements,” Shaheen said, pointing to colonies on hilltops north, south, east, and west of Talfit that are tightening around the cluster of Area B villages south of Nablus. “Many farmers depend on this land. When you cut off their livelihoods, you’re starving them.”

***

*Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist covering West Asia, primarily reporting on Palestine, Israel, the Syrian Golan Heights, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.*

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A Haircut in Gaza, and the Lingering Trauma of War Photograph: ...

2026-03-27T13:44:45Z

A Haircut in Gaza, and the Lingering Trauma of War

Photograph: Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock.com

This story begins not with missiles or explosions—memories that have haunted my days since I finally fled the war in Gaza for Cairo. Instead, it begins with something entirely mundane: the reluctant decision that it was finally time to get a haircut.

I had delayed it for weeks. Partly because I’ve always dreaded the tedious wait, but also because ordinary moments often carry memories beneath them, waiting quietly until something stirs them. Eventually, avoidance runs out of room, and distance stops protecting you.

Around me, men chat about weekend plans, inflation, and football—conversations that feel trivial to me. For them, this is just what people do while waiting for a haircut. But for me, the wait fills with memories of sitting in frozen silence, unsure if I would make it out alive. I remember stepping into the thick smoke of an airstrike and struggling to lift the lifeless body of a man whose skull had cracked open.

## *Staying behind*

I never wanted to leave Gaza. Even when I had the chance early in the war, when an Egyptian friend offered to help, I refused. I told myself I would stay no matter what.

I was used to the reality that even simple acts—like going to the barber—could be difficult at best and life-threatening at worst. Finding a barber with enough battery power to operate an electric shaver was no small feat. The absence of electricity made haircuts a rare luxury, something that required both luck and patience.

Fortunately, I had both.

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Unlike many who were displaced to the southern reaches of the Gaza Strip, I remained in Deir Al Balah and managed to secure an appointment with my barber, Abu Salma. He was a man of quiet dedication who took his craft seriously, insisting on spending two full hours to ensure a perfect cut. It was an excruciating wait made bearable by his undeniable skill.

His devotion impressed me, though the cigarette smoke that filled the shop felt like a frontal assault on my already fragile commitment to quitting. Still, the memory of that day became something we shared.

At least, for a while.

I used to think he carried that memory too. Now he is gone, and I carry it alone.

## *The explosion*

The haircut had just begun when a rocket struck nearby.

The explosion was close—150 meters away, maybe less. The blast rattled the shop, collapsing parts of the ceiling and sending dust pluming into the air. For a moment, life seemed to pause.

Then Abu Salma and I looked at each other.

We were alive.

When we stepped outside, we immediately sensed something was wrong. Normally in Gaza, when a bombing happens, people run toward the site to help. This time, people were running away. A rumour spread quickly: quadcopters were targeting civilians.

It later proved false. But in that moment, it felt real.

Still, Abu Salma and I ran toward the wreckage.

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Through smoke and debris, we searched for survivors. The first thing I lifted was a couch. Beneath it lay a lifeless body. The man’s skull had cracked open.

As we tried to lift him onto a nearby mattress, his pants slipped down, revealing threadbare boxers. Absurdly, I found myself wondering whether, if he had known that today would be his last day, he might have chosen a different pair. I pushed the thought away in shame. Had I become numb to grief and horror?

Another passerby joined us, and together we carried the man toward an ambulance, shouting for paramedics.

Then a voice cut sharply through the chaos.

“Can’t you see he’s obviously dead? Drop him and find someone still breathing.”

I froze.

I hadn’t been helping. I had simply been refusing to accept death—even while holding it.

We moved on.

Soon we found her: a young girl, maybe five or six years old, standing alone in the smoke. She didn’t cry or call for help. She simply stood there, trembling.

Was it fear? Cold? Shock?

I didn’t know.

She was alive, untouched by the blast except for the soot covering her face. Lucky, I thought at first. But what does luck mean if you lose everything? If the memory of this moment stays with you forever?

By the end of that day, more than twenty people were dead. Most of them were children.

Paramedics worked desperately to resuscitate a young boy whose tongue hung unnaturally from his mouth. Watching them, I realised something: no matter how many times I witnessed scenes like this, I would never become desensitised.

Some horrors refuse to become normal.

## *Finishing the cut*

Eventually, more rescuers arrived, and Abu Salma and I understood that our role was over.

We stepped back, covered in blood that wasn’t ours—a silent reminder of what had just happened.

For a moment we simply stood there, looking at each other, locked in an unspoken contest: who would break the silence first?

He lost.

“So… should we finish the haircut?” he asked.

What else was there to do?

I nodded.

Two hours later, I walked home with neatly trimmed hair and blood still on my hands—an irony only war can produce.

My uncles had already assumed I was dead. They had called friends and checked hospitals. My cousin had confirmed I was near the bombing site when he called around to ask if the barbershop was open.

By the time I walked through the door, they were already mourning me.

I expected relief—maybe even an embrace. Instead, I was scolded.

They weren’t angry that I had nearly died.

They were angry about the stress it had caused my mother.

This bombing took place on February 23, 2024. It targeted a member of the Abu Zaaiter family on Yafa Street in Deir Al Balah. Who knows why the Israelis were after him.

Even then, I still resisted the idea of leaving Gaza.

But two months later, my brother needed emergency surgery, and no ambulance could reach us because so many others needed help. Suddenly, it was no longer just about me.

We scraped together the astronomical “fee” required to cross the border—$5,000 per person. My two younger siblings and I eventually made it out.

## *Lingering Echoes*

Now, two years later, I am back in a barber chair.

The memories return the moment the razor hums near my ear.

But it isn’t just haircuts that trigger them. The sound of a plane overhead, the rumble of cars, even cheers from friends during a football game can send panic through me.

I once believed nothing could scare me anymore.

But horror lingers in the mind long after the bombs stop falling.

Some time ago, I asked a friend to visit Abu Salma’s shop and take photographs so I could include them in this article.

That’s when I learned he had died.

His house was bombed shortly after I left Gaza. He survived the initial strike but later succumbed to his injuries.

I sometimes wonder what passed through his mind in those final moments. Did he think back to that night in the barbershop, when we believed surviving meant we might still have a future after the war? Did he feel that same brief relief—the feeling that he had made it—before realising that he hadn’t?

In the end, it was only me who survived to remember.

May God have mercy on Abu Salma’s soul.

I had hoped only to revisit his shop through a photograph, to preserve a small piece of our shared story. Instead, I was left with the finality of his absence.

Now I wonder whether a simple haircut will ever again be just that. Or whether it will always be tied to the image of a shattered body and the memory of a barber who never lived to see peace.

And if such echoes persist in me—an adult who understands where they come from—what resonance will they leave in the minds of children who are only beginning to form their earliest memories?

What kind of future can grow from foundations of fear and smoke?

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Dreams on Hold in Gaza The remains of Rawan Shaat’s home after ...

2026-03-25T12:02:32Z

Dreams on Hold in Gaza

The remains of Rawan Shaat’s home after it was bombed in July 2025.

Three years suspended in the same place. While everything and everyone around me seems to move forward, I remain here, unable to take even a single step ahead. That is what it feels like, despite all the effort I pour into my studies and into trying to salvage what remains of myself amid chaos and a war that has spared no one.

For years, I dreamed of studying in Europe after graduating from high school. That dream drove me to work relentlessly throughout those years. I longed for a dignified and expansive education, one unconstrained by the limitations of a besieged land, deprived of the resources needed to satisfy my scientific curiosity.

When I graduated from high school with a 92.1 percent average in the scientific stream, my family celebrated with immense pride. I still remember the joy in their faces and my own excitement as I imagined the path ahead.

But that moment also became my first harsh lesson: not everything we strive for comes to us in the way we imagine.

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The circumstances at the time did not allow me to leave Gaza. I fell into deep disappointment. Yet I refused to abandon the dream entirely. Instead, I decided to work as hard as I could at home until an opportunity to study abroad might appear.

I enrolled at Al-Israa University in Gaza, majoring in Artificial Intelligence Engineering.

I attended university for only two weeks before something happened that had never crossed my mind—even in my worst imaginings.

War.

## *Dreams delayed*

October 7, 2023 marked a turning point in the life of every person in Gaza. Each of us carries a different story.

Mine is simple: I believed that all my postponed dreams had slipped through my fingers.

My name is Rawan Marwan Shaat, and during those months I felt as though I had lost myself. My dreams were pushed aside as survival became the only immediate concern. In truth, survival itself was never fully in our hands. There was no choice but luck—or perhaps fate.

My mind was consumed with questions instead.

Why did all of this happen?
Why now, just as I had begun to accept a new and unexpected direction in my life?
Why did everything collapse so suddenly?

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Even surrender was not something I chose. It was imposed upon me.

In the early months of the war, I lived among people who had become my friends during displacement. We stayed together in what we believed was a relatively safer house. Eventually, we were forced to flee as bombardment intensified and residents were ordered to evacuate.

We scattered.

I was displaced eight times. Each time the same scenes repeated themselves: shelling, death, displacement, hunger. I lived through the very scenario I had feared most during the first week of the war—losing my home and living in a tent that showed no mercy, neither in the suffocating heat of summer nor in the bitter cold of winter.

Rawan Shaat’s corner in the tent she now calls home.

## *War interrupted*

At first, these were simply attempts to survive.

But after some time, I became painfully aware that time itself was slipping away. My life felt as though it were being consumed without purpose. I feared the war might never end, and that I would disappear inside it.

I knew I had to try to reclaim some fragment of myself.

During the war, diseases spread across Gaza, while many patients with genetic illnesses—such as cancer—died because treatment was unavailable and travel for medical care was impossible, while border crossings remained closed. Watching this unfold revived an old dream within me.

Before the war, I had once imagined becoming a researcher in science and medicine. Life’s changing currents had gradually pushed me toward artificial intelligence, but my fascination with genetic engineering had never truly disappeared. That field, however, was impossible to study in Gaza because of the siege and the severe shortage of equipment and resources.

When my desire to search again for the life I wanted returned, I decided to pursue science once more.

I began applying for scholarships.

At first, rejection was all I encountered. I accepted it quietly, knowing I was still inexperienced and had no one to guide me through the process. My applications carried very little hope—pessimism had become my default outlook after months of war and trauma.

During this time, some universities began offering online study programmes.

I refused.

I could not accept that my bachelor’s journey would exist only through a screen. How could I extinguish the passion for a university experience I had not even had the chance to live? My family and many others urged me not to waste my life waiting for what they called “illusory dreams.”

But for me, this was not a matter of fantasy.

