How do I comfort the loved ones I left behind in Gaza?

Whenever I hear the voices of friends and relatives, I am overwhelmed with helplessness. My words feel empty in the face of their suffering.

Displaced Palestinians seen around their tents in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)
Displaced Palestinians seen around their tents in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)

For more than a year, Gaza has been stuck in an endless loop of destruction. While the rest of the world moves forward, for us, time feels frozen. People everywhere celebrate milestones, build futures, and pursue their passions, but in Gaza, Palestinians are still living the same day on repeat: bombs exploding, homes collapsing, funeral after funeral, and suffocating fear.

I left Gaza nearly six months ago, but it never truly left me. My heart and soul remain tethered to the people I love there: the friends, family, and countless others still trapped under Israeli bombardment, a war machine fueled by unwavering U.S. support. Every success I experience outside of Gaza feels hollow, almost like a betrayal. I live, travel, and work, while those I care about fight to survive.

What I find most agonizing is the uncertainty. When I left Gaza, I promised my family it was only temporary, assuring them I’d return when the war ends. But days turned into weeks, and then months, and now a year has passed with no relief in sight. The thought of never being able to return or see my family again is unbearable. Each morning when I wake up, I check the news and brace myself, terrified of discovering that I’ve lost someone I love.

When I manage to reach friends in Gaza, their voices carry the weight of a reality that has become disturbingly normal. “We had to move again,” my friend Anas, who is 23, told me on the phone last week, as though he were recounting a mundane task. “We stayed in the previous place for 10 days, but the bombing and tanks got too close so we packed up and left.”

Every time I hear his voice, I am afraid it could be the last. But what frightens me most is the resignation in his tone. The terror, the displacement, the bombs — they’ve all been woven into the fabric of everyday life.

Palestinians fleeing from Khan Yunis to Rafah, February 2, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
Palestinians fleeing from Khan Younis to Rafah, February 2, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Being forced to accept the unimaginable is part of the tragedy of being from Gaza. In 2007, when Israel first imposed a siege on the Strip, we thought it would just be temporary — a form of political pressure that would soon be lifted. Instead, it has lasted 17 years. Today, we find ourselves wondering if this war will be the same. Will it ever end? Or is this our new normal? This painful cycle has been repeating itself since the Nakba of 1948.

Anas graduated with a degree in civil engineering just three months before the war began. Like so many others, his family sacrificed everything for his education, clinging to the hope that it would lead to a better future. But now, that hope feels so far away. “I wish I wasn’t born in Gaza,” he told me recently, his voice heavy with regret. “Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t born at all. What’s the point of life if everything you build, everything you dream of, is just taken from you?”

The weight of his despair was palpable, echoing the pain I’ve heard from so many others over the last year. “This war won’t end until we’re all killed,” he said. “Even if the bombing stops, how do we rebuild? I’ll never be the same person I was before.”

In the past, I would have tried to offer some words of comfort. But lately, I find myself retreating into silence. It’s not that I want to distance myself from my friends and family inside Gaza; on the contrary, I want to be there for them, to offer solace or strength. But each time I hear them speak, I am overwhelmed with helplessness. Every conversation reminds me that there’s nothing I can do. 

Anas updated me last week that his family had found another place to stay. “We survived displacement for the 13th time, next time might be the last,” he wrote to me on WhatsApp, punctuating his message with a laughing emoji. The absurdity of that emoji — laughing at the possibility of death — made my heart sink.

Palestinians at site of an Israeli airstrike at an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, October 14, 2024. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)
Palestinians at site of an Israeli airstrike at an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, October 14, 2024. (Ali Hassan/Flash90)

Anas’ cousin later told me that after finding shelter in a relative’s building, they settled in for just one day before receiving a threat from the Israeli occupation forces: the building was to be bombed, so once again they had to flee. I haven’t replied to him yet. I don’t know what to say. 

‘It’s naive to talk about hope after more than 365 days of horror’

My friend Ahmed Ziad, also 23, is currently living in a tent in Deir al-Balah following a series of forced evacuations. In May, he was on the verge of leaving Gaza to complete a Master’s degree in the U.K.. But a week before he was supposed to depart, Israel invaded Rafah and sealed off the crossing. Virtually no one has been able to leave Gaza since then.

Yesterday, I mentioned to Ahmed that I’d heard a rumor that the Rafah Crossing might open soon under Palestinian Authority control. He replied with a heavy sigh. “Are you serious? Do you actually think that life can open up? Our salvation and our crossing are in the hands of Israel, not the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. Israel does not want the war to end until it ends us.”

Like many others in Gaza, Ahmed used to speak about his hopes for the future. He was bursting with plans to do something meaningful with his degree. Now, there’s only despair. “I was so close,” he told me. “Everything was ready. And then, in one moment, it all vanished.”

