The sounds of war in the Gaza Strip have fallen into a tenuous silence. How long it will last and what will follow in its wake remain uncertain. Already, the killing of several Palestinians by Israeli forces since the new ceasefire began on 10 October, and challenges surrounding the return by Hamas of hostages’ bodies, are casting the future of the deal into doubt.
What is clear is that the effects of one of the most lethal and destructive military campaigns of the 21st century – deemed a genocide by a UN commission of inquiry and numerous rights groups and experts – on Palestinians living in the enclave have been immense.
Over the course of the past two years, The New Humanitarian has published more than 36 first-person articles written by Palestinians whose lives have been upended by the unimaginable violence and deprivation, collected in a series called: Don’t look away.
The title is drawn from a line in an article written by Nour ElAssy, a 23-year-old poet and journalist from Gaza City. After Israel withdrew from a previous ceasefire in March this year, ElAssy wrote: “Maybe, years from now, history will tell our story. Maybe people will read about the night Gaza was promised peace but given death. Maybe they will say they did not know. But we will know the truth: They knew. They all knew. And they chose to look away.”
Together, the articles in the series sketch an intimate outline of the Israeli military campaign’s brutal trajectory. They contribute a deeply personal layer to the historical record of what has transpired, pushing back against powerful narratives that have sought to erase the humanity and delegitimise the experiences of Palestinians – a key aspect in the process of attempting to justify the atrocities committed against them.
Hopefully, like diaries and memoirs from the Holocaust after World War II, this collection of articles will be part of the broader body of work that people turn to while confronting the urgent questions of how such horror has been allowed to transpire in Gaza, and how it can be prevented from happening again.
The authors of the articles have worked in the most extraordinary and challenging circumstances: under the falling bombs; through the deaths of friends and relatives; as their homes were reduced to rubble; from the sweltering interiors of tents and between the cold walls of shattered buildings; with Israeli soldiers advanced time and again on their areas of refuge; as starvation withered their bodies and stole their health; and as their hope that their words would move the outside world to action was shaken to its core.
“We write, we scream, we document. But who reads? Who cares?” Rita Baroud, a 22-year-old journalist also from Gaza City, wrote in April this year. “Every day, we lose a part of ourselves. Not just a home, a friend, a meal, or a memory. We lose our belief that this world might care, or that life might one day return to what it was.”
Still, the authors of these articles persisted, even as colleague after colleague was killed (at least 197 to date), making it clear that Israel considers writing and documenting to be crimes punishable by death.
Regardless of what happens in the weeks, months, and years to come, the work of journalists and writers in Gaza will be as vital as ever for focusing attention on what is taking place. The New Humanitarian will continue to publish their voices and perspectives.
For now, here is a selection of excerpts from pieces we have published over the past two years. Find all of the articles in the series here.
Just days after the deadly Hamas-led attack into southern Israel on 7 October 2023 that triggered Israel’s massive, retaliatory attack on Gaza, the Israeli military ordered 1.1 million people living in the north of the enclave to evacuate south. Journalist and human rights activist Maha Hussaini was one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced by the order.
I am around 13 kilometres away from my home and keep opening the Google Maps application on my phone to check how long it would take me to drive there. Twelve minutes, Google Maps says. But I have been here for almost an entire month now, unable to drive back home.
With Israeli aircrafts, drones, gunboats, and tanks targeting people returning from central and southern areas to Gaza City – and as the roads connecting the city to other areas of the enclave have been destroyed by bombs – it’s impossible for me to make the short drive.
It has been almost one month since I was displaced, since I became one of the victims who I am reporting on. The concept of "home" is already becoming a distant memory.
