Zainab’s Gaza Journal: Dispatches From A City Under Siege

Every day since October 7, Zainab Al Ghonaimy has woken up in her home in the besieged Gaza City and the first thing she has done is check her Internet connection. It has become an essential means of survival for Zainab, who has been using it to broadcast her daily journal to the world. It is the only way for the 70-year-old lawyer, researcher and director of the Centre For Women’s Legal Research, Counselling And Protection to connect with her daughter Farah Barqawi in Brooklyn and tell her she’s alright. The internet is the only way she can inform the world about the “living dead” of Gaza. The following are edited excerpts from Zainab’s war journal made available online by her daughter in collaboration with the Regional Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders in the Middle East and North Africa.

Day 11: The eleventh night of this devastating war is over, but the sun still hasn’t woken up well which gives a feeling that the heavy night is never ending. I no longer love the night, although I used to wait for it to come with love, when it is calm for the soul and the sun is with those we love. As for now, the darkness of the night is dark, there is no string of light except the light bombs thrown by Israeli planes to determine the target on which bombs and missiles will be fired.

I don’t like night anymore because it fills me with fear and reminds me of my mother’s stories about the terrifying ghoul that walks through the alleys at night and devours everything that is alive and moving but never gets satisfied. The ghoul of this war so far has thousands of children, women and the rest elders and men.

Fear does not allow anyone to move and they are packed in tight hiding places, either in their house or the new shelter they migrated to. They suppress their desire to pee in order not to move and children and the elderly among them pee inadvertently on their clothes. On these cruel nights, the extinct dragon you see in horror movies is back. We hear his frightening sound and we see the fire blowing out of his multiple heads left and right, blowing up buildings.

Eagerly waiting for the sun to shine and feeling temporary joy because we are alive. With each new day, we rush to write check-up messages to our loved ones, relatives and friends; we might forget one of them but be happy when someone reminds us with a message or call to make sure we are still alive. But we are not okay because even after the sunrise, we have not overcome the darkness and horror of the previous night. Those who were deceived by daylight went to respond to the urgency of children who do not understand why their parents and mothers do not respond to their little needs anymore.

Although the little ones stopped demanding chocolates or chips, they need to eat something. Some parents went to bakeries to buy some bread or to grocery stores to get leftover cans of rice or dry cereal to feed their hungry children. But they got torn apart because an Israeli flight commander in that precise moment decided to get rid of his cargo, unloading tons of explosives over their heads.

We hear lies and crazy excuses from war leaders, presidents, ministers of defense and other Israelis, Americans and Europeans whose hands are stained with the blood of the most precious people, that the mass killing of the Palestinian people in Gaza is a defense of the State of Israel, and that depriving people of drinking water and starving them by not allowing food to enter is a defense of The State of Israel from Hamas Missiles.

The darkness of these nights reflects the darkness in the minds and hearts of criminal war leaders who must be tried as war criminals because they have murdered our people.

Day 12: It was a heavy night burdened with images of the horrific crime committed by the Israeli occupation army, as it targeted the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, a Christian-run medical complex in central Gaza City. A lump in the throat, hardened tears, and a deep emptiness in the chest. I try to be strong so that I may keep holding up and be of support to those I love through my morning and evening messages to friends and family. The images of the martyrs and their torn bodies flicker before my eyes. The sounds of bombing and the intensity of the buildings shaking during the night are things no one can imagine, so much so that after every raid and blast, we are in disbelief that we are still alive.

Perhaps I can overcome the feeling of helplessness, as I am accustomed to moving around, taking action, and am happy to provide services to women and others, but these cursed planes do not allow me or others to move. They do not allow us to even look at the sky, where there is an obsessed murderer waiting for us, watching even the ant on the ground with a magnified radar.

Day 22: There is no real way to describe what we felt last night. As incendiary missiles surged up in the sky, we sensed that they are coming toward us. Then they deviated slightly and we exhaled when we realised that we were still alive. My friend and I and her children huddled close together, clinging to one another. She read verses from the Quran, praying to god to protect us, and her daughters whispered prayers with fear lodged in their throat and eyes.

Day 25: Yesterday, we lived through a night of bombing that did not differ much from the night before. As for me, yesterday was different. A deep sadness squeezed my heart as I did not know how to break the news to my friend that her family home had been completely destroyed by Israeli bombs. A true massacre had taken place. Twelve of her family members were martyred and four others have been wounded, one of whom is her cousin who survived only to bear the news that her three-year-old daughter had been martyred, the daughter she was able to conceive after six painful years of IVF.

Four hours passed as I fought my feelings of fear and worry about her reaction when the news reaches her. I hurried to tell my daughter who lives far away. It made the weight clamped on my chest a little lighter. I mustered up some courage and with the aid of some of the verses of the Quran that are said in such situations, I shared the news with my friend.

Day 26: Gaza’s skies are overcast with white phosphorous, as well as smoke from all the bombings and resulting fires. History will record that if it rains in Gaza soon, black rain will fall for the first time. Everything is beginning to dwindle—and my home is no exception. Our drinking water is running low and if the aggression continues for two more days, we will have to regularly start boiling salty water. My friend and I are starting to cut back on our meals as well, trying to only care for the children.