It felt like life or death.

## *Holding on*

Refusing an online degree did not mean I stopped learning.

Throughout this time, I continued taking online courses in artificial intelligence, programming, and design. I worked to strengthen my technological background so that one day I could combine it with scientific research.

Eventually, not all the doors remained closed.

I received an unconditional offer from the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom to study Cellular and Molecular Biology with Biotechnology, along with a partial scholarship. I also received conditional offers from the University of Bristol and the University of Manchester, each with partial scholarships.

Yet the war in Gaza has created another obstacle.

Because of the devastating economic conditions here, I cannot cover the remaining tuition and living costs. What should have been the beginning of a new chapter has instead become another struggle: searching for organisations, scholarships, or individuals willing to help students like me continue our education.

Despite everything, I keep trying.

Whenever circumstances allow, I go to a small workspace created for students and remote workers. There, electricity and internet sometimes exist, if luck is on our side and the sky is clear. Electricity now often depends on solar panels.

*Working from a small workspace for students and remote workers, where electricity and internet are sometimes available.*

Every day, I search for new opportunities that might help me escape this senseless chaos.

I write about this unfinished journey to remind myself—and perhaps others—that reality is not always kind, and that we are not always responsible for the paths our lives take.

I do not accept this bitter reality. I also do not know whether clinging to my desire to grow amid ruins is the right choice.

But a dear friend once told me something I still hold onto: that my refusal to accept this reality might one day be what saves me.

So I choose to believe him.

Our attempts to hold on to the dreams of the past are not illusions, as some say. They are a lifeline, reminding us of who we are beyond the boundaries of suffering.

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The Only One Left in Gaza Noor Al-Din on his third day in ...

2026-03-24T11:01:02Z

The Only One Left in Gaza

Noor Al-Din on his third day in hospital after being injured. (Photo by Ishaq Al-Tayef).

There are questions the mind asks that the soul cannot answer. What kind of life continues after everyone is gone? What does tomorrow look like when yesterday erased an entire family? Noor Al-Din Habib lives inside those questions.

At 21, Noor Al-Din was the middle son — the peacemaker. If he upset his mother, he was always the first to return, sitting beside her until she smiled. She would tell him, “You are the kindest among your brothers.”

On Wednesday night at 10 p.m., their home was struck. His mother was wounded and remained alive until 3 a.m. Noor Al-Din was injured too, unable to move, though he could hear her calling out each of her children’s names: Riwaa, Obaida, Abdullah, Noor Al-Din, Malik, Sajed.

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When relatives tried to comfort her, telling her Noor was beside her, she called again, “Where is Noor Al-Din?” Then she said, “Noor, my love…I swear I love you. Forgive me. Be patient, my son.”

He heard everything. He tried to reach her, but his injuries pinned him in place.

### *The night they all left*

His eldest sister, Israa — a second mother to her siblings — had already been killed a year earlier, on December 17, 2023, along with her husband and three children. Noor Al-Din dug through the rubble alone to find and bury them.

Riwaa was his confidante. He studied with her, teased her cooking, and loved her pizza most of all. She once said she dreamed of being “the sister of a groom one day.”

Obaida, who earned a master’s degree in management while working at an ice cream shop, was deeply attached to their father. He was killed on June 19, 2024.

Abdullah, 23, worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa and Al-Maamadani hospitals. He came home each week covered in blood, describing the wounded he treated. He was saving to get engaged.

Malik, 17, was Noor’s closest companion — more friend than brother. Sajed, 15, the youngest, was spoiled and adored.

Their final night together was December 19, 2024. They sat at home. Abdullah showed photos on Obaida’s laptop. Their mother asked to see Obaida’s pictures because she missed him. “God willing, we will see him soon, up there,” Abdullah said quietly before closing the computer.

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She told Noor to intend to fast the next day and pray. He performed ablution. He remembers nothing after that.

He woke up in Al-Maamadani Hospital, disoriented. “Where is my mother? Where are my siblings?”

“They’re fine,” relatives told him at first.

By morning, his friend Ahmed gave him the truth. “May God have mercy on them.”

“Who?” Noor asked.

“All of them.”

He begged to see their bodies. They refused. “Remember them as you knew them,” they said.

### *Losing everyone*

After leaving the hospital, Noor visited the Eastern Cemetery to say goodbye. Then he moved into his grandfather’s house.

Each morning, he returned to the hospital to clean and disinfect his wounds. His cousin Ismail stayed close, sleeping beside him at night. “You are not alone,” Ismail told him. “Consider me Malik.” Noor replied, “I want to.”

One winter night, doctors discovered Noor had two leg fractures. Surgery was unavailable; he was placed on a waiting list.

The next morning, Ismail left after promising to return every night. Hours later, a call came: Ismail had been killed.

Noor ran to the hospital, ignoring the pain in his broken leg. “How? He was with me… he said he wouldn’t leave me.”

After that, even ordinary things broke him — siblings walking together, someone saying “my mother.” He wondered whether it would have been easier to die with them.

His best friend Ishaq became his final anchor. “Why talk like this? I am here,” Ishaq would tell him. Noor once said, “I lost four siblings, but life compensated me with you.”

On May 28, 2025, Ishaq was killed too.

“I lost everyone I love,” Noor says. “I told myself I would never get attached again.”

### *Beginning again*

In December 2025, relatives encouraged him to get engaged. He refused until his father said, “I want to see you happy.”

On the day of his engagement, January 2, 2026, he woke up wondering who would stand beside him. There was no one from his family left to attend. His fiancée, who had also lost her father, brother, and sister, understood his silence.

Noor Al-Din on the day of his engagement, January 2, 2026.

Now Noor says he no longer knows what stability feels like. He sleeps in different places, eats mostly canned food, and longs for Riwaa’s cooking and his mother’s sweets.

What can someone build when the people who made the house a home are gone?

For Noor Al-Din, that question does not fade. It is the life he now carries.

***

*Sara Serria is a Gaza-based Palestinian writer, translator, and speaker, and a recent graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza. As a human before anything else, her work is rooted in empathy and lived experience. She focuses on documenting the human impact of war, loss, and survival—preserving personal histories and amplifying the voices of those shaped by displacement and grief.*

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/the-only-one-left-in-gaza

Lanterns Among the Ruins Photograph: Taqwa Alwawi Ramadan has ...

2026-03-15T16:16:45Z

Lanterns Among the Ruins

Photograph: Taqwa Alwawi

Ramadan has never been simply a date on the calendar. It rearranges time. Nights grow longer and fuller. Homes open to neighbours. Tables stretch with shared meals. Mosques fill as life bends toward prayer and reflection.

But this is not how Ramadan arrives in Gaza this year.

Genocide and violent occupation have erased homes, torn apart gathering places, and turned familiar streets into fields of rubble. The landmarks that once organised daily life are gone. Even memory has changed shape. What once offered comfort now feels heavy, a reminder of everything that has vanished.

Months after a so-called ceasefire that never truly held, Gaza remains suspended in conditions that cannot be described as peace. The patterns of bombing may shift, but their consequences remain permanent. Entire neighbourhoods lie flattened. Roads are fractured. Water systems barely function. Communication cuts out for hours or days at a time.

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What little infrastructure remains stands in a fragile state: damaged, unreliable, yet stubbornly refusing to disappear.

## *Broken city*

Daily life has become a struggle defined by scarcity.

Poverty and unemployment have soared, leaving most families without stable sources of income. Aid arrives irregularly and in limited quantities, forcing Palestinians into endless cycles of waiting, rationing, and improvisation. Planning for the future has become almost impossible. Survival replaces planning; endurance replaces recovery.

Even now, airstrikes, shelling, and gunfire punctuate daily life. Local authorities have documented hundreds of ceasefire violations since the truce took effect, many resulting in civilian casualties.

Movement remains tightly restricted, particularly at border crossings such as Rafah. Fuel, construction materials, and humanitarian supplies are frequently delayed or blocked. Caravans and prefabricated housing units are prevented from entering Gaza. Essential rebuilding materials are labelled “banned.”

Even food and medicine arrive as controlled quantities rather than necessities.

Since the genocide began in 2023, more than a thousand mosques have been destroyed or severely damaged. Entire neighbourhoods no longer contain a single functioning place of worship. Communities do not know where—or whether—they will gather for prayer this Ramadan.

Many congregational prayers will take place in tents, among the ruins of what once stood.

Photograph: Ashraf Amra

## *Empty tables*

Ramadan usually arrives with sound.

The call to prayer echoes through neighbourhoods. Qur’anic recitation hums late into the night. After sunset, laughter and conversation spill from open windows as families gather for iftar.

This year, much of Gaza stands in silence.

At a time traditionally defined by family gatherings, almost every household has someone missing—a brother, sister, parent, uncle, aunt, or grandparent killed during the genocide. The empty seats around the table speak more loudly than words.

And often, the tables themselves are nearly empty.

Fasting during Ramadan is meant to cultivate empathy with the hungry. In Gaza, hunger is no longer symbolic. It is constant. With supply chains broken and incomes erased, many families approach the holy month unsure whether they will have enough food for iftar at sunset—or even for suhoor before dawn.

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Abstention is no longer a spiritual exercise. It is a daily condition. People no longer prepare for Ramadan. They brace for it.

Difficult questions echo through overcrowded shelters and bombed streets: How long will this continue? Where is the Arab and Islamic world—not in statements, but in action? Where is the international community?

Where, simply, is humanity?

Gaza does not need seasonal gestures or symbolic relief. It needs sustained humanitarian access, accountability for violations of international humanitarian law, the rebuilding of its healthcare system, the rescue of its collapsing education sector, and an economic recovery that restores dignity and self-sufficiency.

Anything less is not recovery. It is managed collapse.

## *Stubborn light*

Yet even amid devastation, Ramadan still finds ways to appear.

Lanterns hang from broken walls and tent poles. Small shops decorate their doors with strands of colored lights that spill softly onto damaged streets. Many people cannot afford to buy anything, but they still walk through these markets simply to look.

Children press their faces against shop windows. Families stroll slowly through the streets, sharing brief smiles and moments of laughter.

The city, though scarred, refuses to surrender entirely to grief.

In one ravaged neighbourhood, where skeletal buildings rise like ghosts from piles of debris,[ a single white tent glows in the darkness.][3] Strings of golden LEDs hang across its canvas walls, shining like defiant stars against the night.

The lights do not hide the surrounding ruins. Instead, they illuminate them.

[There is no roof from which to hang decorations][4], so the tent itself becomes the lantern. Somewhere nearby, a small generator or salvaged battery hums softly—the fragile heartbeat of a family refusing to let displacement erase the spirit of the month.

