Maha from Gaza 🇵🇸 Substack
I lived through four wars before the age of eighteen.
War has not been a choice for me, it has been a painful reality imposed on me and my family.
During these wars, I studied at UNRWA schools in Gaza that were established to provide relief to Palestinian refugees.
And in every war, I grew a year older, and my understanding of what was happening around me changed, until I gradually realized that what I was living through was not just difficult days, but recurring war.
I survived every time, but every time left something new inside me.
Then came the October 2023 war. It was not just a war that I added to the list of wars I had survived; it was a genocide. It destroyed my life, my home, my family, my dreams, my past, my memories, and my future.
I am still trapped in it and have not survived yet.
The first war: The Cast Lead War of 2008
On the morning of Saturday, December 27, 2008, Israel surprised Gaza with a sudden bombing at 11am in the morning, and bombed all government centers and all police centers.
I was four years old, a little girl who did not understand anything about politics or wars. My dreams at that time were very simple. I was thinking about how to convince my father to take me to the amusement park, and I was eagerly waiting for the electricity schedule so that I could watch Tom and Jerry on television.
But everything changed that day. The images on the television screen instead were horrific, martyrs and body parts everywhere, and wounded people screaming. Although I was a little girl, these words are still stuck in my mind until today.
The war lasted 23 days, during which Israel used M825E1, white phosphorus in populated areas and violated international law.
1,383 Palestinians were killed, more than 5,300 were injured, and the homes of more than 3,400 families were completely destroyed.
Our home was hit during the bombing, and I could hear the sounds of the shrapnel from inside the room as they flew and fell onto the roof of our home. Thankfully, the room in which I was sitting was not hit by the missiles or the shrapnel.
I stayed in my room throughout the twenty-three days, as if I were in a small prison, living through the war from behind the walls of my room. The war ended, but it was only the beginning.
The second war: The Pillar of Cloud War of 2012
People had not yet recovered from the effects of the Cast Lead War, and as soon as they began rebuilding their homes, Israel launched its new war on Gaza on November 14, 2012.
The war began with Israel assassinating Ahmed al-Jabari, one of the prominent leaders of Hamas, while he was driving his car, and his companion.
At that time, I was in primary school, in the fourth grade, but this time I was more aware of what was happening around me. The war began after I had finished my school day, and soon the sounds of bombing began filling the place. The pace of the bombing was more intense, although the war was shorter than the previous war.
We could not play outside the house for fear of rocket shrapnel, the electricity was completely cut off, the streets became empty, and the markets were closed. We did not sleep, as our house was shaking from the intensity of the bombing, and the flames of the rockets illuminated the sky in red.
174 Palestinians were victims of this war, 1,046 were injured, and more than 10,000 housing units were completely or partially destroyed.
I survived the war once again, but with greater awareness. I began to understand that what I experienced at the age of four was a real war and not merely sounds that frightened me, and that the war I thought in my childhood was the end of everything was only one of the wars I would live through.
I survived once again, but this time I understood what I had survived. I began to understand what war is.
The third war: Protective Edge War of 2014
This war was longer and more destructive than the previous wars in Gaza that Israel had launched since 1967.
Tensions escalated after three Israelis kidnapped the boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir and took him to a forest in Jerusalem, where he was beaten and burned alive.
After that, the confrontations escalated, and a round of mutual shelling began between Israel and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Then Israel expanded the bombing and launched a large-scale ground military operation inside the Gaza Strip.
At that time, I was ten years old, but I was well aware of what was happening around me, unlike the previous wars.
On the morning of July 17 we heard the screams of the neighbors as they were calling and shouting. Fear began to take control of me, and my body began to shake. My father left the house to see what was happening, and he found people running while carrying a few of their belongings.
He asked them what had happened, and they told him that the Israeli army had informed them to evacuate the area immediately in preparation for demolishing it.
My father returned home and said to us: “Everyone get yourselves ready, we are leaving the house.”
