The air is thick with tension, and the besieged Gaza Strip suffers another round of attacks. Gaza, where I was born and raised, is a place full of fear and uncertainty. The continuous bombing is a constant reminder that we only live to survive from one attack to the next, dreams turned into ruins. This is a fight for survival, and the question that hangs over our heads like a dark cloud is: “When will this trauma end?”
On the night of Friday, October 27, I was sitting in my aunt’s house, in a room with about nine people, in the dark light of candles. My family and I were forced to evacuate our neighborhood after a warning from Israeli occupation forces. Suddenly, while we were trying to be with our relatives, we heard a loud explosion that shook the house with the intensity of the bombing. We rushed to look out the windows to see what the surrounding houses were like. We saw the bomb near our relatives’ house where my brother, Islam, had taken refuge with his wife and three children. My heart stopped in fear, we tried to call him but there was no call service. After a few minutes, we knew they were good. The big shock was not the force of the impact nor our concern for my brother’s family, unfortunately, we are used to these conditions! The big shock is that the Israeli government has isolated Gaza from the world, literally from anyone outside.
For the past two days, Israel has cut off all Palestinian communication and internet services throughout the Gaza Strip. If communication is cut off, you don’t know what’s going on around you, you can’t contact your relatives and, what’s more, if your house is bombed and you’re injured, no one can call an ambulance to save you. By creating a media blackout in Gaza, the Israeli occupation seeks to kill us while we remain silent.
The air is thick with tension, and the besieged Gaza Strip suffers another round of attacks. Gaza, where I was born and raised, is a place full of fear and uncertainty. The continuous bombing is a constant reminder that.
