Gaza, Invaded by Separation and Pain… and yet It Resists

All around me, life is overflowing with reasons to die. 

Every corner my eyes linger on is filled with tents stretching into infinity. Every street reeks of despair and fear.

Time passes in terror. All I can do is record the omnipresence of death.

This is not just a war: it is a project of extermination, a clear attempt to erase the existence of the Palestinian people. What is happening here goes beyond bombing, forced displacement, and killings: it is the systematic erasure of a people, the negation of our lives and our right to exist.

For two years, I have endured, I have resisted as a human being, and I have refused to let despair distort my face. Yet I am tired, exhausted.

I simply dream of safety, of calm, untroubled mornings, without the roar of planes, under a clear sky carrying only birds. I want to see the sea again and be free to make my own choices, without fear.

Gaza… Today, I tell its story through my eyes, my memories, and my recollections. Every corner of this city speaks to me, every street cries, and every stone bears the weight of what we have experienced.

Since I was a child, I have been repeating in my mind the words I have heard all my life. My father said them, I heard them from his father before him, and so on, through the generations.

“غزة غزاها البين والنوى” – Gaza, invaded by separation and pain.

I still remember the moment we returned to Gaza City, before the war resumed once again. Faced with torn-up streets and houses reduced to dust, I heard my father’s voice echoing, and behind it, my grandfather’s.

Sarah’s family is raising money to leave Gaza. You can donate here.

Their words crossed time to remind me that what we are experiencing today is only an echo of what they themselves endured.

The path of pain, from Jerusalem to Gaza

I often think back to Jerusalem, its stone alleyways, and the route known as the Way of Suffering — the Via Dolorosa. It is the route that Jesus is said to have walked with his cross between his condemnation and his crucifixion.

I have heard a lot about it since my childhood, in my family’s stories, engraved in our memories. But I have never seen it with my own eyes. Since I was born, I have lived in the prison that is Gaza, and this city imprisons me within its walls and its pain, depriving me of seeing the holy city that is spoken of with such reverence and sadness.

There, each step tells the story of a man carrying his cross, each station bears witness to the weight of injustice, the silence of witnesses, the persistence despite the fall. It is the path of all human suffering, of loss, of fear, but also of silent courage that refuses to collapse.

Even though I have never walked it, the stones of Jerusalem seem to live within me. They have seen suffering and redemption pass by, and here in Gaza, I feel that same weight: the cries, the prayers, the promises, and the tears of a people who still believe in life, despite everything.

Has Gaza become like Christ himself, carrying on its shoulders the weight of all the world’s pain?

Gaza, a survivor

Al-Rashid Street, along the sea, has become a veritable Way of Suffering: exhausted souls have walked there, some have died, others have found, despite death, the comfort of seeing their loved ones again.

Those who fell left behind not only broken lives, but also their entire city, their spirits remaining in the ruins, forever engraved in every stone and every breath of this terrible ordeal.

And as I walk along this path, I take in Gaza with my eyes, I bid it farewell, I carry within me fragments of my destroyed home, shards of hope and promises that I will not abandon.

To move forward here is to both take away and leave behind: to take away memories, to leave behind landscapes of broken lives.

Yet with every step, something holds me back, and I look at her,

and I know that even in the midst of her ordeal,

she continues to write her story—

not as a victim,

but as a survivor.

And as I walk, I remember the Way of Suffering in Jerusalem: the same pain, the same falls, the same gazes turned toward the sky. Each breath weighs heavily on me, as if it carried their pain and their broken hopes, and each stone holds the memory of their silent sorrows and wounded hearts.

But here in Gaza, Christ is no longer a single man: it is an entire people who carry his cross.

Sarah’s family is raising money to leave Gaza. You can donate here.