Why do I write today? And for whom do I write? These questions haunt me whenever I put my thoughts into words. I feel as if I have lost my ability to write. I feel as though words have betrayed me, slipping away just when I need them most. I wonder if there is any purpose left in writing at all. I have written endlessly and so have my people. We shouted until our voices broke, cried out until our throats ran dry, documented our deaths, our hunger, our displacement, and our grief in every language and on every platform. Yet nothing changed. The war did not stop. Death did not stop. It stalks us still; in the streets, in the skies, in every breath we take.
And sometimes, death is not the worst of it. Often, death feels lighter than the slow torment we are forced to endure, the daily cruelty that breaks us piece by piece. So, for whom do I write now? And why? Even with my ability to mirror our reality through words, I feel betrayed by them. No language can truly capture the bitterness lodged deep inside our souls. You cannot feel what we live in Gaza unless you are here.
If you were here, your body would tremble at the sound of constant explosions, night and day. Each night you would lie awake imagining your own death: Will it be quick? Will I be torn into pieces? Will I remain trapped beneath the rubble for hours, for days, waiting to be found? Will they pull me out alive, or only my body? You would wonder: Will I survive, only to live the rest of my life wounded, paralyzed, or without a limb? Who will I lose tomorrow? Who will still be alive when the morning comes?
You would know what it means to be forced to abandon your home, your city, your memories, and to walk under a burning sun not knowing where you are heading. You would pass the rubble of loved ones’ homes, where the stones themselves seem to whisper: “Here lies so-and-so.” You would learn the rituals of daily farewells, of loss that does not stop.
If you were here, you would breathe only dust and ashes. You would see children barefoot, starving, their bodies frail and broken. You would hear their trembling voices calling to the skies, begging the planes to drop aid to throw them just a few crumbs of survival. You would see tents turned into ovens, burning their residents alive under the sun. You would see parents pretending to be full so their children can eat the last piece of bread.
Nothing makes sense anymore
For almost two years, the sound of drones and collapsing houses has replaced silence. For two years, we have lived with grief as our constant companion. We have seen our city shrink, pressed tighter and tighter, until there is no space left for us to breathe. The sea before us, the enemy behind us.
Nothing makes sense anymore. Madness surrounds us. You cannot imagine the stench of blood and dust that clings to every street. You cannot imagine the humiliation of celebrating the arrival of cheese or sugar after months of starvation, when our social media becomes filled with pictures of food that used to be ordinary. Can you grasp the cruelty of being forced to rejoice over crumbs?
We have melted away with hunger. Our bodies have become fragile frames, skeletons walking beside one another. And now, even as a few aid trucks are allowed in, trickling in like drops from a cruel hand; people die waiting in line, empty-stomached, crushed by despair. At the same time, the news spreads: “The Israeli authorities plan a full invasion of Gaza City. Another displacement. Another exile.”
But Gaza is not just any city. It is our city. The day I returned to it after a year, and a half of displacement was the happiest day of my life. I walked with my kids, carrying only a backpack, for kilometers under the scorching sun. Gaza appeared before me like the end of the world, shattered and broken; but it was home.
And now, they threaten to take it again. To uproot us once more. Will I remain? Will I be killed on my land, or will I be forced into exile, afraid and far from it?
The last standing fragment of a homeland
The plan to occupy Gaza City is not simply a military maneuver; it is a direct attempt to erase the beating heart of our people. Gaza is not only a geographical space, it is the soul of a nation, the last standing fragment of a homeland that has been shrinking for decades. To strip Gaza of its people is to strip Palestinians of their center of gravity, their symbolic and historical anchor.
For two million people already suffocating under blockades and famine, another forced displacement would be catastrophic. Where would they go? The borders are sealed, the sea is closed, the sky is death itself.
And the consequences will not remain confined within Gaza. The region already trembles under the weight of this endless war. Another invasion, another wave of mass displacement, would break the people of Gaza even further, and expose the moral collapse of an international community that watches as death, hunger, and suffering are turned into weapons of war.
We are the children of this ancient city, heirs to its pain and its resilience. Each day, we are crushed between war, hunger, and death, yet we continue to breathe, to walk, to endure. All that remains constant is uncertainty, an unrelenting shadow over every moment. I have no certainty but in God, in the bond of our shared suffering, and in the love we carry for our wounded, beloved Gaza.
As the great poet Fadwa Tuqan once wrote:
“It is enough for me to die upon her soil, to be buried within her, to dissolve beneath her dust and vanish, to be reborn as grass upon her land, to be reborn as a flower, played with by the hand of a child nurtured by my homeland. It is enough for me to remain in my country’s embrace, as soil, as grass, and as a flower”.
And so we remain. Even when words fail, even when writing feels like a futile act, my heart refuses silence. I bear witness because Gaza is not only a city under siege, it is a pulse, a living testament, a heart that beats against erasure. Its streets, its rubble, its children, its tents; all of it carries the stubborn light of a people who refuse to vanish, who cling to life, hope, and memory. And as I always say: “memory does not die”. It endures in every whispered story, every stone that bears a name, every scar on a wall, every child who looks up and remembers.
We remain not only for ourselves but for the generations yet to come, for the city that taught us how to endure, and for the world to see that even under endless bombardment, Gaza does not yield its soul.
Nour Z. Jarada, a Gazan Mental Health Manager at Médecins du Monde