Gaza genocide: How a lifetime was compressed into a single year Submitted by Maha Hussaini on Tue, 12/30/2025 - 16:27 From displacement to return, and from horrific Israeli violence to tense ceasefires, 2025 pulled me decades into the past - then gave me a glimpse of a possible future Maha Hussaini and her cat, who travelled with her during her displacement before they returned home to Gaza City after the ceasefire came into effect (Supplied photo) On I was never much into physics. For years, I could not fully grasp how time is relative, stretching or contracting depending on motion and gravity. But there is always a plot twist in the lives of Palestinians . By the end of 2025, I could explain with unsettling clarity how the measure of time shifts with geography; how in some parts of the world, decades can be squeezed into a single year. More surprisingly, I managed to experience the concept of travelling through time: more than 70 years into the past, and then decades ahead into the future. Like a rollercoaster easing out of the station, the year began quietly as I lay on my thin mattress in the corner of a room of displacement in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. The clock hovered at 23:59 – one more minute of 2024, a minute that could hold a dozen air strikes. I knew I might not live to see the first minute of 2025. I held on to hope as my fingers hovered over my phone screen, switching between news apps for updates on a possible ceasefire. Of all the points circulating about the agreement, my eyes searched for a single word: “Return.” No ceasefire would feel like the end of the genocide if it did not include the right of more than a million forcibly displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza. Returning home It took 27 days for my hope to become real. In a moment I never imagined I would live to witness, displaced Palestinians were finally permitted to return to northern Gaza . As Israel opened al-Rashid Street, the road where hundreds of Palestinians had previously been killed for attempting to cross into the north, I rushed alongside my colleagues to document the scene. Climbing onto the roof of a broadcast vehicle, I tried to frame the scale of what was going on: vast crowds moving on foot, carrying what remained of their lives, walking towards homes that might no longer be standing. By staying and refusing another forced displacement, I believed I was reclaiming – even in part – what our grandparents had lost in 1948 As I documented these scenes, I felt a shift within me. I was no longer just the image of my refugee grandmother after long months of forced displacement. I was now also the image of a future grandchild, finally walking back towards our original hometown of Jerusalem. This was a scene I had long imagined, whenever our grandparents spoke of the right to return to the homes and villages from which they were expelled in historic Palestine. Covering these events on camera, I struggled to hide my smile, trying to fit the “neutral” image that the world expects of a local journalist – one that denies their own identity and the weight of their suffering, even while reporting on the attacks that shaped it. But I did not return to Gaza City for another three weeks, as we struggled to secure temporary shelter and repair our home – which, against all odds, had survived. In late February, I moved to my fourth shelter, this time in Gaza City. Yet just as the promise of return began to feel real, and goods tentatively reappeared in Gaza’s markets, the rollercoaster lurched violently downwards. Starvation campaign As March began, Israel once again placed Gaza under a total siege, marking the beginning of a new phase of starvation . Two weeks later, it broke the ceasefire and resumed its genocide. Over the next six months, I learned firsthand how money had lost all meaning; it was left untouched in my wallet as I wandered the streets under bombardment, searching in vain for a single bag of wheat flour, ready to pay any price. Rather than buying new goods from the market, people returned to the old practice of bartering – exchanging what they already had for other items. As we sought shelter from Israel’s relentless bombardment, there was no refuge from starvation; we faced hunger in its rawest form. Exhausted, hollow and aching for a single dish of “normal” food, local journalists across Gaza were forced to set aside our own suffering, reporting on starvation from a place of detachment, even as every pang of hunger reminded us that we were living it. ‘I tried to frame the scale of what was going on: vast crowds moving on foot, carrying what remained of their lives, walking towards homes that might no longer be standing’ (Supplied photo) I returned to my damaged home in June. If death were to come, whether by starvation or by bombardment, I wanted it to find me in my own home. Over the next two months, before aid began trickling back in, starvation peaked. I asked interviewees: “What do you do to stay alive?” This question was no longer just a journalistic prompt; it was a desperate attempt to gather survival ideas, as hunger consumed me. From these interviews, I learned how to make bread from pasta, and how tea fattah – a simple dish comprising bread soaked in tea – could momentarily quiet hunger, providing just enough strength to survive another day. But just as some food items began to reappear in Gaza’s markets in August, new Israeli mass displacement orders were issued for residents of Gaza City and northern Gaza. 'Until the last moment' As fresh displacement orders arrived almost daily, and phone calls from the Israeli military repeatedly ordered us to flee our homes, we held on to a fragile hope: that we might remain, if only for one more day, in what was left of our houses. Gradually, the familiar greeting of “How are you?” disappeared, and people began asking one another: “Do you have anywhere to go?” or “How much longer will you stay?” A common answer was: “Until the last moment.” No one truly knew when that last moment would arrive, or whether it had already passed. Still, the phrase circulated widely; on social media, posts appeared bearing these same words. There was no context, no elaboration – a meaning understood only by those living it. Gaza genocide: After months of deprivation, sugar reminds me why I'm fighting to be here Read More » For me, that “last moment” came when Israel’s explosive-laden robots , capable of levelling dozens of buildings at once, moved to within a few hundred metres of my home. On 17 September, I finally packed the essentials I had resisted gathering for weeks. I collected my cat, and my basil plant – which I had bought upon returning home after nearly a year and a half of displacement – and left. Rather than fleeing Gaza City altogether, though, I relocated to the city centre. That felt, in itself, like an act of resistance. For the first time since the genocide began, I carried a quiet, unspoken wish: to die in my city, rather than being pushed once more into the endlessness of displacement. As the granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, I grew up hearing about our family’s grief and sorrow over having fled Jerusalem. That loss shaped our home, and over time, I felt it inside me too. I believe it became part of me long before I was born: the pain of being expelled from a land I had never seen, yet had always belonged to. As a journalist, I have listened to the trembling voices of elderly Palestinians, each repeating the same plea I began whispering to myself: to be buried under the rubble of our own homes, rather than leaving them to the occupiers. Reclaiming dignity This time, the weight of choice briefly leaned in my favour. By staying and refusing another forced displacement, I believed I was reclaiming – even in part – what our grandparents had lost in 1948: a fragment of home, of dignity, of the right to remain. That illusion lasted eight harrowing days. I watched as the city emptied under unprecedented Israeli bombardment and massacres. Entire residential buildings were flattened onto the people inside them. Those who refused to evacuate endured an incomprehensible stream of relentless bombing. From the windows encircling the rooftop apartment where I had taken refuge in the heart of the city, I watched smoke rise from every direction. In the brief silences between explosions, one thought returned with clarity: death is easy. It is survival, under the constant gaze of the oppressor – giving a voice to those they want silenced – that is the real fight. When I stepped into my home for the second return in a single year, I finally grasped Gaza's own measure of time It was then that I gathered my belongings once more and left the city, heading to another part of Gaza. In a makeshift tent in Deir al-Balah, I came to know a different face of life – harsher, yet more invigorating. It stripped away every illusion of comfort, leaving only the raw will to survive as long as I could. Three long weeks passed before a long-awaited ceasefire agreement came into effect on 10 October. I impatiently waited for the next day before I packed my belongings one last time, took my cat and the basil plant, and headed back home. When I stepped into my home for the second return in a single year, I finally grasped Gaza’s own measure of time. Here, a lifetime can be compressed into a single year. You live both displacement and return, starvation and sating, survival and a thousand deaths in between – and yet, somehow, you still have one more moment to hold on, to document it in a story. This act is itself a small victory, as long as you can record it all before they manage to silence you. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Middle East Eye. Israel's genocide in Gaza Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0