21 July 2025

The afternoon bulletin reports that the charred body of a man in his sixties has been found near the Netzarim checkpoint. He was wearing black trousers and a striped shirt, and although his features were unclear, he had a small but noticeable birthmark on his face – a beauty spot. His body is currently at Nasser Hospital.

I had hoped that the unidentified person would remain unknown to me as well. That wasn’t the case. It was Uncle Yusuf, my late mother’s brother, the last of her siblings.

For many months, Israel has imposed strict restrictions on the entry of aid into Gaza, worsening the humanitarian crisis and causing essential goods to vanish from the markets. While flour is considered “white gold” by Gazans, Israel sees it as an existential threat to its mighty state, so its entry into Gaza is blocked, and even loaves of bread are confiscated. Some items, like lentils, are allowed in selectively, while other essentials, such as vegetables and baby formula, are blocked, reflecting a deliberate policy aimed at controlling civilians’ lives and weakening their ability to survive. The war is no longer only about bombing and destroying homes; it extends to controlling the daily food of the population, a form of collective punishment that is apparently prohibited under international law.

Yesterday morning, my uncle left his tent in the Mawasi refugee camp in Khan Younis at 6am, heading to the American aid centre, searching for anything to fill his great-grandchildren’s stomachs. Their hunger forced him out into the open, risking his life to feed them. Since the death of his granddaughter’s husband in an Israeli strike, he has never hesitated to take responsibility for her family alongside his own. He became the sole provider for seven people, including a very young boy and girl who need milk daily. Every day, he would wake early and walk for hours, hoping to return with some flour, a tin of milk or a bag of rice.

Uncle Yusuf was not just a close relative; he was the warm heart of my mother’s side of the family. Since I was a child, he brought laughter to every family gathering. He was a master of pranks and jokes; we often couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or not. His chest’s wheeze and smoker’s cough were like a signature written into his laughter, giving each joke an unforgettable warmth.

His family lost contact with him yesterday morning after he left his tent. He didn’t answer his phone, and the empty roads offered no news. In the afternoon, his eldest son, Rami, searched among the injured and the piled-up bodies in the hospitals and along the roads leading to the American aid centre, trying every path that might lead there. He spent the night frantically searching the endless alleyways under the planes’ fire, unable to return without his father.

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The next morning, Rami came across the body of a young man. He carried the body to the hospital – only to be shocked to find that man’s family there. They were carrying my uncle’s body, which they had found on the road while searching for their missing son. The scene was filled with disbelief and sorrow; no one could process the shock of this tragic exchange of loss.

Then the news filtered back to us: my uncle had been killed. We still don’t know whether he was struck by a bullet or run over by a tank, but what is certain is that he died trying to keep others alive. He was the hero of our lives – a simple, patient man who smiled despite all the pain he had to witness, someone who shared the smallest scraps of food among many mouths. He left behind a profound legacy of dignity, responsibility and a silent love that was lived rather than spoken.

Israel insists we see those we loved as charred bodies, scattered pieces of flesh. It seems they want us to feel the cruelty of losing a loved one. Maybe they expect us to respond like demons. But we hold our loved ones’ remains, sit beside their graves, and say a final prayer.

Dear Uncle, 

Today you met the love of my heart, Fatima, your sister, my mother. Peace be upon you both – and upon the birthmark that appeared twice: once on Fatima’s face and once on yours, Yusuf. I feel that you are truly lucky together; just as you, Fatima, are lucky you never lived through this hell. For you, Gaza remains that small, weary city, bursting with life. The sparkle in Gaza’s eyes has faded, Mama – everything is gone. I hope you remember me before God, and tell Him that my path is long and my provisions are few. May you rest in peace, where life, for the first time, finds you beyond this world.

19 August 2025

I am shocked that the war in Gaza is approaching its 700th day. I am one of those people who once thought surviving past the first month would be impossible. Sometimes I feel like my mind is still stuck on 6 October 2023 – an ordinary day on which the sunlight on my face wakes me. I throw on my clothes in a rush and hail a car. I arrive late at work, but it doesn’t matter. The first thing on my mind when I get there is breakfast, followed by a cup of mint tea – sometimes from Sally, who insists on making it herself and immediately starts telling me about the latest fashion and make-up trends. Before I sink into the day’s routine, I share my morning with friends via Instagram stories. Repetitive, ordinary – but it’s life.

