The Missing
As the genocidaire powers unveil their colonial fantasies for ruling Gaza, there remains the reality of the everyday struggle for Palestinians dealing with survival and trauma.
An archive of a variety of Gaza testimonies and Palestinian artwork from January 2026.
Dispatches from Gaza
Selected writings from posts shared on social media. (Click on the person’s name to see the original post. And for those with an Arabic version, the English is a loose translation of that.)
Nour Abdullatif
I breathe through the eye of a needle,
each breath a wound.
Life presses in from every side,
a narrowing wall of weight and silence.
I do not know what violence of will
could tear this cage apart.
The question dangles like a body from the air—
when will freedom stop haunting my tongue
and finally tear open my chest?
Tamer Nahed
While the world is distracted by images of “the new Gaza” and future skyscrapers, the real Gaza is being crushed right now under the treads of tanks. My friend and his family, along with residents of the eastern area, are under sudden siege without warning and despite the so-called ceasefire.
I have been trying to contact my friend for hours, without success. There are no calls, no messages, and no information about whether they are still alive. This is not a network outage; this is danger.
Tanks advanced and bulldozers entered. Haifa Specialized Hospital was burned to the ground. A hospital that survived the war did not survive the “peace.” Smoke is still rising.
Any movement means death. Quadcopter drones fire directly at anyone who moves. The so called green zone has become a killing trap, with no global media coverage and no acknowledgment of this clear ceasefire violation.
We are being deliberately misled. Reconstruction is discussed while the war continues, more brutal than before. This is not rebuilding; it is burial under silence. The situation is extremely dangerous, and every minute may cost another life. Write, share, and do not be complicit in silence. We are not being rebuilt; we are being targeted.
Wasim Said
I am writing at one o’clock after midnight,
from inside a tent that, by some miracle, has not yet been torn away by the wind, in the middle of a camp where most of the tents have been ripped apart.
I am writing about one of the sons of my town whose condition is critical; his tent was torn away and he was injured in the head.
I do not know what to write, nor to whom, but I feel it is my duty to do this.
For your knowledge, everyone living in these tents once had a home.
They had a house and land, which the monsters turned into ruins.
Omar Hamad
I will never forget the day I was forced to my knees when an Israeli soldier struck me on the back with the butt of her rifle. I will never forget her words: ‘Move faster, you human dogs.’
I will never forget when they bombed the house on my friend’s family just five minutes after I had left. One more conversation with him would have been the distance between me and death.
I will never forget the child, Walid, when he met his friend Saad and the very first thing he said upon seeing him was: ‘My father, my mother, and all my siblings have been martyred.’
I will never forget how a human hand was torn away and struck my face, and how blood covered my body.
All these memories pass through my mind every night before I fall asleep.
I will never forget.
Asem Alnabih
To Refaat Alareer’s friends and loved ones around the world,
Today, 10 months after we recovered his body and laid him to rest in the Ibn Marwan cemetery, we were finally able to build his grave and place the headstone, after immense difficulty reaching the site near the yellow line and finding the necessary construction materials.
It’s a strange, bitter mix of sorrow and relief. That building a simple grave for someone we love has become a source of comfort says everything about what has been taken from us.
Sleep in peace, my beloved, Refaat. And may the eyes of cowards never sleep.
Nour Abdullatif
أنا وكل الناس اللي بعرفهم مش ملاقيين طعم للأكل، فكرت السبب بالأول البهارات لكن يبدو إنه لأ. وحتى زراعة أرضنا مش لاقيين إلها طعم.
السؤال المطروح: هل حقًا الجانب النفسي بيأثر على حاسة التذوق؟ هل تناول طعام واحد لفترة طويلة من الزمن ممكن يغير الطعم المحفوظ بالمخ؟
I and everyone I know can’t taste food properly anymore. At first, I thought it was because of the spices, but it seems that’s not the reason. Even the produce from our own land has no taste.
The question that arises: Does the psychological side really affect the sense of taste? Can eating the same food for a very long time actually change the taste memory stored in the brain?
Alaa Alshawa
هذا العمل لا يصوّر وجهًا، بل حالة وجود متحوّلة. إنه قراءة للإنسان بوصفه كيانًا غير مكتمل، يتشكّل تحت ضغط الزمن والذاكرة والواقع. التفكيك هنا ضرورة فلسفية، والوجه المقسوم يعكس انقسام الذات بين ما نعيشه وما نمثّله.
العين المخيطة ترمز إلى وعي مُعاد تشكيله بعد الانكسار؛ رؤية لا تُكتسب إلا عبر الألم. التجريد في هذا العمل موقف فلسفي يرفض اختزال الإنسان في هوية واحدة. إنه أثر صامت يطرح سؤالًا مفتوحًا:
كيف نعيش بذوات تغيّرت، ومع ذلك ما زالت تُسمّى «نحن»؟
This work does not depict a face, but a transformed state of being. It’s a reading for man as an incomplete being, formed under the pressure of time, memory and reality. Disintegration here is a philosophical necessity, and the divided face reflects the division of self between what we live and what we represent.
The stitched eye symbolizes consciousness re-shaping after fracture; a vision gained only through pain. Abstraction in this work is a philosophical position that refuses to deprive man of one identity. It’s a silent impression that asks an open question:
How do we live with things that have changed, yet are still called “we”?