“It’s naive to talk about hope after enduring more than 365 days of horror,” Ahmed continued. The negotiations once offered a glimmer of hope, even in their failures. But now it’s been months since there was any talk of a ceasefire.”

Displaced Palestinians inspect their tents after they were hit by an Israeli airstrike, in the Al-Mawasi area, southern Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
Displaced Palestinians inspect their tents after they were hit by an Israeli airstrike, in the Al-Mawasi area, southern Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

When I hear from my friend Ahmed Dremly, 27, I am also left speechless. Sheltering in the Al-Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, he lives in constant hunger and fear along with the tens of thousands of Gazans in the northern Strip. Apart from his married sister, Ahmed is the only one of his family who remains in Gaza, after his parents left through Rafah in May to seek medical treatment for his mother. “We’ve been deprived of everything here, even before the war,” he told me during a recent phone call. “Now that you’re outside Gaza, you should do it all.”

In Gaza, even doing simple things — grasping for any semblance of life before the war — feels impossible. “Sometimes, I just want to go to the sea,” Ahmed said. “But when I do, I’m met with Israeli naval boats patrolling the horizon. I can’t shake the thought that an Israeli soldier, wanting to show off his marksmanship, might just decide to shoot me, as we’ve seen happen countless times.”

“Inshallah, God willing, you’ll make it out,” I begin to say, trying to comfort him. But he cuts me off. “There’s no escape from this war that was imposed on us except death,” he responds. “And even if this war ends, there’s another [nightmare] waiting for us. Where will we live? Will we stay in the camps, in tents? How many years will it take to rebuild Gaza? We’ve all lost our jobs and businesses — where will we work? Who will rule Gaza? Will we return to the same vicious political divisions?” 

Ahmed’s nightmare is also mine. Even as a survivor of this genocide, I continue to live within the war. The fear haunts me every day.

“What scares me most is the thought of learning to live with the war, to coexist with death,” he went on. “How can I possibly adjust to life amid all this death, humiliation, and despair?”

Displaced Palestinian children study at a school that was bombed by Israeli warplanes in recent war in Khan Yunis, October 9, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
Displaced Palestinian children study at a school that was bombed by Israeli warplanes in recent war in Khan Younis, October 9, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The more I write, the more words fail me

For a while now, I’ve been trying to distance myself from the psychological toll that writing about Gaza exacts. A month ago, I arrived in the U.K., hoping to carve out a new path. I told myself I would focus on my studies and occasionally check in with family and friends. But within a matter of days, I felt a new burden: I began to notice how many people have forgotten about Gaza, even as Israel’s aggression continues to intensify. Airstrikes are burning people alive, starvation is spreading across the entire Strip, and life outside goes on. 

I consider myself fortunate: I had the chance to flee, to survive. But with that good fortune comes a heavy responsibility to speak out for my people. Documenting and reporting on the genocide from inside and outside of Gaza, I’ve tried to capture their resilience and fear, the glimmers of hope amid despair. But the more I write, the more I feel the inadequacy of words. Each attempt to articulate our reality feels like a grain of sand against a relentless tide, lost in the vastness of the unspoken details that no one outside sees.

“Let’s be realistic,” Ahmed Dremly said to me in our most recent conversation. “What does the media cover? Images of tents stretching endlessly. But do they capture what’s inside them? Do they show how we gather firewood? The last time I searched for wood, my hands were bloodied and my clothes were torn. I was searching beneath the rubble of my uncle’s home, with bodies still trapped under the debris and the smell of death clinging to the ground.

“Does anyone witness how women and children are forced to live in these conditions?” he continued. “Do they feel how we freeze every night, our bodies shivering under the weight of fear and bombing?”

For the past week and a half, the Israeli army has been besieging the northernmost region of Gaza. Tens of thousands of people are trapped without food and water, while Israeli soldiers, tanks, and drones fire at anyone that moves. The sheer helplessness is overwhelming; there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It’s a grim reality, one that weighs heavily on me as I grapple with the loss of connection to a place that was once so integral to my existence.

I called my mother in Gaza City, just south of the besieged area, to check on her and the rest of the family. “We don’t know what to do,” she told me. “The army has isolated us from the north, and we have no contact with your aunt in Jabalia. We don’t know whether they are alive or not. We’re afraid the Israeli forces will reach us next. Where can we go?”

“The situation keeps getting worse,” my mother continued, her voice full of confusion and fear. “We used to think it would only last another month or two, but now we’ve entered the second year. I don’t know anything anymore; we’ve packed our evacuation bags just in case.” Before ending the call, she added: “We’ve reached the point where the lucky ones are those who die instead of surviving.”