The following are voice messages A. sent to friends between 12-20 October 2023:

Thursday, October 12th

The situation in Gaza is very dire especially after the threatening statement made by Avichay Adraee, the head of the Arab media division of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, calling on Gazans to evacuate to the south of the Strip. All Palestinians in Gaza living near the borders, had previously fled to the centre and shortly after that Israeli bombing wiped out the whole area of Al Rimal, usually the safest spot in the centre of Gaza City. This is a mass national exodus. Palestinians are stranded on the streets, some carrying children, some a measly empty bottle of water, some their elderly family members. The numbers fleeing to the South of the strip are extraordinary, an area already over populated that won’t be able to absorb all those fleeing there.

I have a flat tire and looking around me, I am astounded at the huge number of civilians stranded.

Their situation is heart breaking.

Add to all that, Israel has been murdering medical personnel and journalists. They bombed more than 12 ambulances so far.

We don’t have internet, no power, no electricity. They are bombing electric generators and Internet provider units.

We are unable to reach each other, and journalists are losing connection.

It’s very dire.

Israel has committed over 23 massacres, wiping out entire families, all civilians. They are bombing houses and apartment building, without alerting residents.

Over 60% of those martyred are children and women. They are committing a genocide in Gaza. ethnic cleansing, just like in the 1948 Nakba.

There isn’t a single safe spot in Gaza right now. No one is safe. Israel is using panic tactics with families. They are contacting families, of 40 members or more, they call them and demand they evacuate. Sometimes it is a pre-recorded message they play. Then thousands start trying to flee for dear life, then run to find shelter and then the bombing happens somewhere else with no warning.

They’re not warning, they just bomb as they wish.

This time is the bloodiest, they’re bombing entire housing units, tall apartment buildings, like the Palestine Towers, that housed 82 families before it was totally levelled. Those families now don’t have homes. Where are they supposed to go?

They’re targeting many high rise residential buildings.

As a journalist, I am crippled and unable to follow all news. Due to lack of connection, I’m now writing my coverage on paper! No internet, no electricity, laptops dead, connection gone.

Much of the news we’re trying to cover and send isn’t even getting received at this point.

I can’t guarantee that my reporting is even going to reach you, and even if it does, I’m not sure I’ll be alive when it does

We just got a call from a friend who’s on their way to the South of the Strip who told us that the occupation is murdering Palestinians on the main roads as they’re attempting to flee to the south. It’s an exodus, a Nakba, full destruction.

As you can hear around me in my own house, we’re currently over 50 Palestinians seeking shelter here, as you can hear the voices of children weeping. Our neighbours are also hosting over 50 people too. Whole families are being wiped out in Gaza. News outlets are trying to reach out to me, and I’ve been unable to report back or get back in touch with them.

Not a single Palestinian in Gaza has gone through this massacre so far without losing at least one loved one or family member.

The houses of my two sisters were totally destroyed. They went to check this morning, and found nothing there. My uncle’s daughter her fiancé was martyred, and we have no further news about him to this moment. We’re in a state of shock, even as a journalist, I’m lost for words.

Where is the West? Where are these human rights they preach? Where’s international law? And the international organisations?? Where’s the UN? All those entities that claim to stand with humans. What’s being committed is definitely war crimes, and breaches to international law. This is genocide, and should be immediately stopped.

We hold all Arab and Western governments accountable for further supporting the occupation and enabling it to committing these atrocities against humanity.

I’m not sure I’ll be here much longer, this might be my last voice note

Saturday, October 14th (morning)

…We were told to head South and during the time people were heading there, Israeli soldiers targeted and killed a number of them – around 70 martyrs and more than 200 injured, most of whom are women and children.

We’re staying in our home – we refuse to leave our home. We will not let another Nakba take place. The situation is so difficult – there is no water and no electricity since the beginning of the war. Now we search for drinking water… but it’s very difficult to find. So, we are trying to conserve the water we have – we ask everyone to conserve water and not use it unless washing it is absolutely necessary. This is what the situation has come to.

Saturday, October 14th (evening)

…I received news that my close friend has been martyred. He was a bright young man, a bright young man indeed. It makes me feel so defeated. I am so sad. He worked with [the Italian skateboarding solidarity group] Gaza Freestyle when they came to Gaza – they know him. He was a writer with We Are Not Numbers and wrote for Palestine Chronicle. I wrote a post on my account, added a picture of us together, and tagged his account. His page is fantastic – his posts were so great. May God rest his soul in peace. He was killed along with his family members.

