After a year of war in Gaza, we ask every day if it will be our last: Reporter’s notebook

Editor’s note: Ruwaida Amer is a freelance journalist based in the Gaza Strip.

GAZA STRIP–A year ago, my life was very different. I had a routine. I would wake up in the morning to go to work. I was a teacher and a freelance journalist. I loved my students and writing stories.

I would move between the cities in Gaza without barriers or fear. Everything was available, I could buy what I needed. Gaza was wonderful and full of beauty. All along the coast were fun places and I would meet friends and we would enjoy ourselves. I was happy with my life.

But then everything changed.

When we woke up on Oct. 7, 2023, to the sounds of missiles, we did not understand what was happening. And initially I thought it would be a short war, but it just keeps on going. I can hardly believe we have been living like this for a year.

Our lives are so hard now. We struggle to get water and food; electricity and internet access are both scarce. Death and destruction are everywhere. I have lost count of the amount of people I know who have died.

There have been times when all communication with the rest of the world was cut off. Both the internet and phone lines went down and Gaza was completely isolated. I remember we were living in abject terror, fearing that we would die and no one would know anything about it.

We have become used to war now, and some people in Gaza are so tired of it they say they would even welcome death.

I remember at the start of the war the bombing was very violent and seemed so random; we all felt that we could be targeted at any time, in any place. Every night we would go to bed terrified that the bombs would fall on us or at least near us.

There came a time for me and my family that the fear was so great, and the bombing so heavy, that we moved to a nearby hospital, the European Hospital near Khan Younis, for shelter. It was a difficult, cold night at the end of October 2023.

We were especially afraid for my mother, who is 55 years old and suffers from spinal cord disease. She walks very slowly and felt that she would not be able to save herself or help us escape if there was heavy bombing around our house.

So, we went to the hospital in the hope that we might be safer there. We spent the night huddled together in the parking lot, surrounded by other families shivering outside.

We looked at the sky and heard the sounds of warplanes and explosions and waited for dawn to come. We felt humiliated, and scared even in the hospital, so we decided from then on we would stay at home.

The memory of that night, listening to the explosions and seeing the sky light up with bombs, will stay with me forever.

But we didn’t realize then that our suffering was just beginning.

I started receiving the tragic news that some of my students had been killed. Issa, Habeeba and Salma. They were wonderful students, I loved them very much. I cried over the loss of my colleagues as well. I could not believe the news of their deaths. It all felt like I was in some kind of never-ending nightmare. The news of people I knew and loved dying just kept on coming.

After a year of this, it’s nearly impossible to find any joy in life. We have lost our hope. We have no desire to go on, we have lost our passion. As a journalist, I personally struggle when I write stories about people and hear their stories of grief and suffering. Despair and loss is everywhere in Gaza, visible in everyone’s eyes.

Toward the start of the conflict we had a brief moment of hope. On Nov. 24, a week-long cease-fire began. There were celebrations in the streets. We had a respite from the bombs. At that time, I felt safe. I moved around freely. I did not hear the sounds of planes. It was like we could go back to our old life.

But it didn’t last, and things were about to get much worse for my family. When the cease-fire agreement ended we woke up to the sound of heavy shelling in the city of Khan Younis. The war was coming closer to us.

My home is to the east of Khan Younis, located between that southern city and Rafah. At the beginning of December, the Israeli army began its ground operation in Khan Younis. The soldiers had advanced into the city and closed Salah al-Din Street, which leads from my area to the city center. This also meant we were cut off from my sister who lives on the other side of the city, to the west. My sister has two children, and we were constantly worrying about them. We were afraid that we would lose one, or both, of them. The only way out for us to get to my sister then was to go via Rafah because the army had not yet attacked there.

Then the Israel Defense Forces suddenly attacked the west of the city and my sister was forced to evacuate. She managed to flee to safety in time and moved in with us. While she was with us, she was in a constant state of fear and anxiety about her home. Her children were always asking about their home, and when they could go back home. After three months, in March, we learned that her home had been severely damaged. She had essentially lost it.

