The interviews were conducted by Jannah Elgamal and Adam Boumassri. We have assigned pseudonyms to the interviewees to maintain confidentiality and protection of their identities.
In the aftermath of war, the human spirit reveals its unyielding strength, while the whole world lays bare its hypocrisy. Among the evacuees from Gaza who found refuge in Qatar, their stories of life, loss, and survival paint a poignant picture of resilience amidst devastation, resistance in the face of extermination, and courage through genocide. The Georgetown Gazette had the privilege of interviewing four Gazan evacuees. We share their voices, echoing experiences that words alone can scarcely capture.
Context Matters: Gaza, “Beautiful Because We See It As Beautiful, Because It Is Our Home.”
To understand the stories of the people of Gaza, we must understand Gaza itself. Gaza is a small Palestinian territory where many families were displaced during Al Nakba of 1948, as the state of Israel applied its policy of population transfer. The strip is surrounded by the “Iron Wall,” a metal fortification that separates Gaza from the occupied lands and the West Bank. This wall creates a profound sense of imprisonment, restricting travel to be only through crossings like Rafah and Erez. For a child born in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, a sea on one side and an iron wall on the other confine them, cutting them off from the rest of the world. From behind the fence, the child grows up gazing at the illegal settlements that once were their grandparents' villages. For a child growing up in Gaza, every corner carries a persistent reminder of injustice.
For all our four interviewees, this war was not their first experience of Israeli violent repression. They were accustomed to the sound of missiles and the omnipresent Israeli drones – Zannaneh. Omar returned to Gaza in 2000 just to witness the onset of the second Intifada. In response to this massive uprising, Israel killed nearly 5,000 people, including numerous women and kids and wounded around 10,000 children. Omar describes Israel’s extreme, violent reaction to put down the Intifada as “pampering” compared to its genocidal operations occurring now. Even though Gazans’ typical small talk would usually include their dead and wounded from the constant operations against them, they agree this war had leveled up to a shameless ethnic cleansing through which this maniacal colonial state tries to sew its worn alleged legitimacy.
Salma recalls her first war in Gaza when she was a fifth grader. As they sat in class, the sudden roar of bombardments shattered the silence, causing the windows to tremble violently. The teachers, caught off guard, stood frozen in shock, uncertain of what to do next. Panic quickly spread, engulfing everyone as they scrambled to the school’s yard in chaos. Amidst the confusion, Salma desperately searched for her older brothers, her heart pounding, while they too frantically sought out to find her. Salma states, “It was my childhood trauma seeing body parts coming out of the ambulance.” According to her, there was no post-trauma therapy or any kind of support she or her peers were provided. They were left with no choice but to absorb it in their bones. They simply had to live with it.
Following Hamas' victory in the 2006 elections, Israel bombed the power station that supplied electricity to the entire Gaza Strip and restricted fuel imports. This led to severe water and electricity shortages, plunging Gazans into harsh and challenging conditions. Alaa shares, “I am 23 years old and the first time I experienced electricity for 24 hours straight was here in Qatar.” He also describes his surprise when he was told that one can travel from Qatar to Saudi Arabia in three hours by car, contrasting it with his own experience of waiting three days at Cairo International Airport simply for his Gazan origin. Similar humiliatingly demeaning travel experiences were described by his fellow interviewees. Salma recalls the degrading inspections at Erez and Rafah. An Israeli soldier once pointed a gun to her gut while she was packing her stuff back after being investigated. She recalls having to raise her hijab from the back because the soldier doubted her hair band. Salma says having to beg an Egyptian officer to pass her husband's paperwork in order to make it to their honeymoon flight on time. “It makes you feel like you are less than human.” Omar sarcastically quips, “I am a threat to Egyptian national security. As soon as I pay $500, I am no longer a threat.” Of course, this cost was multiplied after the war started.
However, and despite all of the hardships they had to go through their daily lives, they express a deep love for their home. Salma describes Gaza as “beautiful because we see it as beautiful, because it is our home.”
“The Gazan Individual Has Nothing Else to Lose:” October 7th – A Continuation, not a Starting Point.
The second part of the interview focused on Oct. 7 through the eyes of our interviewees. Alaa takes us a day before Oct. 7 to his house in west Gaza, where they were preparing a heartwarming reception for his aunt visiting from outside Gaza. The bitterness in his voice aches as he vividly remembers their last visit to his family’s olive trees field, which ended with a simple collective supper of olive oil and zaatar. At dawn on Oct. 7, they first heard missiles launched from Gaza towards the occupied lands. Alaa and the other interviewees all agreed on how they were taken by surprise and unexpectedness. At first, they thought it was a brigade doing some practices, and then they thought it was a mistake. When the missiles continued for around 20 minutes, they knew something different was about to happen. The murkiness of the events started to fade away and they realized what happened with the news and pictures of the hostages spreading around the strip. “The thing about the hostages is at some point they were walking in the streets among the people and suddenly they disappeared and no one knew where or how,” Alaa adds. They received the news with pride and yet suspicion and fear of what might come next.
