Photo: Palestinians at site of an Israeli airstrike at an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

On October 7 last year, the sky over Gaza ignited. The day began with the shocking scenes of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza, followed later by a torrent of Israeli missiles and warplanes. As a journalist who was on the ground in Gaza, I did what I’ve always done: I wrote, I documented, I interviewed, I bore witness. But nothing could have prepared me for the days, weeks, and months to come.

That first day, my colleagues and I scrambled to understand the basic facts of what was unfolding. As the details became clearer, I grappled with a mix of complicated feelings: my staunch belief in our right as Palestinians to resist occupation and siege; skepticism that the Hamas attacks in southern Israeli communities would bring us any closer to our quest for freedom; compassion for civilians who were killed or harmed; and utter terror at the unbridled violence that I knew would rain down on Gaza in the aftermath.

But I didn’t have long to grapple with any of this. I remember the early hours of Israel’s military assault on Gaza, rushing to make sense of the chaos, torn between my duty to report and the overwhelming grief of seeing my people — neighbors, friends, family — desperately searching for safety that was nowhere to be found.

One year later, now out of Gaza, I’m still writing and still documenting. But the blood on Gaza’s streets is no closer to drying, the pain no closer to easing, the explosions no closer to fading. The cacophony of missile barrages and machine gunfire has become the soundtrack of our lives — a perpetual reality of death and destruction. People around the world scream for a ceasefire, but on the ground, we know better than to expect it: the bombs just keep coming.

A part of me wants to move on, to write about something else, anything else. But as I sit in front of my laptop, the weight of the past year presses down on my chest. Writing to mark a war anniversary isn’t just about reflection — it’s a trigger, forcing me to relive memories of death, displacement, starvation, and survival.

Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in the city of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, July 30, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

 How long can we live like this?

Although I am now writing from exile, I spent eight months on the ground covering the war in northern Gaza. I’ve reported from burning houses and the frontlines of military ground offensives, covering everything from the initial shock of families torn apart by displacement to the resilience of children playing in the rubble.

But as a Palestinian journalist in Gaza, it’s impossible to distance yourself from the pain and tragedy you document. I was one of the hundreds of thousands displaced, taking refuge in makeshift shelters and schools, with no access to medical care. My toddler lived with no home and no proper food for months. Our children now know the sound of bombs better than the sound of laughter.

There’s one question I’ve asked over and over, in all my interviews and my columns, and in quiet conversations with colleagues. I’ve asked it of mothers clutching their children, their faces weary from the sleepless nights. I’ve asked it of doctors working in overwhelmed hospitals, surrounded by the injured, the dying, the dead. “How long can we live like this?” The question continues to echo in my mind, because I still don’t have an answer.

But as a friend of mine pointed out: “We’re not living our days, we’re surviving them.” Survival has become our default mechanism — because we have no other choice. What else can you do when you’ve lost everything but your breath? How do you cope when the only certainty is more death?

Meanwhile, a strange numbness has settled into the bones of the world. The blood of tens of thousands has stained our streets, but the world has grown accustomed to the color. The relentless airstrikes, the blockade, and the lack of clean water, food, and medical supplies, the cries of grieving families — all of this has become background noise.

Palestinians mourn the death of their relatives in an Israeli airstrike at the Al-Awda School in Abasan, east of the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 10, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

That’s the real tragedy — our suffering, long before this war, has never been seen as urgent. And it never will be, unless the world remembers that we are human beings who deserve the most basic rights. Perhaps those of us who survived one year of war are lucky, but our wounds run deep and our demands are simple.

 We keep writing – and waiting

I’ve lost count of the number of obituaries I’ve written for friends and loved ones this past year. I want nothing more than for the day when I can write about rebuilding, about hope, about a Gaza that is free, peaceful, and thriving.

But until that day comes, I wonder, how many more children have to be pulled from the wreckage? How many more hospitals will run out of supplies? How much more blood must be shed before the world decides that enough is enough? It’s as if war has taken up permanent residence in Gaza, planted its roots, and declared its eternal presence.

The people of Gaza long for something as basic as bread, without the fear that a missile will strike while they wait outside a half-destroyed humanitarian aid office. As winter approaches, they need proper tents and clothing to keep the rain from soaking them and their belongings, with nowhere else to go. And most of all, they need an end to the source of their suffering and daily hardship.

But a ceasefire isn’t enough: we’ve grown too cynical to believe it will last. We know that for every brief pause, another trauma is already being prepared.

My fellow journalists and I continue to speak out, not because we want the world’s pity, nor do we need lectures on “neutrality” by white news anchors. We write because we need to live, to breathe. We use our journalism to strive for a future that doesn’t involve counting the dead. We write because we want the bombs to stop, the tanks to roll back, and the drones to disappear from our skies. We want to eat without worrying about where the next meal will come from. We want our children to go to school and grow up without fear of being buried under the rubble. We want medical treatment, proper clothing, and water.

But we also want — and deserve — what feels further than ever since October 7: freedom, dignity, and self determination. This war can’t go on indefinitely. People on the ground are trapped in a suffocating cycle of loss and survival, but they also recognize that some sort of resolution, whatever that might look like, is inevitable. Will it be more of the same — a repeat of the last 17 years under siege, where temporary ceasefires only give way to further death? Or will we finally see a push toward lasting political change, where Palestinians are no longer forced to choose between silence and suffering?

In the meantime, I keep writing — and waiting. We wait for the world to hear us, to act, to finally put an end to our unending trauma. Because one year on, we’re still waiting. And we can’t endure this forever.

Mohammed R. Mhawish