Nour AbuShammala
The Guardian / December 16, 2025
Nour AbuShammala has returned to her partly destroyed apartment in Gaza City. This is her story of multiple displacements, injury and devastation over the last two years
When 26-year-old Nour AbuShammala stepped back into her family’s apartment in Gaza City in October the rooms were gutted, the walls were damaged by bombing, and there was no water or electricity, but it was still home.
Since the outbreak of war in October 2023 she has been forced to flee six times. This is her story of relentless displacement, survival and loss, told using photography and videos provided by AbuShammala and satellite imagery of a ruined Gaza.
AbuShammala was a rising star in international law. A graduate of Al-Azhar University and the Palestinian Bar Association, she had been selected for the prestigious Bertha Justice Fellowship to document Israeli violations for the international criminal Court and had enrolled for a master’s at the University of Jordan.
Born in Khan Younis, she grew up in a wealthy suburb of Gaza City. Her home was a fourth-floor, three-bedroom, 180-square-metre apartment with a sea view. She lived there with her parents, Khalil and Sahar, sister Nesma, and brother Muhammad.
They are a close-knit, educated family deeply involved in civic and human-rights work. By Gaza’s standards, they had a privileged life.
Khalil once led a human rights association and Sahar chairs the Palestinian Development and Women Studies Association. Nesma recently graduated in computer systems engineering, and Muhammad worked with displaced people until he was injured in an airstrike.
“I’ve lived in Sheikh Ajleen – Al-Quds Street, southwest Gaza City – since I was six,” she said. “It was quiet, away from the city’s noise, with only a few homes nearby.”
That neighbourhood is now rubble. The grocery store she visited with her sister, her school, university and mosque – a lifetime of memories – lie destroyed.
AbuShammala was at home in Gaza City, getting ready to meet friends for a birthday celebration, when Israel invaded after the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
“I had no idea what was happening. It was a shock for all of us,” she recalled, remembering waking up to the sound of rockets.
Days later, Israel issued evacuation orders. On 13 October, the AbuShammala family packed what clothes they could and fled south to Khan Younis, to the home of her late grandfather. The car journey took around 40 minutes.
AbuShammala had always loved Khan Younis, her father’s hometown. It was a place of family gatherings and childhood memories. War changed that: once a refuge, Khan Younis came to symbolise loss. “I am someone who has no place. Someone lost from their home, knowing the way but not knowing how to return.”
She stayed mostly indoors, unable to face the destruction. “I would tell myself [the IDF] were posting [photos of the destruction] only to scare us. The thought was terrifying,” she said.
Two months later, in late December 2023, AbuShammala was on the move again. After evacuation leaflets fell over Khan Younis, her family travelled 10 minutes by truck to a patch of land their relatives owned in al-Mawasi. Soon after, they learned that her grandfather’s house in Khan Younis had been destroyed, along with much of the wider neighbourhood.
It was the middle of winter, and they left in a hurry. “Later, we had to buy new essentials like clothes, carpets, kitchen appliances and other basics,” AbuShammala said.
Five of them slept in a single 6×4-metre tent. Later, they acquired a storage tent to free a little space.
Winter in the tent was “unbearable”, though AbuShammala felt luckier than families with small children facing the same conditions.
“We had set up a kind of kitchen made of tarps with all our kitchen items. Then for about two months the gas completely ran out and we had to cook over fire. It was very difficult, especially in winter, having to go outside to cook or even to use the bathroom in the cold.”
There was barely any signal, so AbuShammala spent most of her time in the tent reading books on her phone. She especially enjoyed Guillaume Musso novels.
When her family first arrived, few others were there. But once the IDF entered Khan Younis, the area filled with tents.
The experience carried an echo of her family’s past. Her grandparents had fled militia attacks decades earlier, surviving only because of UN tents and aid.
By 21 July 2024, the family had rented an apartment in Nuseirat, in central Gaza. They moved there in a shared car, and stayed there nearly a year until the second truce in 2025.
The neighbourhood was quieter and less damaged than most, but tents surrounded their building, a reminder of how few had shelter.
There was water and electricity, so “mentally it felt easier, and even though it wasn’t like being in our home, at least we felt a bit of normal life”.
Yet Gaza City – normally a ten-minute drive away – felt impossibly far. “We weren’t able to go to Gaza because the army initially restricted movement from the south to the north,” AbuShammala recalled.
Then came the famine, after all border crossings into Gaza were closed. “Imagine not even being able to find flour to make bread. You’re forced to live on whatever type of food is available, and even that is sold at unbelievable prices.
“We mostly ate hummus and fava beans, and we tried to ration how much bread we had so it would last as long as possible.”
For AbuShammala, life in Nuseirat was survival in exile.
“My love for Gaza cannot be described in words. Any destruction here feels like something inside me is destroyed too. They are stealing our years, our lives, our dreams and our memories”.
