Jehad Abusalim
Mondoweiss / October 8, 2024
Gaza has become a battlefield in the war over the fate and collective dignity of the people of the region, including beyond Palestine. But amid all this, Gaza remains the compass.
When I saw the news of the October 7 events a year ago, I wasn’t surprised. I had spent the past decade writing about and advocating for an end to Gaza’s isolation. I was among the small number of people who consistently warned that if the policies and measures taken by Israel and its allies against Gaza were not addressed, an explosion would be inevitable. It wasn’t a question of if this explosion would happen, but rather a matter of scale, intensity, nature, and direction.
It is impossible to treat the events of the past year as “history” or something that we might reflect on, because the genocide in Gaza continues. Every day, Palestinians in Gaza bury dozens of their relatives and neighbours. Much of the Gaza Strip still lies in ruins. Most of Gaza’s population remains displaced, living in temporary shelters and encampments that continue to be bombed and attacked by Israel.
At the beginning of this war, I was somewhat hopeful that it would stop, that genocide on the scale and intensity we’ve witnessed wouldn’t unfold. I don’t know if this was wishful thinking, given Israel’s brutality and its deep-rooted dehumanization of Palestinians, especially in Gaza. I understood early on that this war, this battle, this confrontation, was bigger than Gaza. It would expand and extend not only beyond the geography of the Palestine question and its century-long conflict with Zionism, but it would also become a battlefield for a clash of values and visions concerning the fate, existence, and collective dignity of the people of the region as a whole.
It is utterly painful to search for meaning amid such massive loss. I lost friends and mentors. I witnessed the annihilation of Gaza as a place and as a memory. Streets I walked, places where I studied and worked, restaurants and cafés where my friends and I sat, chatted, and claimed brief moments of joy amid years of blockade and repeated aggressions — all gone. As a student of history, I used to marvel at places in Gaza that stood as evidence of the continuation of human existence and civilization for thousands of years, representing the diversity, richness, and transformations of a country and its people. I saw these structures, with all the deep meanings they carried, destroyed, bombed, and flattened by Israel’s bombs.
The scale of our loss as Palestinians from Gaza is unfathomable, even for us who come from there. What is especially painful about this loss is that life in Gaza was itself a fight. These semblances of life weren’t easily built; they were fiercely fought for, wrested from the grip of hardship despite the relentless challenges of making life happen in an isolated, impoverished, and de-developed place like the Gaza Strip.
Do you know what it took to build that hospital? That university? Do you know what it took for someone like Refaat Alareer to become who he was? It wasn’t easy. Gaza was all about attempts — repeated attempts — in the face of recurring aggression, destruction, and the nuclear-state-sanctioned sadism of “mowing the lawn.” So, when we mourn Gaza, life in Gaza, and those who lived in Gaza, we also think about these attempts at establishing and maintaining life against impossible odds, which makes the loss all the more painful.
Pain was synonymous with life in Gaza, as it continues to be. Most people knew that an explosion on an apocalyptic scale was only a matter of time, because even though they lived day to day, they were always troubled and burdened by the future — not in the long run, but in the immediate term. Questions about water and food security, Gaza’s population density and growth, and of course, the major issues of political exclusion and erasure faced by Palestinians in Gaza. Most importantly, there were constant questions about the future of Gaza amid a larger Palestinian future that was already being destroyed before our eyes.
In a way, there were those in Gaza who “found their answers” and decided to direct that explosion toward Israel, to bring the clash back to its origin, and to put an end to decades of dancing around the truth. After all, the schemes of population and crisis management were never meant to resolve the fundamental clash between Palestinians and Zionism, but to postpone it.
How can one see meaning through piles of corpses and rubble? The search for hope becomes almost shameful. How can you speak of hope if you haven’t experienced sheltering in a school for a year or had to look your children in the eyes, unable to protect them as Israel’s bombs fell around you? How do you make sense of it all when you are consumed by survivor’s guilt, knowing that while you sleep in a bed under a roof, eat a hot meal, and take a warm shower, your friends, neighbours, relatives, and community are deprived of all these things?
The past year has been a daily struggle between all these thoughts and feelings, yet the compass remains: a commitment to stop this war through deeds, actions, and words, and then to work toward rebuilding Gaza and healing the wounds of our people.
I recently had the honour of meeting several genocide survivors — young people who were injured or accompanied their injured relatives outside Gaza. It was my first time meeting people who had experienced the genocide for months and then managed to evacuate. They had different opinions about what had unfolded and what they had experienced, and in their Gazan way, they made sure to share and share, in ways that made me feel like I was finally home — sitting at the barber shop or with my friends in one of the cafés in Gaza City, where people would loudly complain about politics, the economy, and everything else, making sure everyone could hear them.
Meeting these survivors filled me with enough inspiration and determination to work for Gaza for years to come. It was a reminder that the battle for Gaza is far from over. Despite the profound loss Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere are experiencing, they continue to fight for life and dignity. We must aid them in their fight, which began long before this genocide unfolded. It continues today in spite of the ongoing devastation.
Jehad Abusalim is the Executive Director of the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA in Washington, D.C.
