When I was a child growing up in Gaza, my mom used to say, “The earth flourishes after a storm, and even the darkest night is followed by the dawn.” After 145 days of Israel’s relentless attacks and complete siege on Gaza, I finally understand my mother’s reassurances as her way of being strong in the face of adversity. We have survived 75 years of violence, killing, destruction, displacement, and deprivation of basic human rights. I will need to muster all my strength if my family and I are to survive this seemingly endless war.

The panic that comes without a voice in the night

We were without electricity on Saturday, Dec. 20, 2023, as we had been for over two months. As night fell that Saturday, my family lit candles and prepared for bed. My little brother cried and pleaded with our mom: “I’m hungry. Is there something to eat?” After my mother gently reminded him that we can only eat one dish a day to make sure we have enough food for the next day, we bedded down together in one room. This is how we sleep in every war. If a bomb or missile strikes our house, we want to die together. We don’t want to be like my friend Ahmed Alnaouq, who lost his entire family and will be heartbroken for the rest of his life.

We went to bed early that night, as we do every night. As we lay in our beds, listening to the constant buzzing of Israeli drones, we were deeply fearful of the intense bombing we knew was coming. We hoped for the oblivion of sleep before the bombing escalated in the middle of the night. By 1 a.m., we were all fast asleep when we were suddenly awakened by what felt like a meteorite striking Nuseirat refugee camp, the overcrowded neighborhood where we live.

Three Israeli airstrikes had hit a neighbor’s house. Dust and smoke were everywhere. I could not breathe. My teeth started chattering, and my hands were trembling. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I started shouting, “Am I in a nightmare? Mom!? Dad!?” I heard my family crying with fear in the darkness. I desperately looked for something to shine some light in the room. When I found my phone, I turned on the flashlight. Window glass was scattered on the floor; the door of our house had been blown off its hinges. The foul smell of rubble filled our lungs. The walls of the house were cracked.

Gripped with fear, we all immediately ran out of the house and into the street. We took nothing with us, not even our shoes. The street was filled with rubble and sewage that hurt our feet and made the street impassable. We were terrified. It was dark, and we could not see much of our surroundings. We made our way to the nearest UNRWA school to take refuge. There, we found thousands of other displaced people looking for shelter. There was no way I could call for help. Telephone communications had been down for two months.

Three days later, when we returned to our neighborhood, I was shocked. The damage caused by the Israeli missiles exceeded anything I had experienced in previous wars. Three houses next to ours had been destroyed. Miraculously, our home had survived.

Al Jazeera reported that “more than twenty have been killed, thirty have been injured, and others are still missing under the rubble.” My best friend, Mahmoud, along with his family and other relatives, were among the dead. They had moved south after Israel had told them they would be safe there. Their deaths reinforced what I already knew: no place in Gaza is safe.

Before the Dec. 20 attack on my neighborhood, there was a beautiful garden next to our house. I would look at it every morning and feel a sense of hope, freedom, and peace. The garden was destroyed in the attack, along with any hope or sense of peace I had been holding onto.

The challenge of meeting our daily needs

On Dec. 31, 2023, as the world prepared for a New Year’s celebration, the intense bombing continued in Gaza. On Jan. 1, 2024, I woke up at 6 a.m. to the annoying sound of an Israeli drone hovering above our neighborhood. I felt fear welling up in me and wondered what the drone was doing here. Then I looked out my window. Instead of a beautiful garden, all I could see was a deserted garden full of rubble, sewage, and uprooted trees. It looked as if our neighborhood had been hit by a hurricane. That morning I ate my only meal of the day, red beans that smelled as though they had been left out for days. They didn’t taste good, and there was not enough to satisfy my hunger.

My mother was heartbroken. Still, she knew what we had to do. “We face two inevitable dangers,” she told the family. “Either we stay inside our house and die of hunger, or we go out, risk death from Israeli bombs and snipers, and search for water and food even though we know we might not find any.” Since we had run out of water the day before, I grabbed two yellow tanks and went out to find some. After walking for an hour, I found a place that was selling well water and got in line to wait my turn. Two hours later, I walked home with two full tanks. The water tasted a bit salty but was otherwise drinkable.

It is not any easier to find food. It feels like Israel is starving us as a way to force Gazans to leave. It’s a war of bombing, starvation, displacement, and ethnic cleansing.

Bread is difficult to find since Israel has bombed most of the bakeries in Gaza. The bakeries that remain have no bread to sell since they have no fuel or flour. After an hour of searching for bread, I came up empty-handed. But I kept searching. We had no food left in our house. If I don’t find bread or other food, my family will starve. Just as I was about to head home with nothing to show for my efforts, I saw a crowd gathered around a clay oven not far from my house. A man was baking bread and selling it at five times the normal price. After waiting in line for three hours, I buy as much as I can afford — 15 loaves. My family won’t starve today.

Charging phones is also a challenge. Most people in Gaza have no access to electricity. The Israeli siege prevents Gaza from obtaining fuel to run our electrical generators. Thankfully, some people have access to electricity from solar panels. That day, I spent what amounts to a dollar to charge my phone with solar energy. This might not sound like a lot of money to people in the West, but any money is difficult to come by in Gaza. Like most people here, I have not been able to earn any money since the war began. Before the war, I taught at a high school in North Gaza that Israel has since bombed and destroyed. My dreams, passion, and students are gone.

Once, a We Are Not Numbers volunteer in the United States tried to send me money through Western Union. I never got it. The one still-functioning Western Union office is far from my house. To reach it I would have had to bicycle an hour down a road targeted by Israeli snipers. Even if I survived the trip, I might have come away empty-handed. A friend tells me that every day many people are turned away after waiting all day in line.

Our lives taking a turn for the worse

When I finally arrived home after spending seven hours searching for food and water, I was greeted by a flurry of leaflets falling from the sky. The Israeli military wanted us to flee to Rafah. I ran into our house in shock. “Where will we go? We don’t know anyone in Rafah. Living in tents is terrible!” My mother took control of the situation. “We have to flee as quickly as possible before we’re all killed,” she said. “Family is the most important thing.”

Before we left, I switched on the radio. Western leaders were defending Israel’s right to “defend” itself, while simultaneously denying that right to the defenseless besieged population of Gaza. I smiled at the irony as another explosion roared in the background.