Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

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On the night of March 18, 2025, while we were observing Ramadan, my family and I woke to the sound of very loud explosions, one after another.

We all woke up frightened and began asking my father, “What happened? Has the war returned?”

My father did not answer. No one knew anything.

We stayed together, waiting for morning, not knowing what was happening.

We had not expected the first ceasefire to be broken. We had already spent nearly a year living through war, and we had been looking forward to Ramadan with the hope that it would come without the bombing and fear.

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The first ceasefire in Gaza had lasted nearly two months before Israel resumed its airstrikes that day, ending the period of relative calm that had begun on January 19, 2025.

Then everything became quiet. We ate suhoor, the early morning meal eaten before the daily fast of Ramadan begins, we prayed Fajr (the pre-dawn prayer), and went back to sleep.

But we were overwhelmed by grief and exhaustion. We loved Ramadan, and we had been waiting for it for a whole year, hoping that it would finally be a time to feel some happiness after a year of displacement, hunger, war, and exhaustion.

I remember thinking that even Ramadan, the holy month that we had hoped to celebrate after everything we had been through, had not granted us even one year of peace.

After the war resumed, we were displaced to a school near our home in Jabalia.

As the months passed, life became more difficult, and hunger began to set in. But we stayed. We held on to our neighborhood and our home. We remained there alongside our relatives and neighbors.

Then Eid al-Adha came. That year, it fell on Friday, June 6. For some reason, I was very excited about Eid. I cannot remember why. We prayed Eid al-Adha, listened to the Eid sermon, wore our nicest clothes, and congratulated one another on the end of Ramadan. But the celebration did not last long.

Friday is the weekly holy day for Muslims, when we gather for Friday prayers after a sermon. When the time for Friday prayers approaches, men would normally begin making their way to mosques or prayer areas.

But suddenly, the bombing began.

The sky above us filled with helicopters dropping bombs, while terrifying artillery shells were fired around the area.

We had decided to stay, but an evacuation order was then issued for the entire area. We were forced to leave, abandoning the school that had been our shelter, our home and our neighborhood in Jabalia.

For days, we hoped we would be able to return. We thought the evacuation might only be temporary, perhaps part of an expansion of the Israeli military operation, and that we would return........

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