Across Gaza, the geography of Ramadan is being redrawn.

Where mosques once stood, strings of LED lights zigzag between wooden poles and palm trees, forming glowing paths over dirt roads lined with tents. Lanterns are no longer purchased in markets. They are created from what remains.

[Empty soda cans are carefully cut and shaped into metallic lamps that sway gently in the evening breeze.][5] During the day they catch sunlight; at night they glow faintly in the dark.

These objects are more than decoration. They are declarations of existence—[small flames of perseverance that refuse to let darkness claim the final word.][6]

When Ramadan arrives in a city without homes, without mosques, without enough food to break its fast, the question is no longer how its people pray.

The question is how the world continues to watch. Because a holy month meant to embody mercy arriving beneath rubble is not a natural disaster. It is the result of human decisions—policies maintained, suffering prolonged, starvation regulated. And a tragedy not only witnessed by the world, but tolerated by it.

***

*Taqwa Ahmed Alwawi, a Palestinian writer, poet, and editor living in Gaza (born 2006), studied English Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. She is a chronicler and guardian of her community’s memory through her writing, dedicated to amplifying Gaza’s voice and sharing stories often left untold. Her work has appeared in over 30 international platforms. She is an editor at Baladi Magazine.*

*Taqwa’s Portfolio: [https://tqwaportfolio-project.netlify.app/][7]*

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[3]: https://www.instagram.com/p/DUy1TV6jCmz/?igsh=MWM0NmIyMWYxOHAyYQ==
[4]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU12CjEColU/?igsh=MXVsamJ4bzBrd2M3YQ==
[5]: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU1WEoHDTat/?igsh=cjV6dHBjdm8xNmQ4
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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/lanterns-among-the-ruins

Welcoming Ramadan with a New Spirit in Gaza **By Esraa Abo ...

2026-03-13T16:52:25Z

Welcoming Ramadan with a New Spirit in Gaza

**By Esraa Abo Qamar**

For two consecutive years, Ramadan arrived in Gaza under the devastating shadow of genocide. Both times, it felt nothing like the Ramadan we once knew.

I used to love Ramadan more than any other month. Before the war, it transformed the atmosphere of our home. My mother, especially, seemed softer. I would see her calmly reciting the Qur’an, moving peacefully through the kitchen. Even when we cooked, we did so with ease and joy. There was no tension — only anticipation for sunset.

During the genocide, that version of her disappeared.

She became anxious and exhausted, carrying the heavy burden of feeding us when there was almost nothing left to cook. We were living through famine, fasting nearly 15 hours a day. When sunset finally came, there was often little waiting on the table. The long iftar meals we once prepared — rice, chicken, soups, sambosk, pickles, sweets — were replaced by a small pot of thin soup or canned beans cooked over firewood.

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We had no cooking gas. Electricity was cut across the entire strip. We stepped outside in darkness to light wood fires, smoke filling our lungs as we cooked. We broke our fast coughing, sitting in the dark, listening to distant bombing.

My father’s sadness was unmistakable. His favourite part of Ramadan had always been *taraweeh* prayers at the mosque. But during those two years, he and my brothers could not go. The streets were unsafe at night. Some mosques did not even call the adhan, out of fear. Ramadan felt stripped of its soul.

My little sister insisted on fasting with us, but she missed the sweets the most — especially qatayef, the dessert that made Ramadan magical for her. We missed inviting my grandmother and aunts to share meals. Ramadan is meant to be a month of gathering and laughter. Instead, we were isolated and terrified. Every detail that once made the month special seemed stolen from us.

### *Market filled with light*

This year is different — even if only slightly. After the ceasefire, we are still grieving. The loved ones we lost will not return. The homes that were destroyed are no longer homes. The pain remains. But this Ramadan, we chose to celebrate.

A few days ago, my family and I went to the market to prepare. In Nuseirat, there is a large shopping centre called Al Hyper Mall. I did not expect what I felt when we arrived: excitement.

At the entrance stood a massive glowing lantern, shining brightly as children gathered around it to take photos. Inside, the shelves were full again — meats, fruits, vegetables, dairy products — items we had been deprived of for so long. There were dried fruits, Qamar al-Din, and dates essential for Ramadan. Pickles, sambosk, and qatayef were back in abundance.

The mall was decorated with “Ramadan Kareem” signs, crescent moons, stars, and lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Even the traditional Ramadan drummer — the musaharati who wakes people for suhoor — was displayed. Walking through those aisles felt like stepping briefly into the life we had before the war. I was surprised, and overwhelmingly happy.

### *Children decorating*

The next day, I heard laughter outside — children shouting with joy. When I looked out, I saw our neighbourhood children decorating the street. They had cut colourful plastic bags and tied them to ropes, stretching them from one side of the road to the other. Their decorations were simple, but their excitement was immense.

Nearly every house, even damaged ones, hung lights, lanterns, or crescent moons. We have lost so much — people, homes, safety, stability. But we are desperate for joy. We want any reason to feel alive again, any reason to celebrate this sacred month.

Inside our home, we decorated too. We hung lights. We replaced sofa covers and tablecloths with ones printed with Ramadan phrases, crescents, and lanterns. We bought new plates with Ramadan designs. These small details help us reclaim what we missed.

Perhaps the most beautiful return of all is the adhan. The call to prayer now fills the air again. My father can attend taraweeh prayers and stay late for tahajjud. People walk the streets at night. Roads remain busy until ten in the evening. For so long, simply being outside without fear felt impossible.

Not every area is safe. Some neighbourhoods remain dangerous. The pain has not disappeared. But in many places, mosques are open again. The adhan is loud again. We can walk to *taraweeh* with a fragile but precious sense of safety.

After two Ramadans of darkness, famine, and fear, this one carries something new: determination.

We are still grieving. We are still rebuilding. But we are choosing joy wherever we can find it. Ramadan was taken from us twice.

This year, we refuse to let it be taken again.

***

*Esraa Abo Qamar is a Palestinian writer and English Literature student based in Gaza.*

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/welcoming-ramadan-with-a-new-spirit

The Price of Return: Interrogation and Steadfastness at Rafah ...

2026-03-12T18:44:13Z

The Price of Return: Interrogation and Steadfastness at Rafah

**By Ohood Nassar**

Under the second phase of the ceasefire announced on January 14, 2026, by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff on behalf of President Donald Trump, the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip reopened partially on February 2, 2026, on a trial basis.

For Gaza’s population, Rafah is more than a border gate—it is a lifeline. After years of siege and escalating Israeli restrictions, it remains the primary outlet for medical travel, education, and humanitarian relief.

Yet the reopening quickly exposed the limits of the agreement. Although 50 stranded Palestinians were slated to return from Egypt, Israeli authorities allowed only 12—women and children—to cross. The remaining 38 were barred. The message was clear: control over Gaza’s movement remains absolute.

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On the first day of reopening, 57-year-old Huda Abu Abed returned to Khan Younis with her daughter, Rotana, 31. She had travelled to Egypt for a corneal transplant after suffering severe eye damage during the war. She left her children behind in Gaza, a separation she described as psychologically devastating.

Crossing back was no relief. Huda said she lived in constant fear of arrest. At the crossing, she and other travellers were first handled by individuals known locally as “Abu Shabab,” then transferred to Israeli forces for inspection and questioning.

“When they separated me from my daughter, I felt terror,” Huda said. “I thought they might detain me indefinitely.”

Her interrogation lasted three hours. She said Israeli officers pressed her to persuade residents of Khan Younis to leave Gaza, describing the Strip as unlivable after the destruction. According to Huda, they sought her cooperation in encouraging displacement—a demand she rejected with anger and disbelief.

Her phones, medication, and even toys she had brought for her grandchildren were confiscated. After questioning, she and others were transported in a truck flanked by Israeli military vehicles. She described the journey as degrading and deeply frightening.

## *Return to tents*

Huda returned not to a house, but to a tent in Khan Younis.

“Living in a tent is harsh,” she said. “But witnessing destruction in Gaza is still better than being displaced. Gaza is our homeland. We will not leave.”

Her words reflect a wider resolve among civilians who, despite devastation, reject forced migration.

Wi’am Fares, 44, who returned on February 8, recounted a similar ordeal. He endured over two hours of interrogation about his decision to return and about conditions in the tents where his family had been displaced. Soldiers urged him to go back to Egypt and warned that his family could be expelled as well.

“Return depends on the mood of a soldier,” Wi’am said. “We kept asking ourselves: will we ever see Gaza again?”

He described overcrowded conditions for Palestinians stranded in Egypt and the psychological strain of prolonged uncertainty. He called for unrestricted return for all stranded civilians, arguing that arbitrary barriers only deepen suffering and sabotage efforts toward stability.

## *Lifeline*

Rafah remains indispensable for Gaza’s two million residents. Thousands rely on it for medical treatment, study, and trade. But crossing procedures have become increasingly restrictive, subject to Israeli security vetting that turns travel into an unpredictable ordeal.

Human rights reports indicate that such restrictions function not only as security measures but as political leverage—controlling population movement and narrowing civilian options. For patients seeking urgent care, the process often means invasive questioning, confiscation of belongings, and prolonged delays that compound fear and isolation.

Despite intimidation, returnees delivered a unified message.

“The occupation asked me to convince people to leave,” Huda said. “My message is the opposite: remain steadfast.”

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For her and others, return—even to tents amid rubble—represents dignity. The choice is stark but deliberate: hardship at home over displacement abroad.

These testimonies underscore the profound psychological and physical toll imposed by movement restrictions. Military control shapes daily life, and normalcy remains contingent on political calculations.

At the same time, they reaffirm a central reality: for many Gazans, return—however painful—is preferable to exile.

The reopening of Rafah, though symbolically significant, has exposed the fragility of the humanitarian situation and the extent of continued restrictions. It also renews the urgency of international action—not only to ease immediate suffering, but to secure lasting guarantees of freedom of movement and a dignified future for Gaza’s civilians.

***

*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.*

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Job Opening: Executive Director – Palestine Deep Dive ...

2026-03-06T14:04:44Z

Job Opening: Executive Director – Palestine Deep Dive

**Location: **Hybrid – Primarily** **London studio/office and remote working

**Salary:** £50,000 per annum

**Hours:** Four-day working week (Monday–Thursday)

## **About Palestine Deep Dive**

Palestine Deep Dive is an independent media organisation unapologetically centring Palestinian voices in the face of decades of silencing, dehumanisation and erasure.