One of the first things the Israeli military did following the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 was impose a complete siege on the Gaza Strip, cutting off the supply of electricity and blocking the entry of food, fuel, medicine, and other essential supplies. Alongside a massive bombing campaign and the forced displacement from the north, the move quickly plunged Gaza into a dire humanitarian crisis. Tala Abu Nahla, who worked for the NGO Mercy Corps, wrote the following:
I am a humanitarian aid worker living in the middle of one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time, but I feel completely helpless to do anything. There is no food, no water, no medicine. People are sick and dying all around us; disease is spreading. Every single person is in need, the problems are endless, and yet, what can I do?
The words “despair” and “frustration” cannot adequately express the depth of my feelings. I wish I could shelter all of the people I see now living in the streets in my heart and protect them from the violence and cold nights. And yet, we too, as humanitarian workers are not immune to this suffering.
If we are lucky enough to survive, from now on, everything in life will be marked as the time before and after 7 October.
The thoughts of death and terror come to my mind when I close my eyes. I don’t know what I fear more: losing a family member or suffocating under the rubble. Which is worse: to be alive and suffer, or to die suffering?
These are the problems I contemplate at night. We rarely sleep, and if somehow we quiet our minds long enough to doze off, the explosions wake us up. Most nights, we get maybe two hours of sleep before waking at 4am to wait in line at the bakery for food and water. All our days have become about survival, getting some basic things for our family to eat or drink. To exist is a struggle.
Before Israel’s invasion of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, around 100,000 Palestinians were able to leave the enclave to Egypt via medical evacuations or by paying extortionary fees to an opaque system of brokers. After the Rafah invasion in May 2024, those evacuations almost entirely ground to halt. Abu Nahla and some of her family members were among those who were able to leave before Israel took over the border crossing with Egypt, forcing it to close.
I scrambled to pack, desperately attempting to cram everything I held dear into a single bag. Could I truly capture the essence of our lives in Gaza in such limited space? I gathered mementos I had from my father, who passed away two years ago, clinging to anything that bound me to the memory of Gaza.
Even with the danger and deprivation we had been living in, the idea of abandoning Gaza, with all its complexities and struggles, tore at my heart. I also knew that, once we crossed the border, our journey would be far from over – our heartache wouldn’t end. Everything we had experienced, and the weight of the ongoing war, would follow as we embarked on our uncertain path.
I hope that time heals, and that we will overcome all of these traumas someday. For now, we are just learning to be patient with ourselves.
But the situation in Gaza gets worse with each passing day. I barely get to talk to my friends and family because of the frequent cuts to the cellular network. When we do talk, they tell me that the suffering has only intensified. Many are now facing starvation and dehydration due to limited access to food and water. Many have been displaced multiple times since my departure almost two months ago. The situation in the north is even worse. People have nowhere to turn.
Over the past two years, repeated forced displacement due to evacuation orders and Israeli bombing and ground invasions has been a ceaseless feature of life for Palestinians in Gaza. Rita Baroud, who was 20 years old when the war started and became a journalist as it progressed, wrote about its effects:
It seems unimaginable, but I have been displaced 12 times in the past 10 months. I feel that I will never have a home or a safe place to stay again. I can no longer imagine living without fearing that I will be displaced and lose everything I have at any moment. It’s like we’ve been trying to escape from death, but death keeps chasing us.
I don’t expect to be able to stay here in Deir al-Balah, either. I’m afraid the Israeli army will return and we will have to flee again.
I am only 21 years old. Before this, I dreamed of finishing my university programme and travelling abroad to study for a Master’s degree. I wanted to see the world and explore different cultures. Now, I feel as if death is near. I have been stripped of hope.
I used to be disciplined in everything – diet, sleep, exercise, taking care of my body. This war has turned me into something completely opposite. It has made me a body without a soul.
We don’t have soap, and I can only bathe once or twice a week, if I am lucky, because of the scarcity of water. But I wash my hands compulsively throughout the day, hoping that it will prevent me from catching the diseases that have become widespread.
Journalist Mohamed al-Astal wrote more than a dozen stories for The New Humanitarian during the first year of the war in Gaza. On the first anniversary of its start, he reflected on his experience as a journalist enduring the same violence and deprivation as the people he was reporting one:
Seeing the killing of so many of the people I’ve spoken to while reporting – along with so many of my fellow journalists – has tested my understanding of myself and my profession.