“The operation was mainly against the Gaza division; these soldiers have killed, blinded, and caused limb amputations to thousands of Gazans,” adds Yahya, one of the interviewees. He explained that all the pressure, the sense of imprisonment, and the atrocities committed against the Gazans over the years affect them psychologically. “The Gazan individual has nothing else to lose,” he assures. Oct. 7 was part of a continued wave of resistance that started with the illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands. Oct. 7 was a reaction to prolonged, systematic oppression that suffocated the Gazan population and their grandparents who were once exiled from their homes in 1948. Oct. 7 was a small piece of justice. “It made us feel like we could bounce back— that we can make them feel a tiny part of what they had made us experience for years,” as Salma puts it. The resistance fighters were under equipped compared to the complex Israeli security systems; it made them feel a sense of pride of these indigenous fighters who were stiff enough to face a powerful and connected colonial state with their worn sweatpants, bare feet and strong hearts. “The resistance is legitimate,” Salma stresses. However, they knew that the Israeli retaliation this time would be severe.
They were surprised when Israeli bombardment that started the same day targeted west Gaza which is considered the economic and educational vein of the strip. Salma notes that in all the previous wars, the west side was relatively safer and that her family used to flee to her house. In the last war, however, she states that the week her family spent at her house was the toughest. They described how the unconventional Israeli warning system works. “They would warn us before they bomb a building and that does not have to be a verbal warning; it can also be a stray missile that hits the building first,” Alaa says. “It might as well kill people in its way,” Yahya adds.
“They Cure Us with One Hand; They Kill Us with Ten Others:” On Hypocrisy and Double Standards.
Yahya tells the story of his injury, it was the night of Oct. 21, 2023 and his family had evacuated to his grandfather's house, a multi-story building where his family, including his parents, siblings, uncles and aunts and their families, had all settled. He explains that he already had some fears because one of his uncles worked in Da'wah — he engaged in religious preaching and activities. He explains that people were targeted just for being associated with Hamas. However, Hamas is not just an armed resistance with their extended brigades; it is also a government. In the Israeli logic, even government employees were targeted. They could not evacuate to the south because they were afraid of losing their lives on the way or facing the notorious incarceration. "You want to provide for your family," Salma adds, explaining why people would choose to work for the government even when they disagree with them politically, especially given Gaza's high unemployment rate.
Back to Yahya's harrowing night, he remembers sleeping on the couch with his phone between the cushion and the couch's back. At four in the morning, he woke up with blocked ears. He realized what had happened when he opened his phone's flashlight and pointed it at his hand. "God will make it up," he comments after recognizing his loss. His brother was lying next to him, and Yahya tells us that his brother's situation was far worse than his own. This is why, when he saw him, he reminded him to recite the Shahada, and he recited it himself. "There were 24 family members in the building, and I did not know at that moment how they were doing." He was lying down next to his brother until the paramedics came and they were transferred to the hospital. He describes himself as lucky for getting injured at the beginning of the war when the hospitals were still functioning. He then tells us how he and his brother got separated, as his brother was moved to the ICU. "I thought I would see him again," he comments on the last time he saw his brother before he was martyred; "we had the same hemoglobin level," he adds, supporting his assumption.
Yahya lost many family members that night, including his young cousin with autism. He talks about his other cousin who was the only one left of his family. He describes his uncle's murder after an Israeli missile broke through his back and went on. "I looked at his face and his limbs, and they were okay," is how his wife described it. “He could not make it,” Yahya comments on his uncle’s awful murder. Yahya and his family were attacked in the dark, while they were asleep, a family of 24 including women and children. Five of these children, between four and eleven years old, were murdered, with no armed fighters, only for a religious clerk engaged in Islamic activities in the mosques of the strip.
The suffering of Yahya continued as he was treated in one of the strip's hospitals. "Every day, the medicine gets rarer, and the staff is dwindling," he describes the situation. Many of the medical staff lived far from the hospital, and it was difficult for them to commute due to the war. He also comments on the unsanitary conditions at the hospital. "I used to open my eyes just to see that at least 30 flies were covering the ceiling above my head." "If a fly lands on a wound, it can cost an arm or a leg," he explains, highlighting the dangers of these unequipped spaces. He further explains that the lack of privacy between injured patients not only added to their discomfort but also heightened the risk of infections. He recounts a moment during one of his surgical operations when he mentioned to the doctor that his family had a special curtain to keep flies away. "The doctor was overjoyed," he recalls, highlighting the severe shortage of supplies that left the medical staff grateful for even the most modest assistance.
