Under constant fear of death, you appreciate the smallest things in life. In fact, you treasure anything that lives, writes Abubaker Abed [photo credit: Abubaker Abed]
When The New Arab asked me to write a reflection on 2024, I honestly didn’t know where to start: every month of 2024 in Gaza has been drenched with bloodshed, sorrow, and grumbling bellies.
I’ve stared down death more times than I can remember, the corners of my bloodshot eyes now seem permanently filled with gunpowder residue and soot.
While you read this, you’re most likely enjoying a festive break, wondering what presents you’ll receive, and looking forward to a blessed time with loved ones, family and friends.
As you sit down for a meal, please think of Gaza, where we dream of a clean glass of water, a plate of fresh food — not rotten cans or animal feed — and just one short moment away from the sights, sounds, and smells of genocide.
Israel’s quadcopters hover above my head as I write this. It’s difficult to think back over the year when, at any minute, our year and lives could come to an end. But as I tell everyone, Alhamdulillah for everything. This is mine, and Gaza’s, story of 2024.
On New Year’s Eve 2023, I visited the graveyard in Deir al-Balah, paying my respects to those killed and wondering what 2024 may hold. At the time over 20,000 men, women and children filled the graveyard; mass graves and tiny makeshift headstones crammed together like fish in a barrel.
Then, as now, I was left heartbroken by Israel’s callous violence, clutching to the glimmer of hope that this genocide may come to an end and that I may also survive Israel’s onslaught.
Some days later, however, Israel resumed its duty as murderer-in-chief. There is no respite in genocide. The first moments of 2024 were spent with my family in one room, huddled together, as we heard intense Israeli shelling just one kilometre away. We knew death was imminent.
It was the peak of winter; our fingertips froze under the biting cold. We gathered around a fire made from twigs, hoping Israel’s own firepower wouldn’t subsume us. We had no contact with the outside world, Israel had imposed a communications black-out across the Strip cutting us from one another — our screams and pleas muted by the occupier.
My greatest fear was that if I were to die, nobody would ever find out.
In Gaza, hope is all that stitches up our shredded hearts
As I found out this year, one of the hardest things for any son to witness is watching your parents suffer. Israel has blocked the delivery of their medication, and I was desperate. In the freezing cold, I went to the beach to bring seawater for my father’s cracked feet, even though Israel’s navy was watching me just a few feet away.
We’ve been stripped of our humanity to such an extent that I overheard my neighbours saying once that they wished they could be animals. In February and March, it was I who shared animal feed, canned cat food, and bird seed with stray cats and birds.
Since March, Deir al-Balah has become the refuge of Gaza, hosting hundreds of thousands as panic spread in Rafah, though perhaps refuge is the wrong word; no place in Gaza is safe.
My neighbour’s family has been wiped out, their child left under the rubble since November last year. I would visit bombed areas and report and all I would see was ripped flesh, fractured bones, shredded bodies, and pools of blood. There’s no other way to put it, Gaza has been turned into a human slaughterhouse.
At the end of March, I went back to the graveyard in Deir al-Balah and watched on as bulldozers removed old graves to bury the new. Weeks later, my aunt’s family was wiped out and my uncle was detained and brutally tortured. We couldn’t even share the agony because Israel was dividing central Gaza and the South: the trauma was insurmountable.
Subscribe Now and Listen to our Podcasts OnRamadan came and went — Israel continued its killing. Time passed quickly, and the death toll skyrocketed.
Today, Gaza’s streets resemble a morgue, with bodies piling up, funeral prayers held over shrouded remains, and children weeping, their entire families trapped under rubble.
And yet I clung on. Under constant fear of death, you appreciate the smallest things in life. In fact, you treasure anything that lives. I was overcome with happiness as I saw my yellow rose bloom in spring, it meant the world to me and filled my heart with hope.
Another one of my passions, as many are aware, is football, and it was another thing I refused to let go of as Israel’s bombs fell. I could not stay silent while Israel targeted Gaza’s sporting heroes and destroyed vital facilities. I helped spearhead a campaign for FIFA to ban Israel, but my plea fell on deaf ears within the global football community.
April and May shattered our broken hearts for another time if that was at all possible. In June, we lived through sheer terror after Israel massacred 210 people to rescue four Israeli captives. Bombs, rockets, and bullets were non-stop. We thought, once again, that Israel would wipe us off the face of the earth. Instead, predictably, the world’s headlines focused on the four Israeli lives, as if the 210 Palestinians were sub-human.
Our nightmares continued in July and August when Israeli fighter jets levelled scores of houses in my neighbourhood and their forces invaded Deir al-Balah’s eastern outskirts.
Israel has erased everything around me: homes, parks, towers, factories, and mosques. Literally everything. And yet we stayed in our home and refused to leave, even when we saw tanks just metres away.
I will never forget seeing Israeli bombs fall and flatten buildings, the rolling thunder of the tanks, the volleys of projectiles launched every morning, and the emitted sounds of dogs — it’s the sights and sounds of an apocalypse. To have just one moment of sleep would be a dream.
In September, the rains came. Thousands that had been internally displaced woke to sodden tents and bacteria-ridden tents. All they wish for is to go back to their homes. But their homes, and lives, have long been destroyed. Then, in October, as we marked one year of genocide, Israel decided to close the crossings and block aid from entering Gaza, leaving more than two million people to starve on stale bread made from bug-infested flour, pet food, and expired canned food not fit for human consumption.
Meanwhile, Israel pressed ahead with its policy of extermination and annihilation by besieging northern Gaza. For almost three months, Israel had been intensifying its stranglehold over Palestinians in the north, leaving them two options of death: starve or be slaughtered. I can only imagine the horror that has befallen those poor souls.
And then Sha’ban Al-Dalou, that beloved, vibrant, and kind young man, was burnt alive before the eyes of the world. I remember reporting on him and meeting his family. There were no words to console them then, there are no words now.
On November 24, I turned 22. Honestly, I didn’t think I would live to see the day. There was nothing to celebrate at all. I still can’t block out the screams of my neighbour’s child every night, asking his helpless mother for food, or my two-year-old niece’s tears when her tummy rumbled.
Finally, in December, I consoled myself on the first heartbreaking anniversary of the killing of my very dearest friend Al-Hassan Mattar. We once shared our lives, dreams, hopes, and goals.
As the prospect of a ceasefire grows before the new year, it would be the only true “happy new year” for us. It’s my only dream. I am entirely burnt out and want to treat my little shredded heart as every single one in Gaza. Rafah, Gaza, Khan Younis, Al-Nusairat, and Al-Buraij have become piles of debris. Someone has to stop the Israeli regime from committing countless massacres and turning Gaza into a mass graveyard. The world needs to understand that enough is enough.
Abubaker Abed is a Palestinian journalist, writer, and translator from Deir al-Balah Refugee Camp in Gaza, interested in sports and languages
Follow him on Twitter/X: @AbubakerAbedW and Linkedin
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.
