We, the people of Gaza, have been repeatedly threatened. We have been threatened with being “cleaned out”, with mass death, with “all hell breaking loose” on us.
The thing is, we have already been through hell. I, like two million other Palestinians in Gaza, survived the genocidal inferno from October 7, 2023 to January 19, 2025.
If I have to be honest, I did not survive by hanging on to life. No, I survived by dropping the “f” in life and holding on to “lie”.
The more I lied to myself, the more I sustained my fragile existence.
I still remember the first lie I told myself. It was long before the genocide.
I remember telling myself after the 2008-09 Israeli aggression against Gaza that I would never witness something like that war ever again. It was a naive little lie. I witnessed war again in 2012, and again in 2014, and again in 2021, and yet again in May 2023.
On the evening of October 7, 2023, I hugged my mother when she burst out crying as Israeli fighter jets indiscriminately pounded the whole of Gaza.
I chose to tell her and myself the truth: that this was going to be the final episode of our miserable lives. I felt we were going to die one way or another in what was to follow. She felt the same way; that’s why she was crying.
But how can one exist in total acceptance of imminent death? Human beings by nature want to live. So I started lying to myself again.
Soon after, when Israel bombed the Baptist Hospital on October 17, killing hundreds of people, I lied. I told myself the world would rise up for Gaza and the sun would not shine on Israeli fighter jets bombing Gaza again. It was a short-lived lie. The Israeli bombardment only intensified, reaching genocidal rates.
When Israel forcibly displaced me in December of that year, I told myself that it would be just a couple of days and I would return. When I returned in May 2024, I told myself that I would not be displaced again.
When I returned home after my seventh forced displacement in September 2024, Israel had sharply restricted aid entry into Gaza, and I told myself the world would not let them starve us. But it did. For weeks, my family and I survived on bread, zaatar and a few cans of tuna we had saved from our time being displaced in al-Mawasi.
But by far worst lie I told myself was when phase one of the ceasefire took effect. “This is it,” I said to myself. “The military version of the genocide has ended, because what else Israel can do that it hasn’t already done? We’ve gone through all forms of torment and horror!”
But deep down I knew I was lying to myself.
I knew, like so many people in Gaza, that it was a matter of when and how for Israel to resume the genocide.
It wasn’t long before we got an indication that it was coming. Soon after the start of Ramadan, Israel halted the entry of all aid, triggering another famine. Two weeks later, instead of the call for suhoor, we were awakened by the sound of massive bombardment.
More than 400 people, including at least 100 children, were massacred in a matter of hours.
So, now the question of when has been answered, but that of how – remains. How many more children will Israel kill to realise its so-called “total” victory? How long will it take them this time to “finish the job”? How much horror and misery will we have to endure? And how will it end this time?
Despite living through 15 months of Israel’s genocidal war, I have no answer to these questions, because Israel keeps surprising me with just how much evil it has in store. I mean, is this it? The final stage of the genocide? Resuming the onslaught while blocking all aid, and cutting off water and electricity? I’m afraid that Israel can still go further.
The Israeli government says that this round of attacks will continue until it gets their captives back. If that was the case, then what was the ceasefire for? A rest for the killers from all the killing?
Meanwhile, the world is once again issuing empty condemnations and taking no action. It has failed us so many times that I have stopped counting. The least it can do is not to take our pain and misery for granted, as if we are born into it, as if we are programmed to suffer all the time.
I was raised amid wars and I survived 15 months of genocide, and yet I am surprised that I have not developed an immunity to fear, given the great amount of torment I have been through. I am still afraid of what is to come.
As I face death once again, I want to be truthful to myself. I want to say that I deserve a much better life than the one Israel has oppressively imposed on me. I deserve a boring, uneventful, secure life, free of bombs, starvation and unimaginable loss.
I don’t want to lie any more, I want to live.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