We are a small but rapidly growing organisation committed to building a multimedia platform capable of producing timely, in-depth journalism that exposes the realities of Israeli apartheid, colonialism and genocide.

Through podcasts, video journalism and written analysis, we challenge the failures and biases of mainstream media coverage. Through first-hand testimony, unflinching commentary and expert analysis, we aim to deepen public understanding while amplifying Palestinian perspectives and celebrating the fullness of Palestinian life and culture.

Palestine Deep Dive reaches an international audience and has built a significant global following across digital platforms including more than 100,000 followers across Instagram and YouTube.

We now operate from a newly built London-based studio, marking an exciting new phase in the development of our multimedia journalism.

## **The Role**

We are seeking a new **Executive Director** to succeed Omar Aziz and lead the organisation into its next stage of growth.

This is a unique and exciting opportunity for an experienced leader to guide an independent media organisation at a critical political and historical moment.

The Executive Director will consolidate the organisation’s recent growth, strengthen its editorial and organisational structures, and manage a growing team in producing impactful journalism.

We are looking for someone with excellent organisational development skills who can lead a growing team of journalists, producers and video editors and represent the organisation publicly.

## **Who Would Suit This Role**

This role would suit someone with a strong commitment to Palestinian liberation who is excited by the challenge of leading and growing an independent media platform at this critical moment.

You may already come from journalism and documentary media, or possibly from academia, campaigning, or the non-profit sector, but you will share a deep understanding of the political stakes surrounding media coverage of Palestine.

## **Key Responsibilities**

* Provide overall leadership and strategic direction for Palestine Deep Dive
* Support and develop a growing team of journalists, producers and video editors
* Lead the editorial team to ensure high-quality journalism aligned with the organisation’s mission
* Develop internal processes to expand audience reach and impact
* Oversee the development and delivery of Palestine Deep Dive’s new weekly live show, ensuring it becomes the central pillar of the organisation’s editorial output and audience engagement.
* Some management of budgets and operational planning
* Lead fundraising efforts, including donor relations and grant applications
* Build partnerships with aligned media platforms, organisations and networks
* Represent Palestine Deep Dive publicly through media appearances, events and partnerships
* Ensure strong governance, accountability and ethical standards across the organisation

## **Skills and Experience Required**

### **Essential**

Candidates should have several years of experience working in media, campaigning, academia or the non-profit sector, along with a demonstrated commitment to Palestinian liberation and justice.

* At least three years’ experience managing and supporting teams
* Experience working in journalism, media production, campaigning, research or academia
* Demonstrated knowledge of the Palestinian question, regional politics and global geopolitics
* Excellent written and verbal communication skills
* Strong organisational and management skills
* A sophisticated understanding of the English-language media landscape and its coverage of Palestine
* Experience developing organisational strategy and managing projects
* Ability to work collaboratively with creative and editorial teams
* A strong understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks governing journalism in the UK, including defamation law and editorial risk management

### **Desirable**

* Experience working in journalism, independent or alternative media
* Multimedia or video journalism experience
* Fundraising or grant management experience
* Arabic language skills
* Experience representing organisations publicly in media or at events

### **Personal Qualities**

* A strong commitment to the mission and values of Palestine Deep Dive
* Integrity and a proven record of upholding professional ethical standards
* Ability to lead with both vision and humility
* Emotional intelligence and care in supporting colleagues with lived experience of occupation, displacement or trauma
* Comfortable working both behind the scenes and as a public-facing representative of the organisation when required
* Ability to work under pressure and manage multiple priorities
* A collaborative and supportive leadership style

## **Terms and Conditions**

**Location:** Hybrid – Primarily** **London office and remote working

**Hours:** Four-day working week (Monday–Thursday)

**Salary:** £50,000 per annum

**Benefits:**

* Pension scheme
* Flexible and generous holiday allowance
* Flexible working arrangements
* Generous parental leave policies

**Contract:** Standard employment contract including a three-month probationary period.

**Right to Work:** Applicants must have the legal right to work in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Palestine Deep Dive is not currently able to sponsor work visas.

## **Application Process**

Applicants should email the following:

* A CV
* A cover letter (maximum 1,000 words) explaining how you meet the essential criteria
* A list of relevant materials (publications, articles, videos, etc.) with web links
* Names, positions and email addresses of two referees

Please send applications with “**Executive Director”** in the subject line to:
info@palestinedeepdive.com

## **Deadline:**

Friday 20 March 2026. *Early applications are encouraged, as interviews may be conducted on a rolling basis.*

Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. All applications will be treated in strict confidence.

## **Additional Information**

Palestine Deep Dive is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and encourages applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Due to the volume of applications we receive, we regret that we may not be able to respond to all applicants individually. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Palestine Deep Dive reserves the right to close the application process early if a suitable candidate is identified.

https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/job-opening-executive-director-palestine

‘I don’t recognise myself’: Turning 20 in Gaza I didn’t ...

2026-02-18T15:05:27Z

‘I don’t recognise myself’: Turning 20 in Gaza

I didn’t suddenly feel like an adult. There was no dramatic moment, no sense of arrival. But something inside me changed—slowly, painfully, and permanently.

A few days ago, a friend mentioned that only twenty days remained until my twentieth birthday. I laughed, unsure how I was supposed to feel. The genocide began when I was seventeen. Then came eighteen. Then nineteen. Now, I am approaching twenty, carrying years that were never truly lived. From January 31, 2006, to January 31, 2026, my age increased—but my life was interrupted. I exist between the person I was before everything collapsed and the person I am still trying to become.

I have changed so much that I sometimes don’t recognise myself. At seventeen, I wanted to understand everything—people, injustice, the world. I chased truth relentlessly. Now, I often retreat from it. Not because I stopped caring, but because awareness came too violently. Knowledge arrived through trauma.

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Growing older frightens me, not because of the number, but because of what it contains. I never imagined that three years of my youth could be erased this way. I once believed turning twenty would bring clarity and direction. Instead, it brings uncertainty. As I approach finishing my bachelor’s degree in August 2026, I face a painful choice: Should I accept scholarships and study abroad, leaving my family behind in constant danger? Or should I stay, choosing responsibility and presence over a long-held dream—to study, even briefly, outside Gaza?

Those who know me know that I am ambitious. I don’t compete with others; I compete with who I used to be. I balance calm with strength, sensitivity with reason. I believe ethics are the foundation of all relationships, which is why I strive to treat people with honesty and respect. I value simplicity and reject pretence. I prefer to live as I am, without masks. I am kind by nature, and I once assumed the best in everyone—but experience taught me that kindness does not require self-erasure, and that boundaries are necessary for self-respect.

I do not settle. I seek growth even when the path is unclear. I stumble, doubt, and break—but I do not give up. Failure, to me, is not an ending but part of learning. Success matters not for recognition, but for knowing I stayed true to myself. I endure with patience, even when grief and fear overwhelm my inner world.

## *Reshaping*

Family remains my anchor, the last reliable source of safety in a life shaped by instability. I cherish those who stand beside me in the hardest moments. This genocide has reshaped me in ways language cannot fully hold. Oh, hurried age - you betrayed me. You placed burdens beyond my capacity and denied me the chance to complete my childhood. Gaza, often called the world’s largest open-air prison, was always a place I loved. But genocide introduced a constant sense of suffocation, as if even love became trapped behind walls.

Loss stopped being rare and became routine. On October 15, 2023, Israeli forces bombed the home of my closest friend, Shimaa Saidam, killing her and most of her family. Soon after, Lina al-Hour and her family were killed on October 27. Mayar Jouda on October 31. Asmaa Jouda on May 24, 2025. On November 1, 2023, missiles destroyed my uncle’s home, killing his wife Neveen, my aunt Asmaa, and my two-month-old cousin Fatima. By the end of that year, my grandfather’s four-story home was flattened. My uncle Abd al-Salam and his children, Huthaifa (13) and Hala (8), were killed. I also lost professors and teachers I deeply respected.

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Loss extended beyond people. It took homes, routines, places, memories, and parts of my identity. My mind became heavy with images and knowledge it was never meant to carry.

And yet, something human survived. I held onto education, reading, and writing—anything that could keep me from collapsing. Writing became both refuge and resistance. I wrote constantly. Through it, I became a writer, poet, and editor. My work reached audiences beyond Gaza. Education became my quiet weapon against erasure.

Nineteen years of survival taught me lessons no classroom could offer. I learned that strength lies in acceptance, that happiness belongs to pure hearts, and that kind people are life’s greatest blessing. I am no longer who I was—not because I weakened, but because I matured. I now choose silence over justification, calm over confrontation, distance over emotional exhaustion. I protect my peace. I no longer wait for apologies or explanations.

## *Achievements*

Achievement now means something different to me. Why don’t we record, as achievements, what we endured during the genocide? The hunger that taught us how to ration hope. The displacement that stripped “home” of its meaning. The fear that followed us into sleep and woke up with us each morning.

Why don’t we honour the nights we survived under bombardment, the hours spent waiting for news that could destroy us, the days when simply staying alive required strength beyond measure?

Why don’t we document how we learned to live with loss as a constant presence? The first day without a friend. The moment we received news of martyrdom. The numbness, the silence, the shock. We learned to memorise final voice notes, photos, and messages. We learned how to carry names that would never answer again.

Why don’t we recognise how we mourned places—the homes where laughter once lived, the mosques, the schools, the universities, the rooms where dreams were first spoken? We learned to grieve memories buried under rubble and to accept that entire chapters of life could disappear overnight.

We carried responsibilities far beyond our age. We became emotional shelters for others while having none ourselves. We learned to hide panic to comfort younger siblings, to appear strong before our parents, and to break down in silence. We endured exhaustion, repeated displacement, and constant uncertainty. We lost people, routines, futures, and versions of ourselves.

We learned under bombardment. We studied while classrooms disappeared and death hovered overhead. Learning became defiance. Education became survival. Every page read and every word written declared that we would not be reduced to victims alone.

## *Collapse of certainty*

We lived through the collapse of certainty. We held onto dreams while genocide tried to erase us—not only physically, but emotionally and culturally. We insisted on hope when despair was logical. We imagined futures even when tomorrow was not guaranteed.

We continued forward without knowing whether morning would come. We built fragile routines inside chaos. We carried grief quietly to survive. We learned patience without limits, endurance without recognition, grit without rest. We grew older than our years and stronger than our circumstances.

These experiences were not chosen. They were imposed by violence. Yet they gave us skills no certificate can measure: patience shaped by loss, strength built through survival, emotional depth forged by grief, and a refusal to lose our humanity.

If achievements were measured honestly, endurance would come first. Survival would be honoured. And remaining human—still able to dream beyond genocide—would be the greatest achievement of all.