I heard the news of his death from the United States…I can only connect to the internet a few minutes every 5 – 6 hours... A relative of his in the US sent me the news about him. I told him it was a lie – sent him my number and said if you are serious – call me. When he called he was crying and said that he’d received news that Yousef and his family have been martyred. They were also hosting displaced people in their house in Beit Lahiya. They were all killed without warning – the entire house was bombed with them in it. Most of them, women and children, were martyred on the spot. Some of them are still under the rubble…May God rest his soul in peace.

Sunday, October 15th (morning)

Hello I hope you're all well – dear god I pray for the end of this situation. Really, we are exhausted we can’t bear any more. Thank god today has been relatively calm, in the night there was some bombing but on the whole the night was calm. I’m still in my home in Gaza [City] many people fled to the South, but many stayed here in the north after they saw the massacre of 70 people and more than 200 injured on the road south – people got scared, including the people who had intended to flee and decided to stay here. And then after that there was so much bombing in the South, so much bombing and bombing and bombing, massacres, so many people martyred, so many killed. That’s to say – people left Gaza went to the south and sought shelter with people there and then they all get shelled. You even have people who fled to the south who came back to Gaza [City]. UNRWA announced that it will only provide services in the south – it completely withdrew from the north. The World Food Program says it has got food for 1.3 million people stuck at the Rafah crossing and others say there is medicine stuck at the crossing. We’re all so tired from talk. People are hungry. The shops in Gaza have nothing left even if you have money there’s nothing left to buy especially the basics, the necessities. Everyone is cutting back what they eat to the minimum. And people also are not eating and drinking because they don’t want to have to go to the toilet. Listen cutting electricity and the internet is easier than cutting water. So they cut off the water. But the water that comes through the taps is not drinkable it’s never been drinkable. People normally get drinkable water from water trucks that make rounds through the streets. Now water trucks can’t move through the streets because of the destruction, drivers and staff of water trucks have been killed, water trucks drivers are scared to move. The few sweet water wells in Gaza can’t be reached… The water that people have [remaining piped water in storage tanks] that water, you know there are studies on it that say 79% of it is unsafe for humans and animals to drink. People are starting to drink that unsafe water - it’s catastrophic. No one can wash. We can’t even wash our hands before we eat, you’re covered in dust and filth and you can’t wash, you can’t clean yourself to pray, your clothes, forget it you can’t wash them. There’s no water at all. It’s a huge problem, it’s catastrophic. 

Sunday, October 15th (afternoon)

The issue of not letting in aid is killing especially for hospitals. There have been 10 medics martyred, so have ambulances so many have been attacked. So -  you know what are people doing? There’s an airstrike on a building – so someone nearby gets in his car and goes there to get people out – because the ambulances can’t get there fast enough, there aren’t enough of them and so many of the roads are destroyed, vehicles can’t get through them. So, maybe you’ve seen it – people transporting the injured and dead in their cars, on carts on anything they have to get them to the hospital. But then at the hospital there’s no room left, there’s no beds for the sick and injured. There’s no room for the dead bodies. The sick and injured in the hospitals are put on the floor. For the ones with lighter injuries, they [the medics] do the minimum and say to them – “go, go home – there are people with more severe injuries”. The poor doctors are working 24 hours a day, day after day, they don’t have a moment to rest and they are begging for medical supplies, begging for help – they are overwhelmed. And the numbers of martyred, of dead, where do you put them? The morgues in the hospital are full. So, what have they started doing – they a get ice cream trucks and stack the bodies on top each other. The trucks are cold and there’s no place else to put the bodies.

Sunday, October 15th (evening)

The humanitarian situation is devastating. There are so many houses destroyed and shelled constantly. Many medics have been killed and we are now obliged to make choices on who to rescue from under the rubble. There have been more than ten hospitals that received calls from the IDS to evacuate, hospitals! But the medics are saying we are staying, we cannot take the patients, where would we take them? We are staying here with them, we will not abandon them.

As volunteers and medics are trying to rescue the wounded and take the martyrs out and while they know there might still be people alive under the rubble, they are obliged to leave as they receive a call for help in other areas where the possibility of saving lives is highest....they have no choice. This is such a catastrophe. And the world is watching...we don't have even humanitarian aid let in. This is not about being Western or Arab or Palestinian, this is about humanity and human rights.

At least we see that the world is on fire and reacting out there, this is of great support to us here.

Please continue to demonstrate, please don't stop your the showing of solidarity for us here. It is of great comfort to us knowing you are present out there.

I don't know how those who are buying into the one-sided propaganda is able to be at ease with their conscience...the suffering I saw today is indescribable.