I asked him where we would go, father, and he answered me hurriedly: “I don’t know, we will go where the people go.”
When we left the house, we found the bodies of our neighbors lying on the ground, blood flowing from them. I wished I could retrieve them, but the continuous bombing around us did not allow me to do so.
We headed to Beit Hanoun Hospital, and the hospital was crowded with displaced people. We sat on the ground while we thought: Where will we go? Who will receive us? Do we have relatives living outside the town whose circumstances allow them to receive us?
But the F-16 planes did not even give us a chance to think – they bombed a house next to the hospital and the bodies flew into the sky. Many of those who were around us were injured.
Then we held each other’s hands and began to run. Five kilometres later we reached the UNRWA schools in the city of Jabalia where people had begun gathering. People who lived in the border areas from different towns began arriving at the schools, and whoever did not find a place for themselves in the school either searched for another place outside Jabalia or spread out on the street and slept there with their family.
They were difficult days for me and my family. We had never experienced displacement before, and suddenly we found ourselves living among large numbers of people and in very harsh living conditions, people on top of each other, the bathrooms always full, and water scarce.
During the war, several attempts were made to reach a temporary truce. During one of the temporary truces, we returned to the town of Beit Hanoun to inspect our home and try to bring some clothes and necessities that we needed.
When I arrived, I found our home partially destroyed.
We tried to take some clothes out from under the rubble, but we could not get anything out, as bombing began was continuous, so we fled quickly and returned again to the shelter center in Jabalia.
The war lasted 50 days, until a ceasefire was announced on August 26, 2014. We hurried back to our home in Beit Hanoun, and the shock was great: our home had been completely destroyed. More than half of the town had been destroyed, so our situation was like the situation of many people around us.
After that, we moved to the house of one of my father’s relatives, and we lived there for two years. After more than two years, UNRWA rebuilt a new house for us. The house was not as beautiful as our previous house and did not carry the same memories, but it became a new home for us. We felt comfortable in it after suffering for more than two years.
During this war, 2,251 Palestinians were killed, more than 11,231 Palestinians were injured, about 18,000 homes were completely or partially destroyed, and more than half a million people were displaced from their homes.
I survived, but I lost my home and learned for the first time the meaning of displacement.
The fourth war: The Guardian of the Walls War of 2021
Seven years later a new war broke out on Gaza in May 2021, after tensions escalated in Jerusalem when Israeli settler groups expelled Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
On May 10, the events escalated greatly, and bombing began.
At that time, I was seventeen years old, and I was no longer that child who lived through the 2008 war. I was well aware of what war means, what displacement means, and what parting from loved ones means.
This war was not a new experience for me, but it was somewhat different from the previous wars.
In the 2014 war, I experienced displacement and the loss of the home, while in the 2021 war I was living through the war while carrying in my memory everything that had happened before.
In this war, we did not become displaced from our town, but we became displaced to my aunt’s house, which is located in the middle of the town, as our house was near the Israeli border. We were ready for displacement, so we put our clothes in plastic bags, and left.
During this time Israel launched many fire belts in the town. This war was difficult for me, we never felt safe, the sounds of the Israeli armoured vehicles getting closer little by little. We all sat in one room and through the dark night without electricity recited the Shahada aloud. When morning came our souls calmed down a little because of the day light, and we would nap for two hours, despite the bombing all around.
In every war I grew a little older, and with every war my fear changed. I no longer asked myself only: “What is happening?” because I had come to know the answer well: it is another war, another life that stops, homes that may be destroyed, and people who may not return to their homes.
The war lasted 11 days, during which 260 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, more than 2,000 Palestinians were injured, more than 2,300 housing units were completely or partially destroyed, and about 113,000 people were displaced from their homes.
I survived this war once again and realized that the wars that I thought in my childhood were temporary events had become part of my life and my memory.
