Here’s what it’s like to be a Palestinian living in Gaza. From Gideon Levy at archive.ph:
Conversations with a friend in Gaza, now sheltering in the Muwasi DP camp. He’s 62, eats once a day and gets life-saving medicine from the ‘terrorist’ UNRWA. At the camp, they’re waiting for Trump: Either he’ll kill us or he’ll end the war, says the friend
Suddenly, a voice from the dead. M., my good friend from the Gaza Strip, whose name flickers on the cellphone screen, answers the phone. I have goosebumps all over. Over the past year I’ve tried calling him on and off, convinced he’d been killed. But suddenly, I hear a voice from the dead. M. is living in a tent in the Muwasi displaced-persons camp together with other surviving family members. It’s the best news I’ve heard lately.
The bad news is that Sa’id was killed. Sa’id al-Halwat, our mutual friend, a taxi driver with a face of constant sorrow, was killed with his son and his grandson when the Israel Air Force bombed Jabalya as he was trying to take shelter in his daughter’s home there. That was back in December 2023, about two months after the war started, M. related. Said was 67, a kindhearted man. I loved him very much.
Ghassan Kishawi was also killed, M. told me. We wandered around Israel with Kishawi, a hydraulic engineer, one day in the spring of 2015, years after Israel imposed a siege on Gaza. With the aid of the European NGO he worked for, he’d managed to obtain a one-time entry permit to Israel. Together we traveled to various places, including, at his request, the ruins of Al-Qubeiba, the village of his ancestors, next to the Kfar Gevirol neighborhood in Rehovot. He seemed thrilled at the sight of the arched structure that’s still standing there. Since then I hadn’t heard from him. Now he’s among the myriads of dead – 43,000 killed is the number. Sa’id and Ghassan are the names of people I knew. I choked with emotion when I heard that Sa’id was dead.