Friday, October 20th

My phone, Jawwal, switched off since yesterday when the electricity came back, it was great so I could charge my phone. Actually this is not electricity it is a motor, that brings electricity once a day for an hour.

I am ok, until now... this evening was very difficult. This morning I was shocked at the news of my close friend who has been martyred. She is a poet and an exceptional person truly, may Allah have mercy on her, she was martyred ...and even everyone started to write on Facebook and on social media that "If I am martyred, please remember me." Or people writing "I know I will be martyred," this is something unbelievable, it is like we don’t know if we are in a film or whether it is a nightmare. it is something surreal. I ask myself “Is it possible that all this can be a nightmare? Will this end? Will all this truly ever end?" On the other hand, the hope is here with the pain and and the suffering...

Yesterday they released two prisoners, a woman and her daughter, both American, and some aid has arrived. For sure it was the result of an agreement. The shelling gets less, but only during the day, in the night it comes back. This night as I am looking, the sky is all red [from the shelling], so everything is very strange, it is surreal, for real we got into something that feels like unconscious.

Yesterday they shelled the hospital, but the people refused to get out.

Today one of best residential areas of Gaza was erased, cleansed,  literally, Tel el Alia. My cousin's house was razed to the ground, she and her husband and three daughters found refuge in the hospital of Al Aqsa. I called her yesterday and she told me: "we are staying here...do you want to bomb? we are staying here, where will we go?"

I got very upset about the people who got killed in the Church. You know, they (the Christians) are very few in Gaza, they are all so well respected, I have so many friends from the community.  There is a young man who was martyred who I know, I was talking to a friend of mine to get in touch with him so I could get a media permission to get there for Middle East Eye. I was telling him I want to talk to Majd, he told me that Majd is in intenstive care and his mum was martyred. This news got us really sad, all of the shelling and destruction, the hospital and the Church saddened us the most...

Last week of October

Hello, may God bless you. Your message made me very happy.

The Internet issue is really disastrous but there are no solutions to it.

I’m now connecting to the net through my neighbors but it can disconnect at any moment, and it’s very weak. The Internet problem still exists, but hopefully it will be solved and we will stay in touch, God willing. I am fine, thank God. I mean, things are not fine, but we thank God

First week of November

Good evening, how are you? We haven’t heard this sweet voice for a long time. [note: a constant buzzing sound of the drone in the background increases, and he tries to raise his voice]. Oh Lord, please let all of these difficulties end well and quickly, and God willing, we will all be fine and talk at ease, and everything will be okay, and we will not be anxious but relaxed and calm. God willing.

The situation is getting worse every day. We’ve almost lost hope about getting [access to the [communication] net. I mean, it is over. We’ve even stopped thinking of checking the Internet, the communication network. Friends try to call me all day to find out if I’m still okay. When I finally answer, they say, “I’ve been trying to call for five hours since the morning, and I tried 30-40 times before it finally worked.” But praise be to God, Lord of the two worlds.

To be honest, the past two days I became a little sick, perhaps from inhaling gunpowder. I have something like congestion, my chest hurts a lot. It’s most likely the cause because the smell of gunpowder, rubble, dirt, and smoke is everywhere. You can’t avoid inhaling it. About five or was it four days ago, the house of my uncle was struck – it’s in the same area where I am. I mean, may God have mercy on them, five people died there. Thank God, not everyone. There were more than twenty people in the house, and I swear to God, there were many friends and many good people there. By God, they were like flowers. Girls and boys, they are all gone, may God have mercy on them. There are many people, I am sure, many people I know who have gone, and I don't know about them because there is no internet. I swear I started to hate trying to connect to the network. Anyway, though don’t have internet, I no longer want to watch the news, and I have become bored with the repetitive, cold news. It is all cold talk, talk that doesn’t sate my hunger or slake my thirst. I wait for the internet, only to communicate with you and with my friends outside, to reassure them, but nothing more.

[The Israeli invasion of Shifa hospital] will still take time [to happen], it needs at least ten days, because as you see and as you follow things, the positions have hardened, even though many people there have already left. Every day things become more difficult: the story of the water, the story of eating, the random airstrikes, and the story of the hospitals. But praise be to God, people remain diligent doing what they have to do to survive and that’s it. In the end, we won’t be able to defeat the universe with endurance. We do what we have to do and try to save what we have and save money and reduce the use of water and food as much as possible. But that's it. That's the way things are. Praise be to God. But it's a story of exhaustion. I imagine that you all may be as tired as we are, or even more, and you may wish that you were here with us. Things are not simple for any of us. Just like you, I say there are lots of people who support us, but when things have reached this far is it the evil people who are in control? Or is it the evil who rule? It’s disgusting, for God's sake, disgusting. I mean, no Arab country has taken a positive step to stop the suffering we are living. At least to get more supplies into Gaza, food, water [loud boom] there’s an airstrike [sound] there’s a close strike […] It will land soon because the sky is lit up in red, for sure [Loud blast sound in the background]. God protect us!

