I’m a doctor and psychiatrist, and before the war in Gaza, my days followed a reliable routine. I would go to work in the clinic, visit my friends and spend time with my family. I lived a normal life. Now, my family and I are refugees in Rafah, after the Israeli army ordered us to leave our home in Khan Younis. We are living in the worst conditions imaginable. We spend our days waiting. We wait in queues for two or three gallons of drinkable water, or for food or plain flour to make bread over a fire, after months without electricity.
In the last few days, as we heard that Israel was preparing for a ground invasion in Rafah, we knew that there was nowhere else for us to go. Israel claims it will evacuate civilians, but how can we believe that when there seems to be no plan and we have repeatedly seen what they have done before? All we can do – all 1.4 million of us – is wait for the worst. Life feels like one eternal, never-ending day. It is filled with suffering and scenes of horror that you see so often, they begin to blend together. It is our collective new routine to hear, witness, sit with, and walk beside death. Death felt closer than ever when the Israeli military launched extensive airstrikes overnight on 12 February.
I have spent my career working in mental health and community trauma in Gaza, but even that couldn’t prepare me for the profound sense of hopelessness that has spread through our community now, permeating everything. Almost all of the people around me have lost family members, whether they’ve been killed by Israeli airstrikes or snipers, taken by the Israeli army, or displaced to other areas. It is the uncertainty that is killing us slowly. We don’t know who will be next to die or lose their family.
When a human being faces danger or a threat to their survival, they will respond in one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze. We cannot fight and we cannot escape, so we are a people frozen, many of us for four months now.
When you are in a freeze response, you can’t act or feel normally. People become like zombies. When I am at the clinic in Rafah, waiting in the water queues or talking with neighbours, what I notice is that people’s faces have become empty of life. They are masks of fear, hopelessness and emotional numbness.
Some days, I don’t know how I can carry on mentally. I don’t know how to wake up the next morning and face the fact that this is reality, and relive every day the sounds of the bombardment, the buzz of the drones above our heads. I can’t face yet more news of those we love who have been hurt or killed.
As children, we develop the notion that our sense of security and safety is rooted in our homes. We were told only days ago that our home in Khan Younis was bombed. Our first thoughts were, where will we go? Where will we live? When a person loses their home, that feeling of safety is wrenched away.
When the bombardment of Rafah started, I was with my family in the tent we are living in. What can a thin piece of nylon protect you from? It won’t stop the shrapnel from hitting you or your family. So we stared at the sky and watched the massive bombardment, waiting for our fate, knowing exactly what that meant. What can we do?
We’re a small family. My brother, sister and her four-year-old twin daughters. When I see the terror in my nieces’ eyes, I want to break down.
We are all trying to be strong for the children. But we can’t hide this reality from them – they are experiencing everything just like we are. Everywhere you go, you are surrounded by children without parents or with no living family members.
For us, this is not war. It is a never-ending bloodbath, yet as the world watches the unfolding genocide, no action is being taken that could prevent it. Nothing that is happening to us is justifiable and no human should experience this kind of suffering.
We fear that these warnings by Israel are laying the groundwork for what is to come. They are getting people around the world used to the idea that Rafah is becoming a target – so it won’t come as a shock when we are killed.
Nothing except international intervention will stop this. The international community must keep applying urgent pressure for a permanent ceasefire. It may be our only chance to survive this.
Bahzad Al-Akhras is a Palestinian medical doctor and psychiatrist
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