The genocide war on Gaza, 2023. The war that I have not yet survived…
I thought I knew the meaning of war well after I had lived through four wars before I turned eighteen, and somehow survived each one of them. I thought that I had begun to know how to act when war begins, how to hide, how to escape, and how to search for safety.
But this war was completely different from what I thought and knew.
I got married three months before the genocide war, and my husband’s house was next to my father’s house, and both houses were located within the areas bordering Israel. I had a small and warm home where I lived with my husband and my husband’s family, and after my marriage I began preparing myself to study for my diploma, while my husband was preparing his master’s thesis in financial accounting. Our life was simple, full of dreams for the future, dreams that would disappear within hours.
On the morning of October 7th, 2023, the war began.
Members of Hamas attacked Israel’s border area using gliders, jeeps, and motorcycles. They breached the Israeli fence enclosing the Gaza Strip, crossed into the settlements and kibbutzim of the Gaza envelope, and took 251 hostages with them to Gaza.
I woke up at dawn on October 7th to the loud sounds of Palestinian resistance rockets being launched heavily toward the settlements of the Gaza envelope. I had not heard such sounds before. I woke up not knowing exactly what was happening, but when I looked through the window of my room, I saw Palestinian resistance jeeps crossing the border fence, and other jeeps returning quickly. At that moment, I realized something big had begun.
Families in Gaza had already began burying their children who were killed during the crossing. I told my husband then, “Those who were killed, their families were able to see their bodies and bury them, but we will die in a different way, and I do not expect our family to be able to know our bodies. Woe to us from what is coming.”
I felt something unprecedented would happen, but I never expected what followed.
My husband and I hurried to the grocery store to buy provisions that would last us at least one week, because I knew we would be displaced.
At one o’clock in the morning on October 8th we heard screams in the street. It was not one person screaming, but many voices. The electricity was out, and the bombing continued without stopping.
My father opened the window to see what was happening, and saw people being displaced. He asked them what was happening and they told him that the Israeli army had ordered them to evacuate the whole town immediately. As the intensity of the bombing increased, it left us no time to think. My husband, his family, and I left quickly toward Jabalia, to the school where we had sought refuge during the 2014 war. We walked more than five kilometers on foot. We left without personal belongings, and took only the clothes we were wearing. Our only thought was survival.
When we arrived at the school we found it full of displaced people. There was no room for us, so we continued walking and searching until we found Shadia Abu Ghazaleh School. We stayed there for ten days. We found out then that one of the people killed by Israel was our wedding photographer, Ahmad Abu Hamdan, who hadn’t even given us our photo album yet. Sometimes I think of the people this war killed, of the photographs their loved ones will never look at again, of the albums that remained beneath the rubble, and of the memories that disappeared with their owners.
On the morning of October 18th the bombing intensified, and we had no choice but to be displaced again, this time to southern Gaza, and the city of Rafah located on the border with Egypt. We thought it was safe because it was where the Israeli army had told the residents of northern Gaza to go to.
We stayed in Rafah for about seven months, until Israel announced it would launch an invasion of the city. When the invasion began, we were once again displaced and this time we walked to Al-Mawasi Khan Younis, a sandy area on the coast of the city of Khan Younis.
At first, we did not have a tent, so my husband, his family, and I slept on the sand by the seashore. We did not have the money to buy a tent, so the next morning kind people helped us build a simple shelter from wood and plastic coverings.
We stayed in Khan Younis for about nine months, living on the aid provided by the World Food Programme, such as lentils and flour. My husband did not have a job, and he spent his days searching for water and bringing it from faraway places. We lived a difficult life in Khan Younis, but we tried to adapt to it and move forward, however difficult it was.
Then the ceasefire came on January 19th, 2025.
The joy was different. After more than a year and a half of war, displacement, and hunger, we thought that we would finally return to our home. So at six in the morning, my husband, his family, and I set out from Khan Younis toward Beit Hanoun in the north. We walked a distance of 31 kilometers on foot until we reached Beit Hanoun at five in the evening. When we arrived we were in a state of extreme exhaustion.