I have been a journalist for 23 years, but this past year has changed everything about how I do my job. It has been like nothing I have ever encountered before.
The constant violence and deprivation have exposed both weaknesses and strengths I never knew I had. Now I am aware that they are there. The most basic human fears, needs, and hopes – the desire simply to stay alive – are what continue to propel us through every day of living in Gaza.
We have all been reduced to our most basic, vulnerable, human state. We have come to understand that, in the eyes of the world, we are not people with a say or a voice. We do not have blond hair or blue eyes. Our lives are not valued.
Every day I wonder what would happen to my family if my turn comes – my wife and five children, the eldest is not even 16 years old, and the youngest is a bit over two. What would happen to them?
They are the one, main reason why I am still functioning 365 days after this war wrecked everything in our surroundings. I am trying to keep them alive, but can I guarantee their safety or my own?
With over 90% of Gaza’s population displaced, the aid response cripled by Israeli obstruction, food in short supply, and the medical system in tatters, the second winter brought even more intense suffering for Palestinians in the enclave. At least eight newborn babies died of hypothermia and dozens of other children perished in the harsh conditions. Rita Baroud wrote about the dire situation but also the small moments that brought respite amongst the horror:
The winter cold has arrived in Gaza, bringing with it a harsh reminder of how fragile life has become. Gaza is now unbearably chaotic. Nothing functions. There is no order, no safety, nothing to make us feel that life could ever be normal again. The streets are filled with debris. Destroyed buildings stand as monuments to all that we’ve lost. Water is scarce. The electricity is still cut off. Imagine being made to live for more than 15 months with no electricity.
The simplest necessities – food, medicine, a moment of rest – are almost impossible to obtain. Our hunger has gotten worse with the biting cold. Children who once played in the streets now sit silently in the ruins of their homes. The vibrant sounds of life that once filled every corner of this small, crowded territory have been replaced by explosions and the relentless noise of drones that never leave our skies.
We don’t have enough food. I see mothers trying to bargain for a handful of lentils or beans, their voices breaking as they attempt to negotiate prices they cannot afford.
I’ve made a few friends since the last time we were displaced: two cats, Simsim and Susu. Simsim is grey and carries the wounds from a harsh life. His paw is injured, and he allows no one to come near him. Susu – a white cat with splashes of orange and black in her fur – is the opposite. She playfully jumps towards me as if trying to comfort me even a little bit.
Since we came back here, I have made it a habit of feeding them every morning. I look for them in the corners of the rubble where they hide. I don’t have much to give them because we too suffer from hunger, but I split half a loaf of bread, soaking it in water or in the brine of canned tuna or peas, if those items are available.
Seeing Simsim and Susu every morning gives me a sense of solace. Their presence makes me feel that I am not completely alone and that some kind of life still exists amidst all this wreckage.
On 15 January 2025, Israel and Hamas agreed to the first major ceasefire of the war. From the beginning, it was unclear how the three-phase deal would lead to a permanent end to the war. Nour ElAssy wrote about the hope and trepidation that accompanied the agreement:
As I write this, the sounds around me are a chaotic symphony of celebratory gunshots and chanting from the streets mingling with the laughter of my nieces and nephews in a strange sense of joy. We hold our breath, unsure of how to feel, because in Gaza, joy is a rare luxury, one that comes with the sting of doubt.
This is our reality: we are clinging to the faintest hope – a hope born from the uncertain promise of a ceasefire that has just been announced after more than 15 months of war. But we also feel the weight of history. Every past ceasefire in Gaza has been fragile, fleeting. We’ve seen the world make promises before, only to have them broken by the same forces that continue to tear us apart.