Twenty is not an answer. It is the beginning of an unresolved question—and I am ready to live it. Welcome, my twentieth year. Please bring safety and peace with you. They are feelings I have missed more than words can express.

*Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi is a Palestinian writer, poet, and editor based in Gaza, dedicated to amplifying Gaza’s voice and bringing to light stories too often left untold. Her work has been featured in leading international platforms. Her portfolio: https://tqwaportfolio-project.netlify.app/*

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As Rafah Reopens, Relief is Tainted by Loss On the same day, I ...

2026-02-17T20:56:06Z

As Rafah Reopens, Relief is Tainted by Loss

On the same day, I received two pieces of news that could not have felt further apart. First, I heard that the Rafah border would open the following day. Hours later, I learned that twelve people had been killed in a new ceasefire violation. Together, these headlines formed a familiar truth: for Palestinians in Gaza, any moment that resembles relief arrives only after a price has already been paid.

On February 2, I woke up in a peaceful place in Italy. Still, before starting my day, I checked the news from Gaza as I always do. That morning, I stared at the two headlines, unable to process them. I didn’t know how to feel. Confused, I called my family and asked how both things could be true at once: how news could be both hopeful and devastating. One of my eight family members answered quietly, “Sara, it is normal.” And sadly, it is. It has become normal for Israel to twist even moments that might appear to favour us. As if two years of genocide were not enough, even our smallest taste of “freedom” must be shattered.

I no longer live in Gaza – I was evacuated to Italy – but I follow every update as if I were still there, because my family is. Distance means nothing when your heart remains attached to the place that shaped you for 21 years. Every headline carries weight. Even though I am safe, even though I am technically free, the news reminds me that you can leave a place physically while your soul stays behind.

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“Rafah border reopens.” Social media has been filled with this headline. People outside Gaza may read it and feel relieved, but only Palestinians truly understand the untold stories, the unbearable conditions, and the hidden restrictions behind those words.

Happiness, for Palestinians, is always incomplete. It always arrives missing something.

## *Returning*

The first day of Gaza’s prison gates reopening—supposedly in both directions—has just ended. It is 2:20am in Italy, one hour later in Gaza, and I am still glued to the news, searching for any sign of a better future for my family and for Gaza. I watched a video of a woman returning to Gaza after being evacuated for medical treatment, along with fourteen others who had also been receiving care abroad. “Do not leave Gaza. Stay in Gaza,” she cried through tears. Israel had promised that fifty people would be allowed to return. Only fourteen were. In this place, promises are fragile. Israel’s promises rarely meet reality.

No one can judge them, and no one should blame them for choosing to return home. Home is home—especially for those who were injured and forced to leave Gaza for treatment while hospitals were being targeted. At least 115,000 Gazans were evacuated to Egypt in the early months of the genocide. They may have survived, but survival came at a cost—emotionally, physically, and financially. I know families among my relatives who were deeply affected. “The war left us with no choice,” one relative told me during a video call. “I can’t wait to go back. I love Gaza.”

Many people have clung to false hope as this news spread across social media. In reality, this reopening is only a drop in the ocean for more than two million people trapped inside Gaza. Anyone who looks beyond the headline, without filters, will see that this gesture is largely performative. Israel presents it as relief, while the truth on the ground remains painfully unchanged.

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“We were informed today that only five injured people will be allowed to leave Gaza per day,” the director of Al-Shifa Hospital said, his voice filled with shock and grief. His words reflect what we all feel. Five people per day, while tens of thousands are wounded, and the number continues to grow.

## *Limited freedom*

This reopening is extremely limited. Even reaching this announcement has cost us two years of our lives. Rafah border—*Ma‘bar Rafah* in Arabic—has been Gaza’s only outlet to the world since 2001, after Gaza’s airport was destroyed. It was fully closed 20 months ago, on May 5, 2024. I remember exactly how that felt. I personally lost a scholarship because of it. Families were torn apart. Food barely entered. The injured suffered in silence. And the world moved on.

And now, the world expects Palestinians to feel free.

But how can freedom exist when movement depends on lists and luck?

This is not freedom. It is calmer control.

Still, I hold on to the hope of reuniting with my family and loved ones. I may be free in Italy, but my soul is not. I see the same feeling reflected in my colleagues from Gaza, all of us living in exile. We share news the way children wait for a long-delayed reunion – counting days, clinging to fragments of possibility. “If this process continues at this pace, I will see my family in two years,” one colleague told me yesterday. And sadly, that is the truth.

With every trip I take here in Italy, I feel a quiet guilt. For hours afterwards, my mind wanders. What if life were this easy in Gaza? What if movement were unrestricted? What if every student could study freely? What if every patient received treatment? What if there were no occupation?

So no: this is not freedom. It is a tighter form of control, farther from the world’s eyes. We do not ask for the impossible. We ask for normality. And we hold on to the hope that one day—even delayed, even wounded—that normality will finally find us.

*Sara Awad is a Palestinian writer who evacuated to Italy to complete her bachelor’s degree in languages and translation. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, Al Jazeera English, Palestine Deep Dive, TRT World, Drop Site News, The Independent, Truthout, PRISM, and other platforms. Passionate about capturing human experiences and shedding light on untold stories, and focusing on social issues, resilience, identity, and hope amid the ongoing realities of war and occupation.*

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UNRWA’s Termination of Gazan Staff Abroad is Creating Another ...

2026-02-02T11:38:26Z

UNRWA’s Termination of Gazan Staff Abroad is Creating Another Humanitarian Crisis

**By Abedalrahman Mohammed**

In the midst of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, another crisis is unfolding quietly but no less devastating: the termination of Palestinian employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) who are currently outside the Gaza Strip after being placed on exceptional leave. Many of these men and women did not choose to leave Gaza — they fled for their lives, sometimes accompanying sick relatives, sometimes escaping bombardment that left them no alternative.

Yet now, they are being told their contracts have been ended immediately, a decision that has sent shockwaves through families already fractured by war and displacement.

UNRWA placed hundreds of its Gaza-based staff on exceptional leave starting in March 2025, a temporary measure meant to protect their jobs while they were unable to work due to the ongoing war and the closure of border crossings. However, in early January 2026, the agency abruptly announced that those contracts would be terminated, effective immediately, citing a severe financial crisis and an inability to sustain salaries and programme commitments.

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The decision affects roughly 600 employees, primarily in the education sector, many of whom are currently in Egypt because they could not safely return to Gaza. Staff learned of the termination through formal letters outlining that their services had ended, and that their final settlements — including end of service compensation and notice pay — would be processed in due course.

Many of the affected employees had hoped that the “exceptional leave” would be temporary — that once crossings opened, even briefly, they could return to their classrooms, clinics, and communities. Instead, they now confront a different form of displacement: economic erasure.

## *Arbitrary and unjust*

The impact of this decision extends far beyond individual employees. These are families — parents, spouses, children — whose livelihoods depended on stable work with UNRWA. The agency is often one of the few employment avenues in Palestinian refugee communities. Losing that work means losing not only a paycheck but also access to medical insurance, educational support for children, and the psychological security that comes with professional identity and routine.

Local human rights groups have condemned the termination as arbitrary, unjust, and a violation of basic rights, noting that the employees were prevented by circumstances beyond their control from returning to Gaza and resuming their duties. They argue that blaming staff for having fled a war zone amounts to punishing them twice: first by the violence that drove them out, and then by stripping them of their means to survive outside it.

The reaction among Palestinian society has been swift and critical. Comments from staff and unions highlight the personal trauma and financial insecurity caused by the decision. “The decision is arbitrary and discriminatory. We did not leave Gaza by choice — we fled for our lives or to accompany sick relatives. Now we are punished for surviving,” said Abu Adi Al-Talla’, spokesperson for UNRWA contract employees.

Palestinian factions and unions condemned the move as unjust and inhumane, warning that dismissals undermine basic employment rights at a critical time when families are struggling to recover from war. “Cuts and contract terminations amount to a ‘stab in the back’ of employees who lost colleagues under bombardment and have served as a safety valve for the agency,” said Ahmed Abu Houli, of the PLO’s Refugee Affairs Department. Hamas, meanwhile, described the decision as an infringement on fundamental employment rights for people who were unable to return due to border closures and war conditions.

## *Human tragedy*

This is not merely an administrative or financial issue; it is a human tragedy unfolding in parallel with the broader crisis in Gaza. UNRWA employees are not faceless bureaucrats — they are teachers who once stood at chalkboards, parents who tucked their children into bed before the war began, and community members who provided stability in an unstable world. Now, many face unemployment in foreign lands, with depleted savings and uncertain futures.

The agency has indicated it will provide statutory compensation, but for many families, such payments — arriving weeks or months later — do not address the immediate needs of daily life. They cannot replace the security of a job, community, and home.

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In a moment when international attention focuses on the physical destruction within Gaza’s borders, the termination of services for these employees exposes a different dimension of the crisis: the systematic unravelling of Palestinian social and economic structures that have been sustained, imperfectly but indispensably, by institutions like UNRWA.

Stripping people of their employment because they had to survive war and protect their families raises profound ethical questions about who bears the burden of conflict and who is protected by international humanitarian systems.

The decision to terminate the contracts of UNRWA staff who fled Gaza under life-threatening conditions is more than a labour dispute — it is a moral crisis. It turns survival into a professional liability, punishes those who were driven by fear for their lives and those of their loved ones, and deepens the economic fracture for families already pushed to the brink. As Gaza’s war continues, so too must the international community grapple with the consequences — seen and unseen — of policies that transform victims of conflict into victims of institutional abandonment.

***

*Abedalrahman Mohammed is a Palestinian journalist and translator with over 20 years of experience in the field. He is a professional author producing analytical documentary-style journalism.*

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In Gaza, the occupation enforces slowness. Speed is our escape. ...

2026-01-28T12:46:16Z

In Gaza, the occupation enforces slowness. Speed is our escape.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

Every Friday afternoon, when the week loosens its grip on Gaza, the sand begins to vibrate. In west Gaza, where the land meets the sea, engines roar back to life along the scarred stretch once known as the “Netzarim corridor” and on the sand dunes of al-Zahra.

Motorbikes and off-road vehicles surge forward, cutting through sand dunes that look out toward a sea that is somehow still breathing, still blue. Tires dig in. Sand sprays into the air like fireworks.

For a few fleeting hours, Gaza’s youth move fast. Faster than grief, faster than memory, faster than the suffocating slowness imposed on their lives.