As I write today’s journal entry, death has come very near. One of the buildings not too far from us was destroyed and the sound of shattering of glass was terrifying.

A friend said, “You can leave when the Rafah crossing opens”. She is worried but she does not realise fleeing means agreeing to be displaced, and we refuse this. Escaping means surrendering to the will of the enemy that wants to force us into exile. We will not accept another Nakba.

Day 28: Today is the sixth day since the martyrdom of Hanaa and eleven members of her family during an Israeli raid on her home.

Her relative told me: “My aunt took refuge in our house for fifteen days when they bombed several buildings in her neighbourhood. But on October 28, she decided to return home with her family. She told us, I am going to my house and I will not leave it. If I must die, let me die in my house. Let my house be my grave. On October 29, when she returned home, a missile struck her house and turned it into a grave.

Until now, for the sixth day in a row, they have not been able to reach her body, nor the bodies of her daughter and grandchildren. All of them remain buried under the rubble. Hanaa chose not to be homeless or shelter in other people’s homes or shelter centres. She clung to her home until it became her grave.

Day 29: In Gaza, all human rights arrangements have collapsed at the severed foot of a child who was overtaken by a criminal sniper yesterday. He fired a lethal weapon that blew up the boy and his friends to pieces while they played in the courtyard of Al-Shifa Hospital. 

Day 30: Attacks on Gaza City and northern parts continue, getting worse by night. We can see death approaching. At night, we feel so scared that our eyes fall from their sockets and our hearts jump out of our chests. There is nowhere safe left in Gaza. Supplies of food and drinking water are running short everywhere. Electricity and water for indirect use has been cut off and nothing is allowed into the Strip. Today, the occupation forces bombed the psychiatric hospital, the Rantiki hospital that provides paediatric cancer treatment and the Eye Hospital. 

Day 32: For the first time since the beginning of this savage assault in Gaza, I have felt like crying. So far, I haven’t wept for the 10,165 Palestinians who have been killed, because they are at rest now. But today, I have cried at the indescribable sense of helplessness and frustration we feel when faced with the living dead. This anguish is for more than 27,000 wounded Palestinians who have been deprived of basic medical attention because services are unable to operate.  Yesterday one of the departments of the Al-Shifa hospital complex was bombed for the second time, killing and injuring more people. This is an ongoing war on hospitals.

We rack our brains thinking of what we can do to help others but then we cannot even help ourselves. Today, for instance, I panicked because I found the water bottle empty. We would now have to sterilise non-drinking water by boiling it.

Today, a friend and I tried making bread, but we realised that it wasn’t a long-term option as the gas cylinder will run out soon.

Day 33: The free world’s gift of white phosphorus bombs finds their way to us day and night. Last night was unlike previous nights as death approached with every concussive missile and every artillery shell from warplanes. It was impossible to seal our eyes for even half an hour straight. We choked from the smell of phosphorus as we glimpsed through the window the illumination of bombs and the flames that erupted with each missile. We tried to dim the smell with wet cloth pieces and hoped that dawn would break quickly. But even as the first light cracked, the rockets and shells continued to fall down like rain.

We are aware of the fact that death is inevitable. But what everyone fears is death by the scorching of phosphorus, which makes a person’s features disappear into non-recognition. This is a fraction of the danger we live with every day.

My friend said to me between moments of quiet, “We have to leave this place tomorrow.” I did not want to discuss it during a difficult moment of sheer terror. In the morning, we resumed the conversation and I told her that there was nowhere we could go. The whole of Gaza City was besieged. So all people will have to remain here and we, like them, are waiting for what comes tomorrow. 

Day 34: If I am destined to stay alive, I will keep trying to communicate with you.

Today I will not recount the usual details associated with living under the threat of death in every moment. And I will not write on the extent of the terror we feel with sound of every nearing bomb or how our sky is painted black from the smoke of the incinerated buildings nearby. But I cannot ignore that I feel oppressed by the idea of leaving my home and walking into the unknown. We all know that the moment will undoubtedly come when the city crumbles. With the approach of the ground incursion, we will have to leave.

Since early hours of the dawn, I have been consumed by thoughts of having to leave my home. The constant airstrikes will not even allow us to go anywhere. Any move that we make will be mired in danger.

I convinced my friend that if we are forced to leave, we will depart with everyone else as a large group and seek shelter in a nearby hospitals or shelter centres. I remember that when the Israeli occupation forces entered Gaza in 1968, we were forced to leave our homes. We took shelter in the neighbourhood mosque. But today, there is no room for seeking shelter in a mosque or a church because these buildings were among the earliest to be damaged. It is difficult to compare that invasion and this one in terms of the level of aggression, the types of weapons and the deceit and atrocity of the occupation state.

Once again, I run away from the idea of leaving my home. I do not know what personal belongings I should carry. We are approaching a drop in temperature and warm clothes take up a lot of space. The distress we are facing now is hard to describe. But if I did leave my home, would I find a place to charge my phone? Would there be a way to connect to the Internet? How would I communicate with my loved ones or send them my morning messages, the responses to which make me feel that am I still alive? I might also not be able to deliver these daily dispatches to those who have grown accustomed to receiving them.