We’ve learned the hard way that a ceasefire is just the beginning. It’s a chance to breathe, to mourn, and to rebuild. But it doesn’t erase the trauma, the devastation, or the immense loss we carry. Around 90% of Gaza’s residents have been displaced. Entire towns lie in ruins, yet the spirit of our people remains unbroken.
In the ashes, we dream of planting new seeds, of finding a way back to some semblance of normalcy. But that dream is haunted by the shadows of our destroyed homes, the men killed leaving their wives as widows, the parents killed turning their children into orphans, and the 15 months of horror and trauma we have been forced to endure. How do we celebrate when we’ve lost so much?
During the ceasefire, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been displaced at the beginning of Israel’s military campaign returned to northern Gaza. Rita Baroud wrote about returning to the ruins of her family’s home and Israel’s imposition of a new, complete siege on the enclave:
I went to my neighbourhood, al-Rimal al-Shamali, to where my house once stood. It didn’t look the same as when it was first destroyed: It had changed even as rubble. The moisture and bulldozers had worn it down further, erasing even the ruins.
My family and I were nearly buried under that pile of rubble on the third day of the war. Luckily, we had left our house before a missile hit on 9 October 2023, engulfing it in flames and partially destroying it. My father and I ran back to the house to search for my cat, Sarah, who we had left behind; but we couldn’t find her. Just after we left, a second missile hit, collapsing the rest of the house as I stood there, at a distance, watching it turn into rubble.
That was my home for 20 years, where I lived with my grandmother, my uncle and his children, and my family. The house had five storeys. Inside, it was a warm and safe place that held all of us together.
On the second day of Ramadan, Israel closed the border crossings, preventing any humanitarian aid from entering. We were already being strangled. Now, the grip is even tighter. They are blocking the entry of food, fuel, water – everything that we need to survive.
As soon as the aid suspension was announced, Gaza’s merchants began hoarding supplies. In a single night, prices skyrocketed to unimaginable levels. Markets filled with desperate shoppers, each trying to buy whatever they could before prices became completely unaffordable.
In Gaza, we live in a different kind of financial system – a market where prices rise every second, not based on supply and demand but on the level of suffering. The tighter the siege, the higher the prices, until food becomes a rare commodity out of reach for many.
On 18 March 2025, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the ceasefire. Nour ElAssy wrote about the devastating return of war:
There is a moment, right before waking up, when the world is silent, a moment where sleep still holds you, where reality has not yet sunk its claws into you. But then, in an instant, the silence is gone. The ground heaves beneath you. The sky erupts in fire. Walls shake. Screams cut through the night. And suddenly, you are awake, not to the soft breath of dawn, not to the quiet murmur of life returning, but to devastation – to a war that was supposed to have paused, yet never really did.
That’s what happened on 18 March when Israel began bombing Gaza again. It confirmed that this so-called ceasefire, which started on 19 January, was never real. It was violated time and time again. The bombings never truly stopped. Gaza’s borders remained closed. The Israeli occupation is once again blocking all humanitarian aid.
After the first night of bombing, the families of the people who have been killed in the renewed offensive stand outside the buildings and tents that have been bombed, staring at the piles of debris, knowing that somewhere in there, beneath the weight of a world that has failed them, are the people they loved. But they cannot do anything. No one can do anything.
One of the places that has been bombed is a displacement camp in a cemetery near my home. That is Gaza in 2025: People living in a cemetery with no place left to go as the bombs continue to fall and the world looks on.
After nearly three months of total siege, Israel began allowing some food and other supplies to enter Gaza. The vast majority of food, however, was channeled through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a shadowy outfit staffed by American security contractors that the UN and established NGOs accused of severing Israeli political and military interests. As soon as it started operating at the end of May, its operations were marred by mass violence as Israeli soldiers and the organisation’s armed staff opened fire on Palestinians attempting to get food:
The sky was full of buzzing drones. I saw a young man fall to the ground near me. Blood was gushing from his neck. I heard a woman scream: ‘Help me!’, but no one went near her. Fear had taken over.”