This weekly ritual is not new. Since around 2015, young Palestinians have gathered in the Netzarim area and nearby al-Zahra city to ride, perform stunts, and test their limits.

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But after two years of genocide, displacement, fuel starvation, and an Israeli military presence that rendered the area a killing zone, the return to these dunes is more than a hobby. It is an act of reclamation.

“We love life,” Mahmoud Saqer, 30, one of the riders in the group, tells me. “And this is how we remember that.”

Mahmoud remembers the early days clearly. Back then, al-Zahra was completely alive. Thousands of people would come on Fridays, including riders, families, children, vendors, and spectators. The dunes were wide, the streets intact, and petrol was available.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

“Everyone had his own style,” Mahmoud adds. “Some would lift the bike on one wheel. Others would race up steep sand hills. Some would fall, break a bone—we used to joke and call it a ‘quick death’. But no one would give up. We keep trying until we make it.”

The gatherings were communal events. Crowds formed naturally, drawn by the sound of engines and the sight of young men defying gravity. Watching was part of the experience. For riders and spectators alike, it was a release.

## *Empty horizon*

That release became impossible after the genocide started.

During the genocide, Netzarim was transformed into a corridor of death. Israeli occupation forces occupied the area; anyone attempting to cross or even approach it risked being shot on sight. Petrol vanished. What little entered Gaza became impossibly expensive—up to $40 per litre. Motorbikes and off-road vehicles were hidden away.

“We stored all the motorbikes,” Issam Abu Asr, 26, who was displaced after his home in al-Shejaiya neighbourhood was destroyed, tells me. “Not because we forgot our passion, but because a single missile could take it all away.”

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For younger riders like 15-year-old Waleed Alareer, the loss was deeply personal. Before the genocide, he rode along the brightly-lit asphalt roads by the sea, learning balance and control. During the genocide, he could only walk to the closest accessible point, stare at the empty horizon, and imagine the sound of his engine.

“When the IOF soldiers were centring in the Netzarim area, I was reaching to the last point I could reach and standing there and remembering,” he tells me. “About how I used to start my bike and ride from north to south.”

## *Burning rubber*

When the Israeli forces withdrew and riders cautiously returned, the feeling was overwhelming - but incomplete. “I hadn’t ridden in two years,” Mahmoud says. “The first time back, it felt strange. I couldn’t even lift the bike on one wheel.”

Mohammad Al-Zaza, 22, describes the return as an attempt to stitch his scattered memories back together. “We try to remember how it was before,” he says, “but the memories are missing pieces. The streets are destroyed. There’s no lighting. We have to leave at sunset. Before, we stayed until midnight.”

The losses are visible everywhere. Friends who once rode together are gone - killed, displaced, or unable to repair bikes destroyed in the bombing. Al-Zahra City has been wiped off the map. What remains of Netzarim are fragments, now narrow and crowded. Still, they come.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

But on Friday afternoons, people gather around the riders again, forming loose circles. Some sit on broken concrete slabs. Others stand barefoot in the sand. Children cheer when a bike catches air. The sea breeze carries the smell of salt and petrol, mixing with the sharp scent of burning rubber.

When engines rev, sand sprays outward in wide arcs. The first acceleration sends dunes trembling. Riders perform wheelies, drift sideways across loose terrain, and charge uphill until gravity nearly wins—until, finally, it doesn’t. “It’s not just for us,” Mahmoud explains. “The people watching—they’re releasing energy too. They watch the bikes, the sea, the flying sand. For a moment, everyone breathes.”

Speed here is contagious. Even standing still, you feel it.

## *Enforced slowness*

In Gaza, slowness is enforced. Waiting—for electricity, for fuel, for permission, for reconstruction, for relief. Occupation stretches time until it becomes a punishment. That is why speed matters. “When I ride fast, adrenaline and happiness hormones are released,” Mohammad says. “It’s indescribable.” Issam puts it differently: “Speed is instinct. It’s inside us. Occupation tried to kill that—especially when fuel was cut—but it didn’t work.”

Even now, petrol remains scarce and exorbitantly priced. Spare parts and engine oil are nearly impossible to obtain. Each ride is calculated, rationed, precious. And yet, the bikes keep moving.

Riders never go alone. They arrive together and leave together, partly for camaraderie, partly for safety. But the emptiness of Netzarim carries risks—criminal gangs, collaborators, and the lingering threat of violence. “We ride as a group,” Issam says. “It’s about spirit and protection.”

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

The riders coordinate beforehand, message each other, share routes, and document their rides on Instagram and TikTok. Visibility itself becomes a statement: we are here, and we are alive.

Walid laughs when he describes his first ride back. “I was flying with happiness. I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Despite exhaustion, loss, and uncertainty, the dunes offer something rare in Gaza: unfiltered joy. The riders are not naive about what they face. They speak openly about petrol prices, destroyed infrastructure, and the impossibility of returning to what once was. But none of them speak of surrender.

Photograph: Khames al-Refi

Their message to the world is clear. Pressure the occupation to allow fuel, spare parts, and reconstruction. Support Gaza’s youth, whose talents survive without resources. Above all, understand that joy itself is a form of resistance.

As the sun dips toward the Mediterranean and engines fall silent, the sand settles. The riders pack up, promising to return next Friday. On the dunes of Netzarim - amid ruins, sea air, and flying sand - they choose speed over erasure, and life over everything else.

*Ali Skaik is an English Literature student and writer from Gaza City. Every word he writes is a pulse from his life in Gaza. He is a member of WANN and has published work in The Nation, The New Arab, The Intercept and The Electronic Intifada.*

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The Unbearable Weight of Escaping Gaza’s Destruction Dreaming ...

2026-01-18T13:38:00Z

The Unbearable Weight of Escaping Gaza’s Destruction

Dreaming tastes strange when it comes with guilt. I had long hoped for a scholarship to study abroad, like any other international student - and now it’s real. I have won a place in Italy to complete my bachelor’s degree, just as I always dreamed. But I never imagined my scholarship would arrive in the middle of a genocide. I never thought it would be my ticket to survival.

The process began in the early months of the war when I realised Gaza was no longer the place I had once known. I told my family I wanted to complete my bachelor’s degree abroad, no matter how long it took. Amid starvation, bombs, death, and unimaginable conditions, I held on to my dream.

I spent hours on my phone - no matter how many times the electricity or internet failed - searching for a scholarship that could realise my dream. I applied dozens of times to different countries and programmes and, somehow, I had the strength to keep going, even while sheltering from the war.

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Every email notification was a promise of escape, but it always ended the same way - with a rejection. I remained trapped in Gaza, with no clear way out. But I kept pursuing my dream, even when the world around me was telling me there was no hope.

Then, good news finally arrived: I was granted a scholarship in Italy. I remember vividly where I was when hope finally touched me: sitting in the tent at our displacement site - it was October 2025. I prayed that this time it would be real, that my heart would not break again.

While waiting for my evacuation date, I spent days and nights without sleep. I was torn between chasing my dream and the guilt of leaving my family. It felt unbearably cruel to hold a single ticket to survival while part of a family of eight who had no similar way out. For a month, I waited. For a month, I asked myself the same questions every day: why must I leave Gaza to have a future? Why does life for Palestinians always feel incomplete? Why is our joy always complicated?

## *Evacuation*

Finally, the night of the evacuation arrived. I received a call from the Italian embassy: be ready on 17 November at 4am in Deir al-Balah. I was instructed to only bring my phone and charger, nothing else was allowed.

The dream was finally becoming real, but for a Palestinian, happiness is never pure. All my hopes for the future fell away as I said goodbye to my family: my father, mother, four brothers, and one sister. Tears still fall as I write this. Can you imagine how much I miss them? For me, we are the best family. We endured the war and its unbearable conditions together, hand in hand. We shared the pain with patience and hope. In reality, survival meant nothing without them.

At 6am, I began leaving Gaza. Once on the evacuation bus, I realised that nothing would ever be the same. Not me, not my future. I began to think of those who had destroyed our dreams, forcing us to leave and rebuild our lives elsewhere. Fear, stress, and terror consumed me. I was about to face the people who had tried to destroy us over the past two years. All I could do was sit in silence - powerless - and follow the rules they imposed.

“Sara Awad, Italy.” That was the last thing I heard from the Israeli soldier at the checkpoint. My heart felt so heavy, and survivor’s guilt began to settle deep in my mind and soul. More than ten hours passed on the bus heading to Amman, Jordan. As we crossed our occupied land, I saw it for the first time in my 21 years. I understood I might never see it again. There were 24 people being evacuated to Italy, including students and family reunions. Elderly people and children were exhausted from the long evacuation process.

During these hours on the bus, I started to think about everything I had endured during the war. I cried like a child longing for her mother. Millions of emotions, suppressed and scattered during the chaos, now poured out as I left Gaza behind.

## *Heavy freedom*

After days of exhaustion and fear, the journey was finally over. I arrived in Italy. I had expected to feel happy and relieved, but the truth was the opposite. Life outside Gaza seemed completely normal, too normal, while my people continued to suffer, even during the so-called ceasefire.

Italy was safe, clean, beautiful, and welcoming. And yet, it just kept reminding me how unfair life could be.

The first days in Italy felt unreal after witnessing two years of war. Life here was slow and quiet, the air clean, the streets calm. There was no chaos, no faces filled with fear, no constant uncertainty. People moved freely, unburdened. I realised how heavy freedom could feel when you’ve lived without it for so long.

I thought building a new life away from home would feel like a fresh start, but I didn’t realise the weight of carrying two lives at once - one of them scarred by war. How heavy it is to be a 21-year-old girl away from her loved ones, trying to build a better future for herself.

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But, as always, Gazans know nothing about giving up. I still have hope for the future. It is January 2026 - a new year and a new chapter of my life. All my wishes go to Gaza and my family. May they remain happy and safe for all the years to come.

My heart is also full of gratitude and appreciation for Italy and its people. I am here living a good life because of the support of many lovely Italians. Effort and hard work sometimes pays off. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity, and I hope that all students in Gaza who dream of a scholarship will be able to achieve it. I also hope that they can pursue their dreams without carrying the weight of survivor’s guilt that I bear in my heart.

Thank you, Italy. But I count the days until I can return to my homeland, to rebuild it with my education and my hope. My beloved Gaza, I carry you in my heart.

***

Sara Awad is a Palestinian writer who evacuated to Italy to complete her bachelor’s degree in languages. Her work has appeared in The Intercept, Al Jazeera English, TRT World, Drop Site News, The Independent, Truthout, PRISM, and other international platforms. Passionate about capturing human experiences and shedding light on untold stories, she reports on social issues, resilience, identity, and hope amid the ongoing realities of war and occupation.