Back then, I was growing. Today, I am shrinking. At six in the morning, I stand on my balcony, inhaling the first breaths of the day under the pale dawn light. My neighbour Khalil waters his small plants, giving me a faint sense of hope that things might turn out al lright. But the news quickly fills me with dread, broadcasting threats that are becoming concrete plans to occupy Gaza City and displace its residents. The next neighbourhood on Israel’s agenda is my own: Al-Sabra. Remember this name well – it may one day be given a Hebrew name, claimed as the legacy of their “Benjamin”.

My father arranges his books. He wipes off the dust and pats them gently, as if granting them safety. My six-year-old sister Fatma, whom we all call Fatoum, climbs on to the desk and flips through a picture book about the digestive system. She stops at an image of the large intestine, stares at it for a long moment, then laughs: “It looks like a big worm, Dad!”

He smiles calmly, adjusts his glasses, and says, “It may be a big worm, Fatoum, but it’s necessary. Without it, we cannot live.”

His steadiness amazes me. Unconcerned, indifferent to the news. Or perhaps there are hidden depths in him that allow him to face the present with extraordinary calm. Inside me, meanwhile, is a whirlpool of questions that never ends. Time: how has it slipped away from my life? How long will I need to get past all this? When did everything turn upside down?

Now, there is no pavement to stand on, no car to hail. I no longer care much about breakfast. Flour has become so expensive, and the markets are empty. Even if something is available, the prices are unbelievable. Skipping breakfast and spending hours without food leaves me exhausted and dizzy; even the simplest household tasks become hard. Hunger is no longer just a bodily need – it weighs down the body and memory alike.

The world, it seems, is not content with the pallor of my face and the frailty of my body, nor with acknowledging my starvation at the hands of Israel. It wants us all to become skeletons – zombie-like – before it can finally declare that we are famished. Only then does it allow itself to take up its “humanitarian” responsibilities toward us, as fellow occupants of the planet.

It pains me to see Fatoum go off to kindergarten each morning with no packed lunch or juice, carrying only half a piece of bread. Yet she is delighted with that half piece, as if it were a precious treasure. I learn so much from her about contentment. This war’s destruction has already forced her to live in a tent for a year and six months, yet her small smile refuses to break. Every day, she reminds me that a child’s heart can find joy, even in the harshest circumstances.

At noon, I go out looking for soap. I check every local shop in the neighbourhood, asking the shopkeepers and searching the shelves. Nothing. No soap, no shampoo, no washing-up liquid. All cleaning supplies are banned from entering Gaza, it seems. Soap, shampoo, sponges, even tissues and toilet paper have disappeared from the markets. Even the water we drink, which is entirely controlled by Israel, is contaminated and highly saline. Water for other uses is severely limited. I am ready to buy any kind of soap at any price, but all I find is a sticky liquid that makes my hands itch. Imagine – the thing I miss most these days is soap foam: any kind of foam, shower foam, or even washing-up liquid foam. Something so ordinary, yet completely absent from my life.

Why do you forbid soap, Israel? If Israel had vocal cords and could answer this question with any voice other than bombs, what would that voice sound like? I think it would be harsh, heavy, and terrifyingly resonant. But it speaks in a measured, polished tone: “It’s self-defence.” Read between the lines, and it says that restricting the everyday, the ordinary, is just another way to kill you. The 2,000lb American bombs are not enough.

You only truly know the comfort of home when you’ve been displaced from it, left to shiver in the cold or swelter under the sun in tents. Every day, I live under the assumption that we will be forced to flee again. Before this war, I had romantic ideas about tents: on a beach under the moonlight, cooking food on a fire all night. In reality, a tent is a slice of hell. While you sleep, creatures crawl over your body. At midday in summer, you sweat as though you’re in a sauna. There is no privacy; your problems become an open show for neighbours, men and women alike.

There remains hope inside me, though it sometimes mingles with another thought: that death might be a comforting, even desirable, escape.

5 September 2025

Since the Israeli occupation announced its intention to invade Gaza City, our mornings have lost their usual shape. They now begin with two questions, heavy as stones: should we leave our house today for a tent, or postpone leaving a little longer, clinging to what dignity remains under our roof?