This is what my husband, Abdullah, told me about what happened when Israeli forces opened fire on him and thousands of other people who went to try to retrieve food from one of the distribution sites run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
As of 18 June, over 400 people had been killed and thousands of others wounded trying to obtain aid from these sites since they began operating on 27 May, and the casualties continue to mount each day.
Before my husband set out on 10 June, he knew it would be dangerous. But after hesitating for weeks, we had no other choice left. The last grains of rice and lentils that we had been rationing had run out, and there was nothing left in the house where we are currently staying to cook for our five children.
That is why my husband decided to take the risk to head to one of the small handful of distribution centres run by the GHF. The one he went to is located in the Netzarim Corridor: an Israeli military road and buffer zone – constructed over demolished neighbourhoods that once buzzed with life – that now cuts Gaza in half.
The journey was extremely dangerous. Would he be shot by the Israeli army? Or assaulted and robbed by the armed gangs that are now widespread across Gaza? Or was the sky that never ceases to rain down Israeli bombs and missiles on Gaza’s residents the biggest threat?
“I knew I might not return alive, but I had no other choice. Either I go or we die of hunger,” he told me before he left in a tone I had never heard from him before.
In early August, Israel announced plans to invade and take control of Gaza City. Nearly one million Palestinians were living there, the majority having returned during the ceasefire earlier in the year. As the invasion began and Israeli forces advanced, journalist Rasha Abou Jalal and her family tried to hold out to avoid being displaced, once again, to the south of Gaza. But staying in the face of Israel’s unrelenting onslaught soon became too dangerous.
I tried to endure longer, refusing the idea of displacement to the south. I could not accept the thought of leaving my city, Gaza.
My family and I fled to a house that its residents had just abandoned, seeking shelter inside. Several fragments from nearby airstrikes had pierced my tent. We lived in this house on the 14th and 15th, hiding from the quadcopter drones.
I forbade my children from making any noise or playing outside. Our water and food supplies were dwindling, despite rationing. It was only a matter of time before those drones discovered us. There was no one left in the residential neighbourhood where we were in except us.
Our escape began. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. In that moment, my role as a mother outweighed my role as a journalist. I did not think of documenting, I did not think of photographing what we went through. I thought of only one thing: protecting my children and saving them. It was pure maternal instinct.
We wore light clothes and shoes to help us move faster. We left the house we had sheltered in. The street, which had been teeming with life and people only days before, was now completely silent and empty. We were the only ones moving through that street.
A second ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas went into effect on 10 October 2025. Like the last one, there are many unanswered questions about how the agreement will lead to a long-term end to the war. Questions of ending Israel’s nearly six-decade occupation of the Palestinian territories, Palestinian self-determination, and accountability and justice for crimes committed during Israel’s military campaign all remain unaddressed, if acknowledged at all. Rita Baroud, who evacuated from Gaza to Europe in April, wrote about the arrival and uncertainties of the truce:
I sat by the window. Daylight was still pale. I picked up my phone again. Videos were spreading. Children walking barefoot in the streets. Women carrying water containers on their heads. Young men taking pictures of the ruins – some of them laughing. In Gaza, even laughter is an act of defiance.
I wrote in my notebook: “Day one of the truce. My heart feels split between two places. Here, the rain continues and trains run on schedule. There, time stumbles. No one knows if the next hour will pass or return to war.”
The sun is rare in this country. I heard a bicycle pass by the canal followed by a child’s laugh. For a moment, I wished the laughter came from Gaza, carried to me by the wind across the sea.
I went for a walk by the canal. The sunset was pink, the air cold. I tried to smile. But inside me was a storm of questions without answers: Will the truce last? Will they allow aid in? Can houses be rebuilt before people collapse?
The truce there is a short breath between two suffocations. And here, the calm feels like betrayal. Words lose meaning when you know the distance between language and reality is measured in pain.
I saw a short video of a woman still searching for her son’s body under the rubble – even after the truce. She said: “The war didn’t stop inside me.”