I could not recognize the landmarks of the city because of the great extent of the destruction inflicted upon it, but I was excited to once again see our home, and to collect my clothes and personal belongings that I had left behind. But when we arrived at our home, we did not find the house we had left.
We found only ruins.
I could not bear the shock.
I sat on the ground crying and asking myself: How many years will we need until we can rebuild our home?
I slept for a few hours in front of our destroyed home, on top of the stones. The next day, we began cleaning the area in front of our destroyed home, and we set up a temporary tent until we decided what we would do next. The tent was not a home, but at least it was in front of our old home. Despite everything, I felt some relief. Because we returned to the place we belong to, even if nothing remained of it but rubble.
About 42 days after our return to Beit Hanoun, and after the hard work and cleaning, at dawn on March 18th, 2025, we woke up to bombing again. We ran barefoot, and this time we did not know where we would go. Another displacement. We walked more than 8 kilometers toward western Gaza, until we reached the UNRWA Rimal Girls’ School, and found a place there to shelter us. But what we experienced there was one of the harshest stages of suffering that we had gone through. Israel had begun tightening its siege of Gaza, preventing the entry of aid and goods, so food prices rose to unbelievable levels. The price of a kilogram of flour reached 80 dollars, and people began collapsing in the streets from the severity of hunger. Signs of malnutrition appeared everywhere on children and women. I was not spared. One day, while I was lighting firewood so that I could cook food, I suddenly fainted. My husband carried me in his arms and ran with me to the nearby medical point.
After examining me, the doctor told me I was pregnant.
My joy was great, but it was mixed with pain and fear. I was happy because I became pregnant after childbirth had been delayed for more than two years because of severe infections as a result of the displacements and unsanitary conditions I was forced to live in. But, while I was happy, I felt very afraid for my daughter. I was afraid that she would be born to live the difficult life that her mother lives, and that she would face the same suffering that I face. I did not want her to live what I am living.
There was one question that kept occurring to me constantly: How and where will my daughter live amid all this destruction?
I continued my pregnancy, but the hunger that I was facing began to exhaust my body. I developed anaemia, and we did not have food with which to silence my hunger or maintain my health and my daughter’s health. A person can sleep while sad, but they cannot sleep while hungry. Even those who had money could not buy what they needed, because the markets had become completely empty of goods.
People began searching for any alternatives that could help them stop their children’s crying. I used to grind pasta and lentils until they became like flour, and we would ease our hunger this way. The sound of children crying from hunger did not stop. I wished I could sell my kidney and feed every child crying from the pain of hunger.
Then the aid distribution points known as the “American aid points” began to appear, in cooperation with the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.” But these points did not give us a feeling of safety; rather, for many, they became places where they risked their lives in order to obtain food.
I used to prevent my husband from going to the GHF aid distribution point because I could see what happened to those who went there; some of them did not return, martyred while trying simply to get some flour. Others returned injured. But in the end, we had no other option. We had to obtain food, so my husband went. He was shot at and survived death twice. The third time he injured his back, and he began suffering from a herniated disc in the fourth and fifth vertebrae. At that point, our fear was no longer related to food alone.
My husband was injured and needed treatment, and at the same time, we did not have enough money to provide food. And a question remained haunting me: how will we be able to secure the costs of his treatment, while we can barely secure food?
And then, after all the suffering that we were living through, another forced displacement. Nothing is harsher than hunger except displacement. After six months of hunger, poverty, and suffering, the Israeli army ordered all the residents of Gaza City to displace south again toward Al-Mawasi Khan Younis. Fear filled our hearts that this displacement would be the beginning of the displacement of the people of Gaza entirely and the full and complete occupation of our land.