What triggers these questions every dawn is the sound of the “exploding robot”. Armoured personnel carriers are huge, trundling vehicles carrying many tons of explosives, remotely controlled and capable of wiping out large parts of surrounding buildings. When they detonate, their roar pierces the air, followed by a sharp, lingering whistle. Then a thick layer of dust rises to obscure the sky, accompanied by a choking smell that causes fits of sneezing and makes your eyes stream.

Israel’s army is stationed right on the outskirts of the Al-Sabra neighbourhood, where we live. According to several Israeli newspapers, the plan is a multi-stage campaign lasting at least four to five months, focusing first on northern and central Gaza before spreading to the remaining areas. In the early morning, when the world is still, the quiet of dawn amplifies the sound of explosions, making it feel as if they are drawing ever closer. The danger we are supposed to flee – which just yesterday was a couple of miles away – seems to have settled at our doorstep. I wake up terrified, a dormant anxiety rising with me.

To the soundtrack of explosions, I rush from my room and find my father’s study transformed into a sea of books. He has emptied the shelves on to the floor and is sitting amid them, leafing through a collection of scraps he had kept in one of the volumes. His library is dear to all of us. He has collected these books from many countries: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, India and Pakistan. Most are on jurisprudence, language, medicine, calligraphy, typography and mathematics. My father, who worked for many years as a maths teacher, constantly kept up with the latest developments in his field.

“Dad, what are you doing?” I ask.

He lifts his head from the books and replies calmly, “Good morning, darling. I’m packing the books into bags. I’ll bury them in the courtyard.”

I pause, stunned for a moment. “Are you serious?”

He smiles gently. “What do you see?”

I sit on the sofa, watching him. He carefully places several books inside thick plastic covers, tapes a sheet of paper listing the contents, then wraps the books in multiple layers of clingfilm, securing everything with strong adhesive tape. He makes sure every edge is tightly sealed, leaving no gaps for air or dust. He works slowly and precisely, smoothing out air bubbles and pressing the tape into every corner. When my father sets off to carry the books downstairs, I tell him I’ll do it.

He has dug a wide but shallow pit, just enough to fit a layer of neatly stacked books. He lines the bottom with a thick woollen blanket to act as a cushion, presumably to absorb moisture, then places the book bags inside. Once the pit is full, he covers it with plastic and begins sprinkling sand over it. He pauses, then turns to me. “Do you want me to bury anything for you?”

“No thanks,” I say.

The clay sticks to my father’s hands. His hands are dark-skinned, marked by scars that trace the maps of a long life. They are cracked from hard work, each crack blooming with meaning. His hands know the smell of clay, the roughness of wood, the coldness of iron. With them, he carried me as a child, repaired the doors of our home, painted the walls of my kindergarten and fashioned the wooden classroom benches that have remained cherished in my memory since 2004. I was so proud among my classmates to know that my father had painted the murals and built the wooden chairs.

My father sees death as the one true certainty, and he is remarkably calm about it. There is, he says, only one way to die, and it matters little whether it comes from a missile or a bomb. He feels victorious over Israel because, while they lose their own humanity by killing us, we have only salvation.

I know my father worries, but he does so with a composure only he possesses. My own anxiety, by contrast, is a noisy commotion inside me. I worry about the possible and the impossible, about yesterday, today and tomorrow. I worry about F-16 and F-35 jets, precision-guided smart bombs and perfectly dumb bombs, multi-headed missiles, surface-to-air rockets, fire belts (once called carpet bombing), exploding robots, armed drones, flying drones, warships, submarines, tanks and troop carriers. I worry about what I know of Israel’s arsenal, and what I do not.

Fear can sometimes ignite a spark of desire for life – when it rises before a difficult exam or a job interview – and so remains a challenge that can be faced. But what if the thing feared is an Israeli soldier, armed with every tool of annihilation, precise in the method by which he will carry it out? Then fear becomes a vast horizon no ordinary person can cross.

At the edge of this helplessness there remains a faint hope: that the sound of the shells will lessen, that the roar of deadly machines will cease, so that I may glimpse, even for a moment, a single brighter possibility.

As the New Statesman went to press, Sondos Sabra was still in Gaza City under heavy bombing. She has been accepted on to a creative writing MA programme at Lancaster University and is waiting to hear whether the UK government will assist with her evacuation. More of her diaries can be found in “Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide” (Comma Press)

[Further reading: Letter from Gaza: “What I feel isn’t just hunger. It’s slow, internal erosion”]

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