Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

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Approximately 92 percent of homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed since October 7, 2023. According to United Nations estimates, around 436,000 housing units have been damaged or destroyed as a result of Israeli airstrikes and military operations.

Less than a week after the war began, on October 13, 2023, Israeli forces issued evacuation orders for northern Gaza, forcing over 1 million Palestinians to move southward to areas such as Khan Younis and Al-Mawasi, which were presented to residents as “safe zones.” However, these areas were not prepared to accommodate such a massive influx of displaced people, lacking the infrastructure and health services needed to cope with successive waves of displacement.

As the bombing continued and evacuation orders expanded, residents flocked to the Al-Mawasi area from across the Gaza Strip — from northern and central Gaza, and especially the eastern border areas near the fence. The neighborhoods along the eastern border were among the first to experience heavy shelling due to their geographic location, and my family was among those forced to leave under constant fear and repeated warnings.

Later, on January 3, 2024, the building that housed our home was bombed and leveled. It was an eight-story building occupied by 32 families. In an instant, it was turned to rubble, leaving all those families homeless — another number added to the destruction statistics. Behind each figure is a home, memories, and a life destroyed in an instant.

Before the war, Al-Mawasi was known as a quiet coastal stretch west of Khan Younis, comprising open agricultural land, sandy and uneven, with scattered plastic houses and seasonal farms. It was not an urban area or a densely populated center but an open space used for farming, with proximity to the sea.

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However, with the start of mass displacement orders, these open lands quickly became one of the most crowded areas in the Gaza Strip. Within weeks, tents covered nearly every empty space. There was no longer “open land,” but instead rows of fabric and nylon, tents pressed tightly against one another with barely any space in between.

How can such a place be considered a “safe zone” when it lacks the most basic necessities for life? No proper sewage systems, no organized infrastructure, no spacing between families, and not even enough room to pitch a new tent. Many families had nowhere to set up their tents, let alone space to store water or build a makeshift toilet nearby.

Al-Mawasi transformed from open agricultural land into a chaotic tent city, unplanned, unprotected from heat........

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