I have spent four years in Gaza, six months of which were during the ongoing war. I’ve never felt so helpless when faced with a monstrous war machine that loads a new bullet into its gun as soon as you’ve fired the previous one, while having seemingly unlimited ammo.
In September, I spoke with the matriarch who ran the shelter for the homeless in Khan Younis. I asked him what hope he had for peace. He pointed to the little girl who was holding her mother’s hand and sucking her thumb. “His father was killed when their house was blown up five days ago, they could not remove his body from the rubble because the place is always on fire,” he said. “What hope?”
In desperate Gaza, sleep is among the most precious things. Back in January, we would run to the window to watch the smoke paint the sky after a loud and dense song. But over time, they have become so commonplace that no one bothers to look anymore.
On a typical night in my neighborhood of Deir el-Balah, the bombing would begin at night, just as people were getting ready to try and sleep. We heard the sound of an arrow and then a loud explosion that shook the windows. These explosions would wake the local dogs, donkeys, children and any other soul who dared to sleep, to barking, howling and other terrifying sounds. More bombs would arrive followed by various types of gunfire until there was a momentary lull. The morning call to prayer would often trigger another series of attacks.
The apocalyptic scenes that everyone sees on TV are more traumatic in person. I often find myself deleting photos and videos from my phone because the camera doesn’t do justice to how bad the surroundings look to the naked eye.
For a person, sight is accompanied by a multitude of sounds. This includes the daily ritual of people scrambling for bread in nearby bakeries as food dwindles, amid the cut-off of commercial supplies and the ongoing and crippling restrictions on humanitarian access. Just this week, a woman and two girls died after being trampled in front of a bakery when a fight broke out because there was not enough bread for everyone.
My dear friend Khaled, who runs community kitchens across Gaza, was worried that soon there would be no food at all and his kitchens would have to close. I tried to find anything useful to say to him because of the reality around us and I cried every time we talked, as I was losing hope too. “Don’t cry, Olga,” he always said. “Be strong, as we are.” Indeed, the power of the Palestinians is unmatched.
In November, the Hunger Review Committee, an ad hoc body of international technical experts that reviews the categories of hunger that may be identified by the United Nations and other actors, published a report, sounding another alarm about the imminent threat of famine, especially in the troubled north. in Gaza. Since then, things have only gotten worse. Many times, I saw people picking up the dirty flour that was spilled on the road after sacks of flour fell from the aid truck.
Prioritizing the most vulnerable in Gaza is a hopeless task as almost no aid is provided. With 100 percent of the 2.3 million people in need, would you rather help a pregnant woman, a survivor of domestic violence, or someone who is homeless and disabled? Do you see all these dangers in one person? The pain of these choices will keep us awake long after our operations in Gaza are over.
In the months we have spent in Gaza, my colleagues and I have seen so much pain, tragedy and death that we can no longer express the horrors. We picked up dead bodies on the side of the road – some still warm and bleeding profusely, others with solid carcasses, half eaten by dogs.
Some of these bodies were little boys. The boys were killed senselessly, some of them slowly dying as they bled out, scared and alone, while their mothers cried about why their sons didn’t come home that night. Worldwide, they became just another number in the terrible number of people killed in Gaza so far – now more than 45,500, according to the Ministry of Health.
In rare moments of peace and in the midst of the chaos of ongoing problems, I think about everything around me and ask myself: “What hope?”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
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