On 8 April 2025, AbuShammala returned to her family’s home in Gaza City to find it in ruins. An airstrike had flattened part of the building. Their home was burned and hollowed out.
The return meant more than the destruction. She walked through the blackened rooms, recalling where everything once stood – sometimes reaching for a vanished bookshelf or mirror.
“Even though our apartment was burned and everything inside was gone, the moment I stepped back, I felt I was truly home, in my neighbourhood, my city, among my people. It felt like my soul had come back to me.”
Inside, they found bullet casings and alcohol bottles. A neighbour said Israeli soldiers had stayed there, and stickers on the door appeared to confirm it.
The area, just north of the Netzarim corridor, had been under tight military control for months.
Still, the family began rebuilding with whatever materials they could find: repairing walls, covering damage and laying new pipes. They cooked over open fires when gas ran out.
Then, on 30 June, Muhammad was at al-Baqa café when an Israeli airstrike hit. A 500lb (230kg) bomb killed 24 Palestinians.
Muhammad survived, shielding his friend, journalist Bayan Abusultan, but shrapnel shattered his legs, leaving him permanently disabled and unable to work.
The Israeli military said the strike was under review, claiming it targeted Hamas operatives. Legal experts said the use of such a large bomb in a civilian area likely constituted a war crime.
Their return home was disrupted after renewed evacuation orders in September. The family fled once more to Nuseirat – paying $1,600 (£1,200) to hire a truck for a two-hour journey that should have taken 20 minutes.
They returned to the same apartment they’d kept paying rent for “in case things got worse – which they did.”
That month was a fragile pause. AbuShammala described life as “on hold,” the sound of explosions shaking the house each night. She worked when she could, commuting to Deir al-Balah for her job with the Stars of Hope Society, helping women with disabilities through a UN Women-funded programme.
“I do feel grateful for what I still have, and I know that compared to others, my family and I are considered lucky. But we still live with fear and anxiety. There’s also the sense of loss that isn’t always visible, the time and years slipping away.”
Eleven days after the ceasefire was announced on 10 October, the family returned once again to Gaza. The walls they rebuilt in summer were already cracking from fresh bombings. Water and gas were scarce.
“My neighborhood still needs time to heal. My school still needs time before it can reopen its doors to students. And even when that time comes, nothing will ever be the same again. No one can erase the memories.”
Yet Gaza City still feels like home. Now, each morning, the family returns to work. “We all try in our own ways, to contribute to our country and remain active members of our community despite everything we’re living through.”
AbuShammala and her sister walked through what was left of their neighbourhood. The mosque and shop were gone; the Bar Association building was badly damaged.
“Every beautiful place I once knew has turned into ashes. The suffering hasn’t ended. The wounds of this city are still open.”
AbuShammala speaks of both hope and caution when looking to the future: “There’s a sense of relief, that the killing has stopped, the displacement has stopped, the destruction has stopped, and that there’s finally a chance to return home.
“But at the same time, things are still very hard. Gaza needs a lot of time to recover, life hasn’t really come back yet. The pain and the scars are still there. There’s sadness despite everything. And Israel isn’t making things any easier, there’s always this fear that we’ll wake up one morning and the war will start again, that our home will be gone, that our dreams will be stolen once more.”
Still determined to return to her career in international law, AbuShammala remembers the advice her mentor gave her when she first began: “The road to justice is long.”
UN experts have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide – a charge Israel rejects.
As those investigations unfold, AbuShammala’s life remains suspended, balancing daily survival and the struggle to rebuild with her hopes for education and a career beyond the war.
AbuShammala is waiting for a border crossing to open so she can begin her master’s degree in Jordan – the path she set out on before the war.
“Gaza is not just a place or walls for me,” she said. “It’s something alive inside me. Sometimes I wish we never woke up on October 7, that our lives hadn’t turned upside down like this. Or I wish I could forget everything that’s happened, as if I never lived through it.”
For now, she remains in a broken city, with her family, trying to rebuild what’s left of their home.
AbuShammala is currently writing a book about her experiences during the war.
Methodology
This project draws on multiple sources to trace where the AbuShammala family have lived over the past two years and how each neighbourhood has changed through the war.
The Guardian was in regular contact with Nour and Khalil AbuShammala over a two-month period to document their story, gather imagery and verify events.
Satellite imagery from Planet and Vantor was used to assess damage and movement across time. Images are dated within the piece and span periods before and during the conflict, with additional imagery used for verification.
Reported damage was verified against satellite analysis, user-generated footage, news reports and official IDF updates. Footage provided by Nour was geolocated using identifiable landmarks and compared with satellite images. Using a combination of these visuals and archive pictures, the Guardian verified footage showing buildings before and after they were destroyed by Israeli strikes.
Ashley Kirk, Manisha Ganguly, Ed Gargan, Antonio Voce, Prina Shah and Laure Boulinier
