“We’re going south to camp in a tent. You can play in the sand. It’s just a trip and then we can go home.”
This is what I was forced to tell my three-year-old daughter last week, as I prepared to evacuate her, my wife, and our newborn baby girl out of Gaza City, while Israeli forces advanced.
I had to pretend we were going on a camping trip to the south of the besieged Strip. I wanted to spare her the danger, suffering, and terror of the truth that we were being forcibly displaced for the eighth time.
She laughed and got excited for the “holiday”, packing her favourite knapsack, which has a purple stuffed sheep on the front.
“To the south!” she said, doing a little dance.
This is the reality of being a father and a journalist in Gaza, where Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with a widened offensive to take all of Gaza City and enforce a boots-on-ground occupation of the Strip.
Nearly all the two million people who live in Gaza have been forced to flee their homes multiple times, and over 90 per cent of homes have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
I am one of those people.
We’re originally from the far north of Gaza – Beit Lahia. I last saw our home, famous for its strawberry fields and orange groves, before the last ceasefire collapsed in March.
Two months earlier, I had walked from where I had been displaced in the south back to Beit Lahia on foot to reach my town. It took me about 11 hours. With every step, I carried hope and a longing to hug my land and my home.
My home had been partially destroyed. Since then, Israel has intensified its strikes on the north – and I don’t know if it’s still standing. I have no idea whether I’ll ever be able to fulfil the promise I made to my daughter to go back.
For the past few months, we’ve been camping in a partially destroyed building in Gaza City. My wife gave birth to our newborn last month, in the dark, in the middle of bombing. I managed to get her to a hospital, but there were hardly any medical supplies, it’s a nightmare. And baby milk now costs $30 (£22).
We didn’t want to move again, but Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to take full military control of Gaza City. And last week Israel dropped leaflets from planes telling us that if we didn’t evacuate, we could be killed.
This is the eighth time since October 2023 we’ve obeyed military evacuation orders, not counting the many times we’ve been chased from place to place within the same city. We’ve criss-crossed the length and breadth of Gaza, trying to escape tanks, fighter jets, drones, and bombs.
