The genocide through their eyes

More than 24 hours have passed since Hamas broke out of its Gaza cage, launching an unprecedented attack that caught the Israeli army completely off guard. The infiltration of Palestinian militants across the separation fence, as well as by air and sea — already described as Israel’s most significant intelligence and military failure since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 — has resulted in the deaths of over 700 Israeli citizens from shooting attacks and rocket fire, and the kidnapping of dozens who have been brought to Gaza.

For those of us watching from within the besieged Gaza Strip, the situation has been nothing less than terrifying ... The death toll in Gaza has already surpassed 350, with thousands more wounded, and it appears inevitable that the worst is yet to come.

Like all Palestinians here, I had received Israel’s messages ordering us to evacuate the northern half of the strip within 24 hours ... On Salah al-Din Road — the main highway that runs through the strip from north to south and connects all of its towns — thousands of families were making the same journey. Some were hurrying on foot, carrying whatever belongings they could, and others were riding on large trucks or in their cars.

Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills

In Gaza’s hospitals, the morgue refrigerators are overflowing with the corpses of unidentified martyrs. These include those whose bodies have been dismembered as well as those who were displaced from their usual place of residence and their identities unknown. Some hospitals have been forced to use refrigerators from ice cream trucks to store more corpses, while others are simply placing bodies they don’t have space for in tents to keep them out of the sun.

After 47 days of continuous bombing and destruction, the news that Israel and Hamas had reached a temporary ceasefire agreement was met with cautious relief here in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip ... But the relief also brings sorrow and anxiety, as people face up to the scale of the devastation caused by Israel’s bombardment — including the loss of loved ones and homes.

Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills

Around half of the Gaza Strip’s population — an estimated 1 million people — is now crammed into the small southern city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Like the rest of Gaza, Rafah does not have enough food, water, medicine, or shelter to accommodate its permanent residents, let alone the vast number of people now seeking refuge in the city.

Many families are sleeping in tents, if they can find one; if they can’t, they sleep on the streets.

Israeli forces moved into Gaza’s southernmost city, which has become a shelter for 1.5 million Palestinians with nowhere else to go. This is the moment they most feared, carrying the potential for a catastrophe greater than anything we’ve seen so far.

Within hours, tens of thousands packed up what remains of their lives — many of them for the third, fourth, or fifth time since October — and headed northwest to what Israel is calling an “expanded safe zone.” But if Palestinians have learned anything from the past seven months, it is that nowhere in Gaza is ever safe from Israel’s onslaught.

The military has demolished buildings along the eastern edge of the Gaza Strip, part of what is widely believed to be a plan to establish a kilometer-wide “buffer zone” between populated areas in Gaza and Israel — the equivalent of 16 percent of Gaza’s territory — which Palestinians would be banned from entering.

Since October, the abandoned Netzarim checkpoint — which the Israeli military operated prior to its “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005 — has been expanded into a 6.5-kilometer-long road bisecting the strip.

Satellite images now show the “Netzarim Corridor” stretching from Gaza’s eastern boundary with Israel all the way to the Mediterranean Sea as well as extensive construction of housing units, communications towers, and other infrastructure.

The army ordered the approximately 400,000 residents remaining in the north of the Strip to move to the so-called “humanitarian area” in the south ahead of a new military operation.

Yousef Zaanoun /Activestills

The offensive comes only weeks after reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering a proposal, known as the Generals’ Plan, to ethnically cleanse the entirety of northern Gaza through a campaign of starvation and extermination. As such, there are widespread concerns ... that Israel may now be putting that plan into action.

For a little over two months, Israel has prevented all food, goods, and medical supplies from entering the Gaza Strip. The consequences have been catastrophic: According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, over 70,000 children are now hospitalized with acute malnutrition, and 1.1 million lack the daily minimum nutritional requirements for survival.

Yousef Zaanoun/Activestills

Starving civilians gather in massive crowds, waiting for permission to approach. In many instances, Israeli troops have opened fire on the masses — and even during distribution itself — killing dozens as they try to collect a few kilos of flour or canned goods to bring home in what Palestinians have dubbed “The Hunger Games”.

Since May 27, well over 400 Palestinians have been killed and over 3,000 wounded while waiting for aid.

Since Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in early March (which it eased only marginally in late May), we haven’t tasted meat, eggs, or fish. In fact, we’ve gone without nearly 80 percent of the food we used to eat.

Our bodies are breaking down.

We feel constantly weak, unfocused, and off-balance. We grow irritable easily, but most of the time we just stay silent. Talking uses up too much energy.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed at least 230 journalists in the Gaza Strip — more journalists than were killed worldwide in the previous three years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Why is Israel targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza? Simple. We are the only ones able to document and transmit what is actually happening on the ground. Every image, every testimony, every broadcast we produce pierces through the wall of Israel’s official narrative. That makes us dangerous: by recording the displacement, the starvation, and the relentless bombardment, we expose Israel’s actions to the world.

Israel’s security cabinet approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to seize control of Gaza City, a campaign Defense Minister Israel Katz later dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots II".

The ground invasion followed almost immediately — first in my neighborhood, Al-Sabra, where I was born and raised, and then in nearby Zeitoun, home to many of my relatives and friends.

Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills

Thousands have fled. Thousands more remain trapped, pinned down by the bombardment and the constant hum of drones overhead. Corpses lie in the streets, unreachable by emergency teams.