Ahmed Abu Artema
Middle East Eye / August 1, 2024
As Palestinian families are displaced over and over again, Israel has erased the cities and landmarks they once held dear.
When you look at people wandering aimlessly in the streets of Gaza, you can see their exhaustion, fatigue and extinguished spirits; their emaciated bodies, scorched by the burning sun, and their lost, wandering looks.
Most people remain silent, lost in distant thoughts. They shun conversation, because words no longer suffice to describe the atrocities they have endured.
Some have managed to maintain their beautiful spirits, and when you speak with one of them, you feel grateful that they have not given up – but these conversations are few and far between.
Many people appear to have lost all passion and drive. They wake up in the morning not knowing what to do, wandering the destroyed streets in search of the basic necessities of life, but there is nothing available.
They fight daily battles to fill a gallon jug of water, or to collect a plate of bad food from a charity kitchen. They return to tents and throw themselves inside, listening to the deafening noise of Israeli drones overhead searching for their next target.
Some of these exhausted people will never wake up, because Israeli warplanes bomb their shelters as they sleep. Those who escape death wake up to continue the search for nothing.
Israel has benefitted from the world’s desensitization to the horrors in Gaza. The news of dozens more homes destroyed, or of the displacement of an entire Palestinian city, no longer grabs the public’s attention; the western media no longer sees it as important.
Continuous destruction
Israel has seized this opportunity with criminal efficiency. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu falsely boasted that Israeli forces killed almost no civilians in Rafah, and US Congress members applauded him enthusiastically. He did not mention the forcible evacuation orders targeting a city where 1.4 million displaced people have been sheltering, nor the continuous destruction of Rafah’s homes and infrastructure.
Displacing people and destroying their homes has become normalized. Some families have been displaced five, 10 or even 20 times in this war.
There is no convincing operational goal behind this long series of evacuation orders. The real goal is to exhaust people and destroy their ability to resist and persevere.
Each displacement is costly, as families must cart their basic belongings from one place to the next, and fuel is hard to come by. Many are forced to walk long distances without a specific destination in mind; some end up settling in streets, hospital yards or even cemeteries.
As the Israeli army orders tens of thousands of people to evacuate an area, they pour into the streets with Israeli rockets chasing them, fleeing from death without having a safe refuge.
The hashtag #WhereShouldWeGo has become common among Palestinians in Gaza. This is a rhetorical question filled with the utmost exhaustion and helplessness.
This is no longer about temporary displacement, where people might cling to the hope that their suffering will end when the war stops. Most people have lost their homes, as the genocidal Israeli army has destroyed a majority of Gaza’s residential structures. People reluctantly comply with evacuation orders, only to find their homes razed upon return.
Loss of stability
What does it mean for a person to lose their home? The value is not just monetary; a home means stability. Its destruction means losing a sense of psychological stability and falling into a state of disarray – struggling against a violent sea without knowing how to swim.
Before the war, many people spent decades saving to buy a house in which to shelter themselves and their children. They saved years’ worth of wages to achieve the dream of a lifetime – one that Israel destroys in seconds through the push of a button from a warplane.
Throughout this genocidal war, Palestinians have not just lost their homes. They have lost everything. Israel has destroyed cities and neighbourhoods, erasing all aspects of life.
Imagine walking the same streets and visiting the same landmarks and neighbourhoods for 40, 50 or 60 years – and then all of a sudden, this disappears. The city and its landmarks vanish.
This type of change causes a violent shock to the system, making one feel as if the ground is shaking beneath them. The entire world they were familiar with has collapsed in front of them. The streets are no longer there, and the familiar faces have either been taken by death, or dulled by exhaustion and fatigue.
Media and human rights groups talk about tangible losses, such as the number of dead people and destroyed houses – but how can we count the damage to people’s souls? How do you renew your desire to live again after such a seismic event; after losing all the elements of a stable life?
Israel is deliberately and methodically extinguishing the will to live among Palestinians in Gaza. It does not want to end this war until the Palestinian people are completely crushed, with their souls in ruins, just like their destroyed homes.
Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian journalist and peace activist; born in Rafah, in 1984, Abu Artema is a refugee from Al-Ramla village; he authored the book Organized Chaos
