Ondine

I used to think there were small things the war had not managed to take away from children, and one of them was the joy of getting a new schoolbag. Three weeks ago, I posted about a campaign to provide school supplies for a school in Jabalia with more than 1,200 students. We raised enough for around 200 children, so we decided to start with the orphans. Since then, I had been waiting for the photos. In my head, I imagined a child going to school carrying his notebooks in a plastic bag, and then receiving a new schoolbag with his favorite superhero on it, along with new notebooks and pencils of his own. I was waiting to see their happiness, glad that we had managed to give them one small, beautiful moment in the middle of all this misery. But when the photos arrived, I did not feel what I expected to feel. I kept looking at the children’s faces. The children are broken. Their spirits are heavy. Some are holding their bags and looking at the camera without smiling. Some look much older than they are. Even the small thing I thought would make them happy no longer seems to reach them the way I imagined. That was when I realized something we have tried not to think about: Gaza’s children have grown up. Not only in age. They have become more aware of what is happening to them. In a normal life, a child does not wait for a stranger to give him a schoolbag. He goes to the shop with his mother or father, struggles to choose between this one and that one, wants the red one and does not like the blue one, and maybe gets upset because his father refuses to buy the more expensive one. These ordinary details are part of childhood. Our children take whatever they are given and say thank you. The war has taken from them even the luxury of saying to their mother or father: I don’t like this one. I want that one. And from some of the children in these photos, the war has taken much more than that. It took the father himself. The father who was supposed to hold his child’s hand and take him to buy his schoolbag is now the reason that child carries the word “orphan.” So when I looked at the photos again, I no longer saw 200 schoolbags and sets of supplies. I saw children beginning to understand why they live like this. Why their families cannot afford even the simplest things. Why their schoolbags, notebooks, and sometimes their clothes come from people they do not know. And why there are things that were supposed to come from their fathers, but their fathers are no longer there. People always say that children forget quickly, that it is easy to take a child away from fear and war for a little while with a toy, some sweets, or a new schoolbag. I used to believe that. Maybe I wanted to believe it. But the wounds of Gaza’s children have become too deep to hide behind a schoolbag with a superhero on it. They kept waiting for this war to end until they grew up inside it, and with them grew their understanding of everything they had lost. When a child understands that what he receives from strangers is not really a gift, but a tiny piece of the life he had every right to receive from his own family, in his own home, then we have lost something much bigger than homes, schools, or money. We are already too late. The children have begun to understand what we have done to their childhood. #SurvivalTestimony

I saw him by accident. An old man stood beside a bicycle, a Palestinian flag moving softly above it. He stopped passersby and spoke about children being killed, about war, and about how easily people learn to live beside another person’s suffering. Then he said: Do not lose your humanity. I stopped, and we spoke. Then he told me he was Jewish. For a second, I looked again at the Palestinian flag above his bicycle. He had once moved to Israel and lived there for years. Thirteen years ago, he left. He told me he could not live where war had become part of ordinary life. And now he does this. He takes his bicycle, raises a Palestinian flag, and stands. No stage. No crowd. No applause. Just a man on a street, speaking for children who do not know his name. I had begun to believe the world had learned how to continue without us. Life moved on. Streets stayed busy. Cafés filled. People laughed, travelled, fell in love. And somewhere inside me grew the fear that what had happened to us had become ordinary too. Another war. Another headline. Another number. Then I saw him beneath our flag. A man who did not know me, my family, or the names of the people we had lost, and yet had refused to forget. I felt less alone. And for a few minutes, on a street far from Palestine, I felt home again. Perhaps that is why knowing he was Jewish moved me so deeply. Not because Jewish people owe Palestinians proof of their humanity. They do not. But because we are taught where everyone belongs. Who should fear whom. Who should stand on which side. We inherit names, countries, religions, memories. Sometimes we inherit enemies too. And yet there he was: a Jewish man beneath the flag of my people. And there I was: a Palestinian man standing beside him. For a moment, history seemed almost embarrassed by us. I asked to take a photograph with him because I wanted to keep the moment. And perhaps I wanted it to reach the people I will never meet. The strangers who marched for us. The people who spoke when silence was easier. The Jewish person who looked at a Palestinian child and saw the child first. The Christian, the Muslim, the atheist, and everyone who let conscience speak louder than identity. I will never know most of your names. But please know this: We saw you. During the darkest years of our lives, when it seemed the world could watch us disappear and simply continue, you reminded us that there were still people who refused to look away. Sometimes hope does not look like victory or peace. Sometimes it is only an old man beside a bicycle, holding the flag of a people who are not his, speaking for children he has never met. He knows he will not stop a war. But he stands there anyway. And perhaps that is why I will remember him. Because on a day when I had begun to believe the world had forgotten us, he reminded me that somewhere in it, we were still remembered. And for a moment, I felt home again. #SurvivalTestimony

Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Gaza was not that the world allowed it to happen. It was discovering that Gaza was only the beginning. All the speeches, protests, resolutions, international laws, red lines, condemnations, and promises of “never again” have apparently taught this monster nothing. This morning, Israeli strikes completely destroyed Ghandour Hospital in southern Lebanon. Another hospital !! Another building once meant for healing reduced to rubble. We watched hospitals in Gaza bombed, besieged, evacuated, burned and destroyed. We were told Gaza was exceptional. We were told the world was watching. International institutions issued statements. Governments expressed “concern.” People marched through capitals demanding that there must be a line even war is not allowed to cross. And now we are watching those lines disappear somewhere else. Again. We are living through a dark age in which military power and money seem capable of crushing almost everything humanity spent generations pretending was sacred: international law, hospitals, homes, places of worship, trees, memory, and human life itself. And perhaps that is what terrifies me most. Not only that these things are being destroyed, but that the world is being trained to watch their destruction and continue with its day. A hospital becomes rubble. A neighborhood disappears. A family becomes photographs. Another condemnation is written. And elsewhere, people wake up, drink their coffee, go to work, come home, and sleep. I once believed that knowing what happened would be enough to make humanity afraid of repeating it. Now I understand the more terrible possibility: Human beings can know. They can remember. They can build museums to the dead, teach their names in schools, write “never again” above their graves; and still allow another human being to become rubble. It happened. Therefore it could happen again. Perhaps the mistake was believing that “again” would look exactly like the first time. If hell is a place where power can destroy human beings, homes, hospitals, memory, and life itself, while those who built laws to prevent it discover that their laws cannot make it stop, then perhaps hell does not require another world. Perhaps it requires only this one, and enough people willing to continue their day. #SurvivalTestimony

I did not need a “pretext” to leave Gaza. I needed an opportunity to survive. And I will never apologize for taking it. I returned to Gaza on October 4, after nine years away, to visit my family before continuing my medical career. Three days later, the war began. Nine days after my return, 41 members of my family were killed. My brother was injured. I stayed. I worked in hospitals in northern Gaza through bombardment, hunger, and the collapse of healthcare. There were 24-hour emergency shifts when a can of tuna was all I had to eat. Later, as healthcare in the north collapsed, I helped establish a clinic with three other doctors. Two were later killed. I continued. The clinic treated thousands until it was destroyed. We rebuilt it, reopened it, and continued our work. The medical services I helped establish provided care to more than 40,000 people. So no, the clinic was not a “pretext.” It was real. The doctors were real. The patients were real. The medicines were real. The work was real. The colleagues we lost were real. The clinic is still operating today, after I left Gaza. The donations raised for it were spent on its work, and I have records of how the money was used. Anyone with a genuine concern is welcome to ask about any expense. Transparency has never frightened me. After leaving Gaza, I began seeking institutional support to help the clinic continue its work. The photos I’m sharing in the comment below are of a little girl who was treated at our clinic yesterday !! But there is a bigger point. Why should leaving Gaza require justification at all? For almost three years, my life was suspended by a war I did not choose. I lost family, friends, colleagues, my home, and years of my life. I worked hungry and treated patients while bombs fell around us. How much more was I supposed to sacrifice before I earned the right to leave? Another year? Another family member? My own life? Sometimes, there is a disturbing expectation hidden even within the language of solidarity: the Palestinian is allowed to suffer, but not to live. People sympathize with us when we are hungry, displaced, grieving, or standing on the rubble of our homes. They share our photographs, praise our resilience, and mourn us when we die. But the moment a Palestinian escapes that suffering and tries to build a normal life, he must explain himself: Why did you leave? How did you leave? Why didn’t you stay? As though suffering is the role we are expected to play forever. As though a Palestinian is more acceptable beneath the rubble than rebuilding his life beyond it. Our suffering does not belong to an audience, and survival is not a betrayal of those still trapped. I was not born to die in Gaza to prove that I cared about Gaza. There is something deeply cruel about expecting Palestinians to remain inside their suffering to prove their commitment to their people. I was not born to die in Gaza so someone sitting safely elsewhere can decide whether I have suffered enough to deserve a life. Leaving Gaza does not erase a single patient I treated or anything we built there. I left Gaza. The clinic did not. I left through a student evacuation. I did not take the clinic’s money or abandon the work. My family is still in Gaza: my mother, father, two brothers, and sister. The youngest is only 14. So when people speak casually about my decision to leave, they should understand what “leaving” meant. I did not walk away from Gaza or the people I love. I left while my family remained trapped there. I am going to continue my education. I am going to rebuild my life. I am going to continue supporting the clinic and the people I left behind. I hope every person trapped in Gaza who wants to leave gets the same opportunity I did. I owe transparency for every dollar entrusted to our clinic. But I owe absolutely no one an apology for surviving.