One of the conversations with the interviewees took place in the atrium, where the Palestine Re-Imagined exhibition was being held. The interviewer asked them about their thoughts on boycotting and whether they consider it a viable strategy. The interviewer posed the question due to the ironic presence of a Coca-Cola stand right next to the exhibition's display wall. Omar said, "It is a form of support, and the least the people outside can do." Alaa recalled, "I remember when I was internally displaced in Gaza, barely finding a way to sleep and sometimes switching my jacket between a cushion and a blanket. Seeing people on social media saying how hard boycotting is for them, I would get disappointed." Yahya then said, "Do you want to know what is even more ironic? We were bombed by American missiles, and we were treated by American doctors." He summarizes it as, "They cure us with one hand; they kill us with ten others."
He later supported his argument with a story from his hospital days. "My bed was right next to a patient who had the same name as mine. He had been transferred from another hospital after the Israeli soldiers had raided his previous one." Yahya describes the other patient's facial features as "extremely white, to the point that you would assume he is not Arab." In his previous hospital, the Israeli soldiers had made the same assumption and approached him, asking about his nationality and how he ended up there. Yahya and his fellow interviewees all agreed that Israeli policies and mindsets are oriented towards white supremacy and stereotypical Orientalism, viewing Arabs as "animals" with less valuable lives.
Our interviewees describe the current war as a relentless ethnic cleansing that extends far beyond Oct. 7. "We are in the 21st century; what is happening right now is incomprehensible," Salma remarks. "When you open social media, you see people living normal lives while we are not—we are dying." She conveys a sense of gratitude whenever she discusses global protests, saying, "After everything we've endured, from evacuation to daily deaths, it feels like everyone should pause their normal lives because what is happening to us is utterly unjust." Despite all they have faced, our interviewees consider themselves fortunate simply for being alive. They speak of the pain in sharing their stories, knowing their people continue to endure similar or even worse suffering. Our second interview took place shortly after videos of burning tents emerged. When asked if these videos altered their previously held views, they responded, "This is not new. Such atrocities have been inflicted upon us for so long; it’s just that now they’re being captured on camera."
Why We Write This, Will There Ever Be a Point?
Frankly, after spending three hours with our gracious interviewees, we found ourselves frozen, unsure of how to begin putting their stories to paper. How can we convey the anguish of a bride forced to beg a police officer to allow her husband to travel with her on their honeymoon? How can we capture the humiliation of a woman compelled to snatch her inspected belongings as a soldier's gun is pointed to her stomach? What words could possibly do justice to the people's disillusionment with international organizations that claim to champion justice and human rights and yet do nothing about their public extermination? And what of the longing for a simple cushion to ease an evacuee's weary head as they sleep? Or the horror of waking to find a beloved older brother lost, along with numerous family members, his own arm and leg injured? What language could possibly describe such injustice?
Sitting in a nice coffee shop on the corner of midtown Manhattan streets, with a view of the festive city unveils in front of me. Sipping from an iced hazelnut latte, thinking of what words we could possibly use to leave the right impact on the readers. I think twice before adding an interviewee’s opinion that might seem too radical for a world that despises people of clear positions. I think of how myself as the writer might also be judged. However, this should not be the case. The besieged, terrorized people should not be judged if they aspired for justice. The people of the outside, in their comfy coffee shops or safe, decorated desks, should not care about their image or how others would perceive them if they intend to take a stance with the right side. If the just word is uttered, let it be out loud— not whispered.
We could wield our finest rhetoric, but words, like so much else, have failed the people of Gaza. They are no longer sufficient to narrate the Gazans' stories, not those shared here, nor the countless others unfolding constantly. And that is as it should be. For these stories are not meant to be merely told with moving, emotive language; they are to stand as enduring testimonies, relentless reminders that a genocide rages on against resilient people, people of unassailable right.
These accounts provide a platform for honest, unvarnished ordinary voices, far removed from the elitist, exclusionary discourses confined within the walls of five-star hotels. This article exists to demonstrate that there are ways to support Gaza, to bear witness to history, that transcend the limitations of fancy language and elegant banners. Neither our interviewees nor we believe this article will spark immediate change. Yet, we are steadfast in the conviction that documentation matters— it stands as irrefutable evidence against propaganda and deceit. The people of the just cause fight on, with every weapon available and even unavailable, and as history has always shown, the righteous prevails in the end.
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