Once the Israeli army had left the area, my sister returned and was devastated by the damage she saw. Much of Gaza has become a wasteland and my sister’s home was no exception. It was largely ruined.

My 3-year-old nephew Adam and his 5-year-old sister Rital were heartbroken when they saw their home. They asked where their room had gone, where were their toys? Why had this happened? Adam has an imaginary friend called Spider-Man and he told me that Spider-Man had offered to help rebuild the house.

Rital and Adam hate their home now. The apartment has been burned in parts; smoke stains scar the wall. It has no doors or windows; the walls are mostly destroyed and they can see the street from it. We have tried to fix it, but it is still very cold at night and we are worried about winter coming.

Rital can remember life before the war and always says how much she misses it — going to restaurants, going shopping and buying new clothes with her mother. But Adam can’t seem to remember life before the war. When he sees pictures of Rital’s memories, he asks about them in great detail, wishing he had been a part of this seemingly beautiful life.

The children are seriously distressed by the war. They hate the sound of the planes and the bombing and they often flinch in fear. They know that their kindergarten was completely destroyed. They have become too used to death and destruction and are now old beyond their years, frighteningly so. They have a whole new vocabulary related to war, displacement and destruction.

And just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse for my family, they did. At the beginning of July 2024, the army issued evacuation orders for different areas in Khan Younis, including my residential area. The war was now, literally, on my doorstep.

I felt that my heart would stop from the sadness, because I had seen what had happened in the other evacuated areas — utter destruction. People returned and did not find their homes. I was begging my family not to leave our house.

We had hoped that maybe as we were near the European Hospital the area might be safe, and that the hospital would continue to operate normally and not evacuate its staff. But the Israeli military advanced, and the hospital, like many other hospitals in Gaza, was evacuated.

The entire neighbourhood was cleared out. My family felt they had no choice but to leave too. We had no other place to go except my sister’s destroyed home. We couldn’t go to the tent cities. My mother would not have survived.

We gathered our belongings in a truck and left, alongside thousands of other people doing the same. It was a very painful scene. The road was crowded and very difficult to navigate as much of it had been destroyed. We had lost all the landmarks of our city. They were reduced to unrecognizable rubble.

We entered the neighborhood where my sister lives and saw such great destruction; it was as if a devastating natural disaster had hit the place. Our faces were tired and sad, scarred by what we had seen along the way. We started moving our things to my sister’s apartment on the fourth floor.

When I first got there, I was shocked by the scene. What was this destroyed place? We tried to fix it as best we could, make it more inhabitable by putting up tarpaulin and nylon for some protection from the elements. We stayed for two weeks and they passed with great difficulty, every moment I felt my heart was burning as if I had left my soul at home. I saw one family on my sister’s street had pitched a tent in their bombed-out home, they were so desperate to be “home.”

I fear the sound of missiles. I wait for them to fall and explode to know if they are close to me or not. They say that those who die do not feel or hear the missile, so I try to remind myself that hearing it is a good sign. That was until I had a very close call.

On Aug. 16, I was in my house on the second floor. It was late and I hadn’t told my family I wasn’t in bed. My father was sleeping in an open area on the roof because the weather was very hot. I heard the sound of a missile falling. I turned off my phone and sat on the floor waiting for it to explode. When it exploded, the whole house shook. Bricks, shrapnel and glass fell everywhere. I screamed and screamed for someone to come and save me. I felt too afraid to go down to the lower floor, terrified that something might have happened to my family down there. My mother and sister were in the lower floor, while my brother was in the street with his friends.

I went downstairs but could not see anything as the smoke and dust in the air was so thick. My entire body was hurting. Thankfully none of my family died in the incident. Miraculously my father who had been on the roof was ok. But since then, I have been suffering from severe backache.

And, while we survived that incident, who knows if we will be lucky another time.

This war has extinguished the life inside of me. I had many dreams — one was to establish a learning center for scientific innovation in Gaza; another was to travel. A girl in her thirties has many dreams, a passion for work, and positive energy.

But now I am just waiting for this war to end and asking every day will I survive it or not. And beyond that we all ask – what does Gaza’s future look like? How will we rebuild our lives? Are we meant to just get used to this kind of destruction?