Ali Aljafarawi
A little while ago I was sitting down, on Instagram. I was looking through memories. And all I think of is that Saleh has been martyred.
I never imagined that one day I would say, ‘may Allah have mercy on you, Saleh’ – or that I would live this feeling.
I swear to Allah, we’ve been wronged. I swear to Allah that we have been wronged. We have been wronged in every way.
My brother (Naji) was abducted (in occupation prisons) for two years. He was the closest person to Saleh, the one he loved most. After Naji gets out, he finds him martyred.
This is a story of a million stories.
He was the person I’d see myself in. Today he is not present.
I swear I don’t know. I’m telling you these things trying to vent, to talk.
This is not just my case. This is the case of two million Gazans in Gaza. Each one of them has a martyr in his house, a prisoner, a missing person, an injured person. Each one of them has a pain and heartbreak.
Wasim Said
Are we a trend?
Are we content for social media?
Are we a match?
Or are we a cause?
The way what is happening in Gaza is dealt with—as if from afar, as a distant viewer, as a mere observer of events—is the greatest catastrophe. Because the cancer will reach you suddenly,
and then there will be no chance for treatment.
Shahd Alnaami
Today, something very gentle happened to me.
On my way home, an elderly woman was sitting beside me. In the middle of the ride, she opened her bag and offered me a sweet. Such a small gesture truly made my day 🥹
Before the genocide, when I used to go to university, I always carried sweets in my bag.
Whenever I met children on the street or on public transportation, I would give them one.
Today, that woman reminded me of it. She brought it back to me. And I decided I will start doing it again.
It’s beautiful how the smallest acts can create a smile on someone’s face, and how kindness, even without words, can reach a heart we know nothing about 🤍
Maram Ali
هنا ،
عند مُنْحَدَرات التلال ،
أمام الغروب وفُوَّهَة الوقت ،
قُرْبَ بساتينَ مقطوعةِ الظلِ ،
نفعلُ ما يفعلُ السجناءُ ،
وما يفعل العاطلون عن العمل:
نُرَبِّي الأملْ .
Here ,
At the bottom of the hills ,
In front of the sunset and the blaze of time,
Close to two shady cut gardens,
We are doing what prisoners do,
And what the unemployed are doing:
Hope is being cultivated .
Omar Hamad
We fought with weapons and we fought with love, we tried every means — books, novels, cinema, stories, a revolution of stones and a revolution of roses, we turned nothing into something, transforming an olive tree planted in our land into a symbol of steadfastness and struggle.
We fought with the pen more than we fought with weapons.
But today, under this rain and this feeling that scorches our hearts with nothingness, we realized that we exist in a world that dreams of our extinction — a world that seeks to erase us, annihilate us, a world covered in false slogans.
I say from here, as I drown between four pieces of cloth, or more accurately, four pieces of nothingness, with my feet buried in mud, I say after the rain paused for a few miserable moments: We will live, we will live despite the will of the entire world, and we will struggle by every means.
Dr. Sandra
war criminals, traitors, money slaves, killers, criminals, and everything that is evil, these are the ingredients that were chosen to form the so called “peace council” for Gaza.
Alaa
From Gaza, a city of broken clocks
we send our congratulations,
the dust still warm,
the stones still remembering names.
The buildings are still crushed.
The bodies are still counted.
But the title has changed,
and apparently that is enough.
A city reduced to rubble
now watches its destroyer
appointed as its protector.
This is not a mistake.
This is how the system works.
Here, killing becomes experience.
Massacre becomes qualification.
The more blood spilled,
the louder the claim to peace.
I am from Gaza, and I say this clearly:
peace built on graves is not peace.
It is violence given a new name,
cleaned up for meetings and speeches,
hidden behind suits and polite language.
You can call it stability.
You can call it order.
But we know what it is,
because we are the ones
still digging.
Mahmoud Massri
Everyone in Gaza is waiting for a spark of hope that the crossing will open.
Some want to travel abroad for medical treatment,
others dream of leaving to continue their education,
others long to reunite with their loved ones who have been stranded outside for a long time,
and others simply want to feel freedom—
to feel that we are not living in an open-air prison under the sky.
I feel all of them within me.
I want my father to be able to travel abroad for treatment.
I want to leave to continue my education.
I want to welcome my loved ones and relatives who are stranded outside Gaza.
And I also want—most of all—
to feel free.
Mahmoud Massri
I am not here for your entertainment when you see my posts.
I am here because my city is burning, and I am trying to make the world speak instead of remaining silent.
My page is not a diary.
My page is more like a battlefield,
and my words are my last weapon—for myself, for my family, and for my city.
From inside the Gaza Strip,
from within a home that is closer to a destroyed tent than a house—
one that costs me a great deal just to keep my family and myself sheltered—
I write what I witness:
hunger, suffering, fear,
and a stubborn, unyielding hope.
Wasim Said
How can I describe my condition, my life, the suffering of my people, the stories of our annihilation?
Is it that I do not know how to express myself,
or that languages themselves lack the words to describe what has happened?
Wasim Said
Does someone who has lost everyone they love count as a survivor?
Does someone who lost their home and now lives in a tent count as a survivor?
Does someone who lost their limbs count as a survivor?
No one survived.
No one survived.
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