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Inside Gaza’s Medical Emergency [ [North Gaza's last ...

2026-01-16T13:43:14Z

Inside Gaza’s Medical Emergency

[
[North Gaza's last functioning hospital forced to shut by Israeli ...]
][1]

By Rawan Wajdi Jouda

Thursday morning in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was not an ordinary day. It wasn’t the roar of fighter jets that gripped our hearts this time, but a more terrifying sound: the silence creeping from behind the walls of Al-Awda Hospital in** **our camp. As a resident of this besieged and exhausted camp, I didn’t need to read the official press release saturating the news to understand the scale of the catastrophe. The power to the hospital had been switched off.

I went along the road to the hospital, where I normally see people rushing along to find a sanctuary for survival. Along the roadsides, sewage water overflowed, a grim reminder of what is causing an invisible enemy which is infiltrating the bodies of my neighbours: Hepatitis A. Upon arrival at the hospital, the massive roar of the generators we had grown accustomed to was gone, replaced by an eerie stillness. I entered through a gate that usually bustled with life, stepping into a reception hall swallowed by gloom, lit only by the faint beams of mobile phone flashlights held by nurses.

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In the corners, I saw children whose faces had turned a sallow yellow, as if a premature autumn had struck their fragile bodies. This is Hepatitis A, the “yellow plague” gnawing at the livers of the displaced in nearby tents. They came here seeking a miracle, only to find that the miracle now depends on “litres of fuel” that had been withdrawn. I saw a mother clutching her jaundiced child. His eyes were dim as he stood bewildered before the reception desk, only for a nurse to tell her with profound sorrow: “There is no fuel for the laboratory to run the tests.” In that moment, I realised the true meaning of “slow death”: to have the cure existing just behind a door, but the key, a litre of fuel, is held captive behind borders by the Israelis.

## *No power*

I approached one of the mothers who was holding her whimpering child. Her voice trembled as she asked me: “We fled death in the tents only to die here because the power is out?” I had no answer. I simply recorded her words in my journal, which was by now full of tears rather than ink. Inside, the air conditioning had been cut. The elevators had stopped working entirely. I saw patients being evacuated from the general and specialised surgery departments in a scene resembling a forced displacement. They had to be moved from their hospital beds because the operating rooms had shut down. As a result of the lack of fuel, more than 50,000 life-saving surgical procedures have been postponed, turning time itself into another weapon against the wounded.

In another dark corner of the maternity ward, a woman was in labour and groaning. The hospital is now forced to prioritise patients among the dying: it shuts down entire vital departments just to get hold of a small generator to light a single bulb over a midwife’s head. Other women in labour are taken to different hospitals, while paediatric admissions are sent to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

I heard the medical staff whispering about the “black market”. Can the world imagine a hospital that saves lives being forced to hunt desperately for fuel from traders at $12 per litre? This means Al Awda Hospital needs $12,000 every single day just to operate. This is a state-level budget needed by a besieged hospital while international organisations close their operations and offer nothing but apologies. It is an impossible amount for a facility that survived 26 months of relentless bombardment, only to be stabbed in the back by a “fuel siege”. Many medical staff, those who haven’t left the field for 600 days since the start of the genocide, have been forced into “involuntary leave”.

## *Engineered annihilation*

What is happening within the halls of Al-Awda Hospital is not a passing fuel crisis: it is a new chilling chapter in Israel’s process of “engineered annihilation,” practised against the Palestinian population in Gaza. Then, while the world was pushing the narrative about “calm” and 2026 heralding a so-called “recovery”, Israel chose to inaugurate the new year with its most lethal move since the start of the aggression: the announcement of a plan to end the international humanitarian presence in Gaza.

This scheme, which aims to expel more than 37 international organisations, led by Doctors Without Borders, goes beyond a mere administrative decision: it is a death sentence for our remaining, stricken medical facilities. We are talking about organisations whose tireless efforts and essential supplies have literally kept us alive throughout more than two years of relentless slaughter and destruction. By expelling them now, the primary goal is to silence international witnesses and strip Al-Awda Hospital and other steadfast institutions of their last chance at survival.

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We are facing a process of* institutional uprooting* aimed at turning Gaza into an uninhabitable space. Israel, which has already banned UNRWA and attacked many of its facilities, is expelling international organisations in order to complete a war of starvation and annihilation. We are witnessing a systematic medical strangulation where hospitals are left coping with an explosion of epidemics, with bleeding supplies suffering a 60% deficit. Medical stocks now cover only 10% of the minimum requirements for life in Gaza. All this amidst a shameful international silence.

I left Al Awda Hospital wondering: if the artery of Nuseirat has stopped, how much time do we have before the heart of Gaza stops entirely? How cruel is the moment when a doctor is forced to choose which of the dying deserves the least pain, or which life-saving surgeries must be delayed? In Gaza, we have had to learn resilience, but today we discover that resilience can be killed by an empty fuel tank.

***

Rawan Wajdi Jouda is a writer and a translation graduate from the Islamic University of Gaza. She is a member of WANN, with contributions featured in WRMEA and Al Jazeera Blogs. She seeks to bear witness to the daily suffering of Gazans and document their lived realities through storytelling.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/inside-gazas-medical-emergency

Murjana Book Launch: Love and Passion in Medieval Baghdad It is ...

2026-01-14T19:17:07Z

Murjana Book Launch: Love and Passion in Medieval Baghdad

It is spring of the year 830. Baghdad, the capital of a vast Islamic empire, is one of the world’s most glorious cities. Its ruler is an intellectual, a forward-thinking caliph who champions reason and the pursuit of knowledge against the forces of ignorance and superstition. The Caliph’s court has become a dazzling academy of poets, musicians, philosophers, and theologians—a picture of a vibrant, self confident, pleasure-loving society.

Order [Murjana][1].

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Yet, it bears the fateful seeds of future strife. The Sunni-Shia divide, religious fanaticism, and the stirrings of Islamist extremism all started then. These themes emerge as the story of a passionate love that ends in murder unfolds.

Dr Ghada Karmi is a celebrated Palestinian author, physician and academic. She was born in Jerusalem before being ethnically cleansed as a child during the Nakba in 1948. Dr Karmi later trained as a doctor of medicine at Bristol University. She established the first British-Palestinian medical charity in 1972 and was an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Her previous books include One State The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel and the best-selling In Search of Fatima.

Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel.

[1]: https://interlinkbooks.com/product/murjana/
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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/murjana-book-launch-love-and-passion

Defiance & Unity in the Age of U.S. Hyper-Imperialism | Vijay ...

2026-01-13T21:02:59Z

Defiance & Unity in the Age of U.S. Hyper-Imperialism | Vijay Prashad

Venezuela’s president was abducted last week in a U.S. military operation that left at least 80 people dead, including 32 Cubans tasked with protecting President Nicolás Maduro. Just days earlier, Israel’s prime minister — international fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes — departed Washington, D.C., after being warmly received by U.S. officials.

Vijay has written more than forty books, including Washington Bullets and The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and chief editor of LeftWord Books in New Delhi.

Ahmed Alnaouq is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers.

https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/defiance-and-unity-in-the-age-of

Israel’s Use of Banned Weapons in Gaza Has Created a Cancer ...

2026-01-12T18:05:56Z

Israel’s Use of Banned Weapons in Gaza Has Created a Cancer Crisis

My uncle’s wife, Ruba, is 21 years old. Back in 2022, she achieved 93% at Tawjihi - among the top scores - on the final standardised exams in the Palestinian school system. Then she started studying mathematics at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza City. She dreams more than anyone I know. She married my uncle, Nasser, in August 2022. Then she gave birth to a wonderful baby girl in June 2023. Her daughter’s name is Tohfa, which means “unique” and “beautiful” in Arabic. She is now almost three years old. My uncle Nasser and Ruba lived happily together as a married couple for a year and two months. Then, on 7 October 2023, the war began, and everything turned upside down.

At the beginning of the genocide, they moved from their house to shelter in Al-Rafee school in Jabalia, which was meant to be a safe place in the north of Gaza. But on 17 November 2023, the Israeli occupation started shooting tear gas and white phosphorus bombs at the school. They couldn’t do anything to protect themselves from the toxic gases because the school’s windows had all been shattered by the force of repeated airstrikes, leaving the frames empty and the rooms exposed.

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During the bombing, they were forced to leave their five-month-old baby, Tohfa, in a safe-room designated for children in such situations. But the Israeli army increased the bombing and dropped leaflets telling people to leave for the south because the north was now a dangerous place. So Nasser and his family were forced to move to Deir al-Balah days later to keep them safe. For many families, moving there was the only hope to find temporary shelter away from direct airstrikes hitting their neighbourhoods.

Ruba was only 19 at this time, and her daughter was still very young and needed care. Ruba was far away from her family, but she carried the water and cooked food over a dangerous fire. This was the first time she had used fire to cook, and it was never easy. Meanwhile, my uncle Nasser was working from dawn until night to earn money and secure food for his family amid the war and rising prices.

## *Shattered souls*

Around this time, Ruba started to feel a strange pain under her left arm. The pain extended to her chest and shoulder, but because of what was happening around her, she didn’t take much notice. She thought it was probably because of carrying water or working too much.

After the first ceasefire in Gaza ended in November 2023, Ruba returned to her damaged house. At this point, she was relieved and happy. With her help, my uncle Nasser repaired as much as he could. But here in Gaza, nothing beautiful lasts. The war soon returned - mercilessly. They had to leave their house again, this time with shattered souls. The pain also soon returned to Ruba from under her left arm to her chest and shoulder, and it was more intense now.

Nasser took her to many doctors and hospitals, but they couldn’t determine the exact cause because the necessary medical imaging was not available. Doctors kept saying it was inflammation, torn tendons, or nerve damage, and they always prescribed painkillers or antibiotics. But the symptoms kept returning, more painful each time. She couldn’t sleep at night, she cried constantly and told her family: “I’m dying”.

By the time the second round of the war paused in January 2025, a boil-like swelling appeared under Ruba’s arm, extending to her chest. Nasser took her to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, where doctors referred her to Al-Shifa Hospital. There, doctors asked Ruba to undergo an urgent surgery to remove what they thought was a boil. But when the doctor started the operation, he was surprised to find that she didn’t have a boil. He became nervous and searched quickly for the source of pain. He cleaned the wound and ended the operation.

A week later, Ruba’s pain returned mercilessly, and the swelling reappeared in the same place. She returned to Al-Shifa Hospital, where doctors asked her to undergo scans and medical imaging. On 6 December 2025, they requested another surgery to take a biopsy from the swelling, which they now suspected was a cancerous tumour.

