Huda Skaik shares her harrowing experience of Israel’s invasion of Gaza City, and her fear of permanent displacement & the erasure of her people.
As Israel proceeds with its occupation of Gaza City, where I live, the residents who witnessed past invasions fear the worst is coming. Despite having survived the ongoing genocide for almost two years, the approaching forced displacement feels permanent this time.
I still hold the memory and trauma of Israel’s previous ground attacks in Gaza City on January 29, 2024. My family and I spent nine days trapped in our home as tanks circled the Al-Rimal neighbourhood and Al-Jawazat area, bulldozers tore into the streets, and helicopters roared above our heads.
During this time, soldiers stormed in and stripped my father, my brother, my uncle, and my cousins, tied their hands, blindfolded them, and marched us out. Then they blew up our home.
What I saw will never leave me. I watched as our neighbourhood was turned into ruins, and it feels like we’re reliving the nightmare once more.
Though the horror never really ceased.
Erasure
Israel’s occupation is not only the presence of soldiers and their tanks—it is the erasure of an entire people. The intention is to cleanse any traces of Gaza City, our neighbourhoods, our mosques, our hospitals, our schools, our cafes (or what’s left of them). It is about uprooting us from our land, forcing us to live in a state of displacement inside our own homeland.
They intend to turn Gaza into a wasteland, that much is clear from their previous ground invasions, when they burned buildings, uprooted trees, and turned our favourite places into dust.
In November 2023, Israeli forces carried out a full-scale ground invasion of the Rimal neighbourhoods in the west of Gaza City, without prior warning. We fled under the constant shelling. Israeli tanks hadn’t entered the area in many years, and this was the first time I had ever seen them, or encountered Israeli soldiers face-to-face.
During the early phase of the genocide, Al-Shati refugee camp and the areas surrounding Al-Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals were subjected to relentless bombardment. Despite repeated orders from the Israeli military to evacuate hospitals, medical staff refused to abandon their patients. The strikes in these areas were indiscriminate and catastrophic.
Indeed, throughout the genocide, Israel has repeatedly issued evacuation orders to residents of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, forcing them toward so-called “safe zones” in the far south. Yet, many of those who complied were later killed in airstrikes, burned alive, or massacred anyway.
It is abundantly clear that the occupation has no interest in preserving or protecting Palestinian life.
No return
Now, Israel wants to force us to move to the south, to “shelters.” I know exactly what that means: to live in tents with no safety and no privacy.
All of us in Gaza City fear that this time, there will be no return. Israel is enacting its blueprint for permanent displacement.
Our grandparents once lived in tents after the 1948 Nakba, when over 750 000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and land, believing exile and displacement were temporary. They died waiting to go home, keys in hand.
When I was last displaced to the South, it was the worst experience ever. Life was so harsh, and living in a tent – whether in winter or summer – offered no comfort. The cold of winter cuts through to your bones, and the summer’s scorching sun practically melts your skin.
My chest tightens when I think about living in a tent again. It will mean the end of what little is left of the familiar: walls that hold within them my family, our laughter, warmth, and even a sense of safety.
A tent was never a home, and returning to one strips me of my dignity.
For me, my home is part of my identity. It is where my grandparents and my parents created memories. It is the olive and orange trees that were planted, the aroma of the soil, it is a symbol of Palestinian existence.
Gaza is not just a random piece of land that people live in for convenience. Its streets carry our stories, joy and grief, its mosques and churches hold the echoes of centuries of faith, and even its sea is filled with the dreams of its people.
As Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah once said: “What is the homeland? It is not a question you answer and move on from—it is your life and your cause together.”
Living each day as if it is the last
When I hear Israel’s leaders speaking about occupying Gaza City, I just have an endless stream of questions in my head. Where will we go? How can we pack all our belongings and memories in only one bag? Why is this happening to us on our land?
All we can do now is live each day as it were our last. We drink our coffee as if it were the last, watch the sunset as if we may never witness it again, and share glances of farewell.
We look at one another to soak up the warmth of existence, with the hatred of farewell and the fear of displacement.
Now, the possibility of a ceasefire doesn’t seem real at all.
For all of these reasons, dear readers, I write these words because I do not know if I will live to see tomorrow, let alone be able to write once again. None of us know anything of our fate, but what brings some comfort is that we are all here together. Even if we die, our death will be intertwined, just like our houses that once stood side by side.
Please don’t forget that we are not ‘dying’, we are being killed in shocking and tragic ways. Remember that what helped me, Huda Skaik, survive Israel’s hell and genocide for so long, was the sea, and my writing that allowed me to document the truth. Remember that every corner, every street, and every whisper of life in Gaza City was once a part of me.
Amidst this uncertainty, I want you to know that my heart remains steadfast. I may be forced from my home, I may end up in a tent, or I may be killed at any time, but let these lines carry my voice: I live here in the heart of Gaza City in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood. Whatever happens, remember that I was not afraid to belong to Gaza until the very end.
The only thing we are determined about is that we will remain in our homes until our very last breath. We will never leave Gaza, and we dismiss any further thought of displacement, whatever Israel does; if we leave, it’s only to go to heaven.
I hope that the soil of Gaza City will embrace my body deep into the earth, for this is my choice over displacement.
The occupier does not realise that as Gazans, if we have nothing left to loose, we always choose to hurl ourselves towards death, before ever surrendering.