Deir el-Balah, Gaza – It wasn’t a nightmare, it was real. The war had returned, just like that, without warning.
The clock read 2:10am when we woke up in terror to the deafening sound of air strikes. A violent noise shook everything around us.
My daughter, Banias, woke up screaming in fear: “Baba! Mama! What’s happening?”
She was right next to me, crying out in terror, but I couldn’t even reassure her. My mind was in complete chaos.
Is this bombing again? What’s happening? Who’s attacking us?
In a moment of denial, I thought: are these Yemeni missiles on Israel? Is this strike hitting us?
The unmistakable sounds of genocide
Oh my God. The explosions intensified, and the sound was unmistakable, one we knew too well – Israeli air strikes on Gaza.
My husband held Banias, trying to calm her down.
I ran to my phone, scrolling through local journalist groups. Everyone was asking: “What’s happening?”
Minutes passed before the news started rolling in: a house targeted in Deir el-Balah, a strike on a home in Nuseirat.
Several tents for displaced families were bombed in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, and there was artillery shelling in Rafah.
An entire residential building was hit in Jabalia, northern Gaza, and there were strikes in the al-Karama neighbourhood. A “belt of fire” unleashed on central Gaza.
Then came the desperate pleas: “A family’s trapped under the rubble.”
“A residential block has been levelled.”
“We need ambulances.”
People screamed for help, calling for civil defence teams.
And still, the bombing continued – violent, relentless.
Images of fear and death
Photos and videos flooded in – shattered bodies, martyrs, the wounded filling every functioning medical centre in the Strip. Scenes that we had barely begun to forget, returned.
Moments later, Israel officially announced it was abrogating the ceasefire and resuming its war on Gaza.
It felt like a blow to the head.
“What does this mean?” my sister, who had come to spend a few days with me, cried out. “No, God, no! We don’t want war again. We don’t want the bombing, the fear.”
We all stared at the news, eyes wide with shock. “Oh God, enough … enough.”
Still clutching my phone, I scrolled further – images of infants killed in the air strikes, burning tents, entire residential blocks reduced to rubble.
Oh God, the same images, the same suffering, the same nightmare.
War was picking up exactly where it had left off – without embellishment, without pretence, without disguise. Just killing, bombing, extermination and an endless flood of blood.
My family around me asked, “What about the north? Will they close the road between north and south again?”
We were trapped.
In Gaza, you can’t plan for a tomorrow
Just last night, I invited my father and my twin sisters, both in their 20s, for a Ramadan iftar at our place in al-Zawayda, near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. It was a simple family gathering, and I convinced them to stay the night, planning for us all to head north the next morning.
We had planned a few Ramadan visits, and some errands to buy clothes for the children before Eid and summer arrived. As always, every visit to the north was also an opportunity to explore new stories.
Now, all those “plans” were meaningless. In a single moment, life had flipped upside down. The war was back.
Planning has become a crime in this place. To plan for your day, no matter how mundane, even something as simple as shopping or spending time with family is an unforgivable luxury.
Here, you are guilty for expecting normalcy, you’re condemned to live in a constant state of alert – every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every year.
My sister, who works in media for a humanitarian organisation, suddenly realised: “Oh God! I didn’t bring my laptop or my things! What do I do now?”
Guilt consumed me. I was the one who convinced them to stay, this was my fault.
What if they close the roads? What will the next phase of the war look like? Will the war start in the north? Or will they invade the central area?
There is only Deir el-Balah left now. Oh God, what kind of trap is this?
My mind spiralled, flipping through thoughts – would we have to wear our protective press vests again? Go back to working from hospitals?
But we had already dismantled our tent workspace there. Journalists had withdrawn, scattered between north and south, trying to start over.
Wait, what about Banias’s school? I had just registered her in a school last week, surely that was over now. We were back to war.
My heart ached. When the ceasefire began, we felt some relief, but never safety. Fear, hesitation and confusion clung to us.
We didn’t know where to start, we didn’t dare to plan and every time we did, the missiles reminded us of our mistake.
The closet
Two days ago, my husband and I went shopping and for the first time, I dared to buy a single rug, a table and chairs, plates and spoons, and a few kitchen essentials.
Since moving here, all we had were four mattresses, four blankets, four plates, four spoons and a small pot for cooking.
Throughout the war, we refused to get anything else. Our clothes were stacked on a sheet spread on the floor in a designated room, divided into sections for each of us, we jokingly called it “the dressing room”.
It was always a mess, organising the clothes on the floor was a daily battle and every time we stepped into the room, my husband and I would say: “We need a closet.”
A closet was a grand luxury, it took a ceasefire for us to even think about buying one, although we were hesitating over whether to stay in the south or move north. We always chose to travel light, ready to flee at any moment.
But just yesterday morning, I finally packed away our winter clothes and told my husband: “Let’s buy a closet.”
Now I had my answer. This renewed bombing meant that the closet was no longer an option, chaos awaited instead … the chaos of my thoughts, my shattered plans, the chaos of a life I could no longer control, no matter how hard I tried.
And despite all the destruction and ruin around us, as if it wasn’t already enough, we know we can no longer dream, no longer plan, no longer wish for anything, no longer look forward to anything.
All we want is do to survive.