Ruba, Nasser, and their families were forced to wait two weeks for the results. The pain increased, yet she wasn’t allowed to take any medication. This was not only because appropriate options were scarce, but also because the doctors feared that giving her the wrong treatment without a clear diagnosis might worsen her condition. We prayed for her, asking God to protect her and not deprive her daughter of her mother.

## *Cancer diagnosis*

After 10 days, the results arrived, and unfortunately, Ruba was diagnosed with malignant cancer. We were all shocked at the news. Ruba burst into tears, thinking about her child, her life, and her future. Doctors said that her case was considered untreatable in Gaza and she must travel outside as soon as possible to receive proper medical care. So far, that has been impossible because of Israeli restrictions.

Ruba loves tea, spicy food, and life in general. Ruba has a family, dreams, and an innocent child, Tohfa, who needs her mother. When I asked Tohfa what her mother has, she replied innocently, “Mama fiha Wawa hana,” which means, “My mum has pain here,” then she pointed to her arm. All night, she asks where her mother is and keeps calling for her. Tohfa is consumed with happiness when we tell her that she will visit her mother at the hospital. Ruba is not just my uncle’s wife. I consider her my sister. Her kindness and love for others define her. Ruba deserves the best.

The genocide in Gaza has severely damaged the healthcare system. Many hospitals and clinics have been destroyed, making it near-impossible to treat patients. There is a serious shortage of medicines, medical equipment, as well as doctors and nurses. In addition, power, fuel and water cuts make it difficult to use the available medical machines and maintain sterile conditions.

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Despite the “ceasefire”, the Israelis are only allowing a small percentage of the aid that is needed to support people in Gaza. As a result, many people, including my aunt and uncle, now rely on humanitarian organisations, which are facing new restrictions placed on them by the Israelis.

The shortage of medicines and medical equipment has worsened. We always have to wait in long lines to be given a prescription to buy the medicine from a pharmacy. Then, often, the medicine is not available in the pharmacies and, if it is, the price is exorbitantly high and therefore unaffordable. Hospitals say that more than half of the medicines and most other medical supplies are gone because only a small part of the needed aid is allowed in.

## *Toxic weapons*

The effects of chemical and other weapons on human beings are well-documented. I believe Ruba’s illness, as well as those of many cancer patients, can be traced directly to the toxic gases, the residue of rockets, the phosphorus, and the internationally banned explosives used on us by Israel.

There are currently around 11,000 cancer patients who require ongoing medical care in Gaza, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data, citing the Gaza Ministry of Health. Many of these patients are able to trace their illnesses directly to the aftermath of the weapons being used by the Israelis, which has led to urgent calls from human rights groups for an independent international investigation to hold Israel accountable for using prohibited substances.

We will not forget or forgive the people who caused the deadly illnesses of Gazans. Or anyone who could have prevented these toxic and internationally-banned weapons from being used, knowing full well their long-term effects.

The healthcare system in Gaza has been almost completely destroyed by Israel. If Ruba’s condition had been discovered earlier, she might have been able to recover before the cancer spread. Ruba is now waiting for her fate to be decided. She has recently received her first dose of chemotherapy, yet her condition remains unstable. Her husband and family are doing everything they can to process her travel documents, struggling to secure a way for her to leave Gaza for treatment before it’s too late. However, so far, all their efforts have been to no avail.

We try to escape reality, but the war lives inside us, leaving its marks physically on our bodies and psychologically on our souls.

## *Left to die*

This is a story of a people being left to die slowly. And it is not only about Ruba. All cancer patients, and others with life-threatening conditions, must have their right to travel as soon as possible, without restrictions, to receive proper medical care. Our healthcare system has been dismantled by Israel in full view of the world - and many so-called “civilised” countries have supplied the weapons used to do it. These patients are not numbers or statistics: they are human beings with shattered and broken souls. Ruba and every patient in Gaza need the world’s attention: they deserve life, without humiliation, waiting, or borders.

The situation for patients in Gaza remains uncertain and unfair. While some emergency cases are allowed to travel outside Gaza, this happens based on the discretion of the occupation authorities. Many patients have been waiting for a long time, and whether someone is allowed to leave often depends on luck or chance. No clear rules are known. The process is opaque.

The world is required to do more than express sympathy. It must demand that Israel allow immediate access to treatment for all patients in Gaza, permit travel for those who need it, and take responsibility for protecting their right to life. Israel, as the occupying power, bears responsibility for the destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system and for restricting patients’ movement. Countries that continue to provide support also bear responsibility. Urgent action is needed.

***

Alaa Dmeida is a 20-year-old English Literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza and a writer who is striving to convey the voices of the oppressed people in Gaza.

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/israels-use-of-banned-weapons-in

Banning Aid Groups from Gaza is Genocide by Other Means ...

2026-01-10T16:19:16Z

Banning Aid Groups from Gaza is Genocide by Other Means

Photograph: Omar Ashtawy

By Huda Skaik in Gaza City

Israel’s decision to bar 37 international humanitarian organisations from operating in the occupied Palestinian territory from the beginning of this month did not come as a shock to those of us living in Gaza. It was merely confirmation that the Netanyahu government is intent on continuing its genocidal policies by other means. It also confirmed that this genocide has never been just about bombs and tanks. In reality, it is about systematically dismantling every structure that allows Palestinians to survive, endure, and bear witness to what is being inflicted on them.

Israel revoked the operating licences of the aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council, for failing to comply with new government regulations. The new rules require international NGOs working in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to provide extremely detailed information on staff members, funding, and operations. The aid organisations have responded by saying that they conduct all the due diligence required. Some have added that these new rules passed by the Israeli Knesset go further than in any other countries in which they operate.

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During nearly two years of genocide, Gaza has been turned into a laboratory of engineered deprivation. Hospitals have been destroyed, water infrastructure dismantled, bakeries shut down, and borders sealed. Aid convoys have been obstructed, delayed, and attacked. Nearly everyone in Gaza has been displaced at least once, and many multiple times. Now, Israel seeks to institutionalise this violence by criminalising humanitarian work itself, under the pretext of new “regulatory” requirements imposed by an occupying power on an occupied population. Another totally illegal move.

From Gaza, this decision reads as another example of collective punishment. International organisations have been among the last remaining lifelines for a population deliberately pushed to the brink by famine, disease and psychological torture. Aid agencies have provided food in markets (although people often cannot afford to buy it), and they have provided medicine in hospitals stripped of electricity and anaesthesia. They have often been a lifeline for us.

## *Witnesses*

Another important element of their role is that aid workers are often the ones who hear our stories because journalists are not allowed to enter. With borders sealed and communication networks often collapsing, they are the “outsiders” we are allowed to speak to. Expelling these organisations and aid workers is a deliberate act that will deepen a humanitarian catastrophe engineered by Israel itself and increase our isolation. International media have also reported that some materials normally provided by aid agencies will now be released by Israel. This is a part of Israel’s plan to use aid to allow certain favoured armed groups to gain leverage.

The timing is also telling. As international scrutiny intensifies and evidence of war crimes continues to mount, Israel is tightening control over witnesses. Aid organisations do more than deliver relief: they document violations, count civilians killed, record testimonies, and challenge official narratives. Silencing them is part of a broader effort to control the narrative of Gaza. Israel wants to control who speaks, who is believed, and whose suffering is rendered invisible.

Photograph: Omar Ashtawy

Having lived through siege, starvation, displacement and repeated ceasefire violations, I have seen how aid is already treated as conditional and expendable rather than a right. One example is that supplies enter Gaza, but there are no longer the professionals needed to use them because doctors have been killed or abducted. Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, a leading paediatrician at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, was unlawfully abducted by Israeli forces on 27 December 2024 and remains in an Israeli prison. Aid workers themselves have been targeted and buried beneath the same rubble as those they were trying to save. At least 562 aid workers, including 376 UN staff, have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

The latest ban is the logical extension of that violence: if you cannot fully destroy life, you turn to suffocating it slowly. If you cannot kill them all, you will make living impossible.

## *Another layer of death*

Israel’s claim of “regulating” international organisations cannot be separated from its long history of restricting Palestinian civil society. These regulations are not neutral safeguards: they are political filters designed to ensure that only compliant, Israel-controlled aid is allowed. This kind of aid feeds bodies while ignoring the cause of the hunger - and treats genocide as a natural disaster rather than a deliberate crime. In the face of mass killing, this neutrality is a form of complicity.

What does it mean to ban aid in a place where more than 80% of the population depends on humanitarian assistance to survive? It means weaponising hunger. It means turning winter into a death sentence for families living in tents. It means telling mothers that formula exists, but not for their children. It means telling the wounded that treatment exists, but not for their injuries. It is an extension of the siege by administrative decree.

From Gaza, the message is clear: banning aid organisations will not bring security, peace or stability. It will just add another layer of death to an already-devastated territory. It also exposes, yet again, the moral collapse of an international system that allows an occupying power to decide who may eat, heal, or live.

Photograph: Omar Ashtawy

The question facing the international community is no longer whether Israel is “going too far” – that line was crossed long ago. Now the real question is whether the world will accept a new norm: one where an occupying power is allowed to starve, bomb and systematically suffocate an entire population into submission without accountability.

Because if the world allows Israel to ban aid organisations with no consequences, it is not just turning its back on Gaza – it is turning its back on the very principle that human life is worth protecting, regardless of who holds the power. History will remember who starved Gaza – and who stood by while humanitarianism was outlawed and extinguished.

***

*Huda Skaik is an English literature student and a journalistic writer from Gaza. She is a member of We Are Not Numbers, and she is also a contributor for The New Arab, Electronic Intifada, Middle East Eye and WRMEA. She has a strong interest in reporting and writing.*

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https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/banning-aid-groups-from-gaza-is-genocide

How the Land of Christ’s Birth Celebrates Christmas Under ...

2025-12-27T20:44:11Z

How the Land of Christ’s Birth Celebrates Christmas Under Genocide

From Bethlehem to Gaza, Palestinian Christians mark the holy season amid Israeli occupation, displacement and ruin.

https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/how-the-land-of-christs-birth-celebrates

Ceasefire? What Ceasefire? Israel Just Massacred Palestinians at ...

2025-12-26T15:08:31Z

Ceasefire? What Ceasefire? Israel Just Massacred Palestinians at a Wedding in Gaza

Celebration Turns into Nightmare; Israel Bombs a Wedding Taking Place in a Gaza School Two Months After So-called Ceasefire

https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/ceasefire-what-ceasefire-israel-just