Day 36: We haven’t received Zainab’s diary entry from two days due to the connection blackout in Gaza. We will keep her place here until our hopes are realised and her diary returns to document for us details of her extraordinary days during this criminal war of extermination and forced expulsion.

Day 39: She is still alive. (Farah Barqawi, Zainab’s daughter)

Day 63: After a month of absence, here is my letter to you amid heavy bombardment and white phosphorous fumes. Finally, after over a month and with great effort, I have been able to find an Internet connection, albeit a weak one.

After the temporary ceasefire came to an end, we have been attacked using numerous kinds of weapons, including bombs and rockets that are illegal under international law, making us a testing ground for lethal weapons.

Besieged as it may be, I always make sure to say, Gaza is unbreakable. Gaza will not be broken even if it is razed down to the ground along with everyone who lives here. History will record that its martyred men and women will rise from their graves to fight back against this Nazi Zionist oppression.

Those of you who watch TV will have seen the destruction and the dead bodies and heard the cries and screams of the wounded, thanks to the surviving journalists who have so heroically continued their work and have been reporting daily on the terrible brutality of the attack.

Some of you might be tired of seeing these harrowing scenes every day, some of you might even be tired of being reminded of us—the living dead of Gaza—not because you don’t care but because you are weary of the feeling of helplessness.

While looking through the messages on WhatsApp, I have also discovered that some people are contending with a desire to stay neutral. Perhaps they are scared for their personal safety and worried that they will be singled out or treated unfairly. Perhaps they are thinking about their ability to travel freely and worrying about being targeted by surveillance or repression by colonial regimes and their Arab lackeys. Perhaps they are keeping quiet—particularly those working in local and international NGOs—because they are worried about their funding. Perhaps some still have faith in the stances of the political organisations they belong to and adopt a superficial analysis of the dimensions of this savage attack, like the idea that the ones who lit the fuse bear the responsibility. To that, I say, from the heart of this mass grave, look at the West Bank.

The people there are not safe either, even less so since the settlers have been armed. The recent brutal raids by the occupation army on cities, villages and refugee camps, causing death destruction and displacement, differs little from the brutality being visited on the Gaza Strip. The violence here defies description. It has become as clear as day that for all our progress and scientific advancement, we live in a jungle where the fate of the world is in the hands of those who have might.

Day 64: We in the Gaza City become weary of the military operations stop for more than three or four hours because it means that the Israeli occupation army is repositioning from one neighbourhood to another. After its concerted efforts to destroy the west and centre of Gaza City, the occupation army ordered the citizens to retreat to the south. Then it began pursuing them in the south, currently concentrating its operations on the city of Khan Yunis. Now it is demanding that the people living in Eastern parts of Gaza City leave and migrate towards the western neighbourhoods, including Al Remal, which have already been destroyed.

During the periods of relative calm, we were busy searching in small shops for basic foods. Because of the short truce period, the market was somewhat replenished and the price of some materials decreased.

After the truce ended, the prices rose again. The price of a bag of 25 kg flour has reached the equivalent of $100 while the original price was around 30 Israeli shekels (about $8) and a kg of wheat used to be sold at 10 shekels (around $2.75). Bread is an essential item for children who are accustomed to thyme and sukkah sandwiches.

The water has been cut off for two days and we returned to the problem of finding drinking water. This means no more bathing or washing our clothes and recycling the water we use to wash hands or clothes to flush toilets.

We are forced to cook one main meal a day that does not require bread. Despite the fact that children are not accustomed to these difficult conditions, they are prepared and ready to adapt. Among them is a girl who does not like to eat porridge but now eats it without objection, as well as a young boy who started eating lentils which he used to hate.

Day 65: My daughter, who is in Brooklyn, is worried about whether I would leave my current shelter, and if I do, where will I go and why am I not leaving yet? I discussed with my friend and cousin and it became apparent that we all agree that we will not leave now. We feel that the entire city of Gaza and its neighbourhoods have been completely destroyed.

A relative who came to us with her family after her neighbourhood was targeted, tells us that before coming to us she tried to move to Al-Remal in west Gaza City as per the instructions of the occupying army. She was shocked to see that the infrastructure at Al-Remal was completely destroyed. We realise the Israeli occupation forces are waging a psychological war. Every day, we receive recorded messages from the occupying army telling us to migrate or else we die under their bombardment. This puts the people of Gaza under great emotional pressure and severe confusion. The idea of being displaced does not make sense as the people who did were arrested, searched and some were murdered in their attempts to migrate to the south.

The neighborhoods of the destroyed Gaza City have become graves to its people who were martyred. They are dark and lightless neighborhoods. We cannot willingly choose to move to the other neighborhoods where there is no one left. We will only move to return to our homes when this Israeli aggression ends. Our homes will harbor us if they still stand and if the occupation has destroyed them, we will put up a tent on the rubble of our homes and live on ...  

(Compiled by Rakhi Bose)