I’m telling you that things are not stable, but we are trying as much as possible to remain holding on. Praise God for everything. This is God’s will and destiny. 

Honestly, I told you before and I will tell you again. If you get news that I am no longer here, be sure that I am in a better place. But If God gives me a lifetime -  you will help me to get out and see you all, so that one can forget or can try and forget the trauma we are now living. The trauma that we will never recover from for the rest of our lives. I look at kids and say what are they guilty of? What are we guilty of? All of us the young and the old. I swear to God, none of us have any mind or feelings left. Praise God for everything. Stay strong, take care of yourself, and peace be upon everyone. Hopefully we can chat one day.

Same Day

Whenever I can send messages or have the Internet, I will send, and so will you. [The sound of airstrikes continues to grow louder along with the constant buzzing of a drone]. And when the Internet comes I’ll listen to your voice messages, take care of yourself and say hello to everyone, may God bless you.

Saturday, November 4th

Hello what’s your news? Hopefully it’s good! Just now I listened to your message and it made me happy because I heard your voice and because you are okay. The Internet isn’t up consistently, the opposite in fact, in many areas like ours it’s been completely cut off. Someone from the neighborhood who has solar panels at home volunteered to try support the Internet cell of the entire neighborhood at least for a limited number of hours. But his solar panels were ruined. The only way now is I can sometimes connect to the Internet through (E-SIM) SIM cards, which are very weak. When I can connect I mostly can receive messages but not send. Internet is still not available in most of Gaza. They [the Israelis] hit the places that distribute the Internet inside Gaza, and then they cut off the network that goes into all of Gaza, okay? Sometimes they allow the network to be up – but it won’t function in the places where they bombed the connections. The Internet may be available for an hour or half an hour, but then that’s if people have been able to charge their phones through a lot of personal effort. Since the first day of the war we have had no electricity, ok. Yesterday, they started attacking homes that have solar energy [panels}. Imagine where the situation has reached to? I mean, any source of life they want to stop. It means it’s monstrous, unbelievable, just incomprehensible. Today I was charging my phone and laptop at a friend’s place close to home, his [solar energy system] broke down and the whole time he was scared. People who have solar energy [panels] are all scared. Today all day I couldn’t find electricity. I went to a far place with another friend to try and charge my phone, and the whole house, meaning my family here at home, had no phone because none of them had any battery power left. The situation is very difficult.  

The most difficult topic is water and food. And it gets worse because Gaza has been split - the south from Gaza [City]. So, food stopped entering - vegetables and tomatoes these come from the south where they are grown or here in the north from the agricultural lands on the border. Of course, all of that is impossible now. The issue of food and water has become very difficult. Very, very difficult and getting worse every day. But we thank God.

 Every one of our family is stressed, a lot. Everyone is nervous, because there are a lot of children [staying at their home]. You are talking, around 80 people altogether, around 80. It is so difficult, especially when we adults find ourselves acting like crazy people, trying to find water, and searching for food. It is not easy. I am happy that the world is with us, but the news is not promising, and the news says that what is happening now will last, at least, three weeks, or a month, at least. Because they have a goal they want to achieve. But thank God, hope exists, and what God decides will happen. I mean, if a person were here or out in space, what God decides for them - will happen. But I get really sad, it’s so dreadful, because people ... I don’t know how to say it... Everyone asks each other, “how is so and so? Are they still here or no longer with us?”. Then someone comes and asks you “Do you know so and so?”. You say yes, and they tell you the person was martyred. Everyone faces this all the time, it’s not like something you get accustomed to. There is so much pain from loss but now it’s something to be expected. Dear Lord! Dear Lord! Thank God for everything, praise be to God, and my greetings to you and everyone.

A. is a young journalist and translator with a degree in English literature from the Islamic University in Gaza. A. has asked Insaniyyat to withhold his identity due to the widespread fear that journalists in Gaza are actively targeted by Israel. See for example the precedent of 2021 bombing of major media headquarters and the killing of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh's family on 25 October 2023.

*A version of this dispatch was published in Italian here by Pagine Esteri.