The Israeli army opened Salah Al-Din Road, which connects northern Gaza to southern Gaza, for only 48 hours, to allow the displaced to pass without inspection, with a warning that the road would be closed and checkpoints would be set up after the period ended. Fearful that we would never return, we tried to stay, but the Israeli army began deploying explosive robots and detonating them in residential areas close to us. The belts of fire left us no other choice. The danger had become greater than our ability to hold out, and we decided to leave. My husband and I displaced on foot and walked a distance of more than 30 kilometers while I was pregnant. My feet became swollen from walking. I was counting my steps, and I would stop to rest every 200 meters, then continue walking. I felt like my body could bear no more, but what choice did I have.
During this time was also my husband’s birthday. I wished that I had been in our home that day, to buy you a piece of cake and celebrate your birthday as any married couple does, but forgive me, my husband, the circumstances did not allow me even that.
We stayed in the south for about a month, living in harsh conditions, until the ceasefire agreement entered into force on October 10th. We were able to return to northern Gaza, but we did not return to the life that we had left behind. We returned to Rimal Girls’ School in western Gaza, trying to start again, as we had done many times before.
Nearly a year has passed since I returned to Rimal Girls’ School in western Gaza. For me, the school is no longer just a place where I sought refuge, but it has become my home and my place of residence. Every day I live in fear that we will be forcibly displaced again. I no longer have the ability even to think about a new displacement, the fear is so great.
On January 21st, 2026, I gave birth to my daughter and the apple of my eye, Ayla.
Ayla was born at the medical point belonging to the International Authority located west of Gaza. She came into life at a time when the world I knew no longer existed for me, and since the moment of her birth, she became all that I have, even though I have nothing.
I wished that I had given birth to her in our home in Beit Hanoun, between the walls of a home, but that did not happen.
Even the simplest things that a newborn needs, I could not provide for her.
Ayla sleeps on a mattress whose thickness does not exceed ten centimeters. She knows nothing about politics, wars, or the siege. She also does not know that she was born far from her home, and she does not know why she does not have a bed or enough clothes. All she knows is her need for milk, diapers, food, and clothes that protect her from the cold of winter. Even the simplest of these things have become wishes in Gaza, in a place where safety no longer exists.
The war on Gaza has not ended yet. Israel has not adhered to the ceasefire. Israel still controls more than 70% of the area of Gaza. No one here is safe. Death follows us everywhere. I feel as if I am living my last breaths. The bombing continues around the clock, and not a day passes without innocent people being killed and injured. I have not gotten used to this situation, and I do not think I will get used to the smell of death and rockets.
More than 73,000 Palestinians have fallen victim to this war, and more than 174,000 Palestinians have been injured, and more than 8,000 people are still missing under the rubble.
Behind every number is a story of a human being, a home, and a life that ended or changed forever.
And so, after all these years and all these wars, I found myself living with my daughter Ayla, my injured husband, and my family in a tent, facing rain, cold, heat, mosquitoes, and rats. I found myself living a life that I did not choose and a reality that I never imagined I would live.
We no longer have a home to return to.
We no longer have our old life.
And our dreams no longer resemble the dreams we had before the war.
When I look at my life since the 2008 war, I see how I changed with every war.
In the first war, I was a child who did not understand why I heard the sounds of bombing.
In the second war, I began to understand the meaning of war.
In the third war, I learned the meaning of displacement and losing the home.
In the fourth war, I became someone carrying in her memory and effects of all the previous wars.
As for the 2023 war, it did not leave me with just a new memory.
It took from me my home and the life I was building. It took safety, and dreams, and then brought me back to the same place where I began: searching for somewhere safe where I can protect myself and my family.
I survived four wars, but this war, I have not found a way to survive yet.
I am still living it.
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Maha is a writer in Gaza sharing her experiences with the world. She has given ScheerPost permission to publish her writing and asked us to highlight her fundraiser as she and her family face extraordinarily difficult conditions.
You can subscribe to Maha’s Substack to follow her updates from Gaza. A paid subscription helps her feed and clothe her daughter and provide for her family. You can also support her directly through Maha’s fundraiser.
This article first appeared on Maha’s Substack and is republished with her permission.