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Karim is a trained nurse in his early 20s from Gaza City. Until Israel’s recent forced displacement order he lived in the ruins of his former home with his parents and brothers. He has now been displaced by the war 13 times and survived an Israeli strike in Rafah. He kept a diary for the Guardian over the past month.
17 August 2025
After two years, I’ve lost all hope. I don’t believe the news about [US President Donald] Trump ending the war. My father says we should move to Deir al-Balah in the south soon, before they force us out again. If it were anyone else, the UN would have stepped in. But for us, nothing. Now they talk about sending us to South Sudan – a country racked by civil war, already full of displaced people. There are 2 million of us, trapped in less than 20 sq km, just waiting to die slowly. And the world will shrug. [Former Israeli prime minister] Golda Meir once said: “[W]e will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.” That says it all. Sometimes, I think Israel should be studied by psychologists – maybe then the world would finally understand the madness we live under.
18 August 2025
I caught a ride to Deir al-Balah with a friend – it felt like an act of daring: cars altered to carry extra people, trailers clinging on like lifeboats. You hold on with everything you have, because if you don’t, you could fall into the open road and be lost.
Near al-Nabulsi Square I saw a “hizam nari” – a ribbon of fire across the sky. Fighter jets carved a line of explosions above Gaza City, one after another; ash clouds rose and everything below them was erased. I counted five, six rockets – then stopped counting because counting felt useless. I have to find shelter for my family – an apartment, a garage, any small place. My mind keeps slipping, I forget things, I forget plans – the chaos steals them. All I feel is a tight, small panic and the hollow hope that we will still be here the next day.
19 August 2025
Yesterday, I finally managed to get a garage – 1,500 shekels, about £335 a month. That’s the cheapest you can find, because demand is high while houses and buildings are bombed to the ground. This “garage” has almost no roof. The landlord even offered me a tiny apartment for 2,500 shekels – honestly, not even a flat in Dubai costs that much. In wars and crises people become more aggressive, more selfish, eager to profit from others’ misery. And maybe that’s “normal”, or rather the expected behaviour of someone who has lived through two years of forced displacement, expulsion, famine – especially inside the world’s largest prison.
So I began setting up my new home – cleaning, arranging, trying to make it livable. I cannot allow myself even a second to think about my old room before the genocide, my box-spring bed, my gaming desk, the air conditioner, our house … I cannot let nostalgia take over. I just keep moving. Forward, forward – never looking back.
28 August 2025
For a week now I’ve been without my parents. Despite what my father said initially, they cling to hope – or to denial – believing that all the back-and-forth between the Qataris, Americans, Egyptians and Israelis means Gaza City won’t be evacuated. So they refuse to leave. For two years the world has done as it pleases while we drown, and we clutch at the smallest, most obvious lies – the little straws that keep us breathing. The cruel truth is the Israelis were never coy about their aims: “We will destroy Gaza.” They did. “We will resettle you.” They did. “We will cut off food and water.” They did. “We will enter Rafah.” All eyes turned there. [US President Joe] Biden said no – they did it anyway. What comes next? Gaza City, my home. It will be emptied, become a wasteland like Rafah. I’m stealing a few quiet days now – a brief, fragile peace I’ve earned.
9 September 2025
My parents are finally with me. We turned the garage into a home – rooms, a little private space. Of course the walls are just plastic tarpaulins. I managed to get online for a moment. It has come to this: the IDF has issued a forced displacement order for all of Gaza City, including the western part. People have no energy, no money, no will to leave their homes – many would rather die than go out.
This afternoon our neighbour told us the Israelis even bombed Qatar. OMG. They have no limits any more. Qatar – with the largest American military base in the Middle East – was reportedly hit by a power allied with the US. I think it’s clear what comes next and what it means for Gaza’s people: genocide until the last breath. They’ve been given carte blanche.
15 September 2025
My mother’s birthday – another quiet celebration under inhuman circumstances. Things have eased a little, but this is not the life we were meant to live. My phone showed me photos from her birthday in 2022: a homemade cake and my favourite New York cheesecake. I remember giving her Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – we burned it for bread at the end of 2023 because we had no gas or wood to bake. What would Orwell think of us now? I like to imagine he’d forgive us. I wiped my tears in secret and kept going. Deir al-Balah is getting fuller and fuller. People are exhausted: they don’t want to die, but many feel they already have.
I held my mother’s hand, kissed it, and whispered “Happy birthday”. She has been sick for days. I wrote her a letter and apologised because I don’t have a single cent for a cake (which would cost about $70) or even a small gift.
21 September 2025
Countries like the UK and Australia have recognised Palestine as a state – why now and to what end? Israel continues to bomb us, the genocide goes on. But now we can officially die as Palestinian people, we have a state. How nice.
After all this suffering, so many countries that have denied for nearly two years that the systematic destruction of a population was taking place in Gaza are suddenly speaking up. Actors, singers and others join in because it’s become mainstream. Before, people would shrug and say, “Oh no, I don’t know enough about the Middle East, it’s too sensitive for me to comment.” Hypocrites.
25 September 2025
Same cruel routine, day after day – people die from hunger, from weakness, from the rockets that never stop. A man not far from us died recently. At first I thought it must have been the usual horror – a raid, a stray bullet. But no. He simply collapsed. His heart stopped. I still can’t believe how ordinary his death felt, how quickly a life can vanish and leave only a hollow silence. I was stunned, like I’d been anaesthetised to this kind of loss and suddenly woke up.
My day is a map of survival: fetch water, scavenge for firewood, bake bread that barely fills a stomach. In the little time left, I search for scholarships – a small hope, it might be the only way out of this prison. But they ask for English tests; they know there are no test centres here. Online exams? Impossible: no stable internet, no valid passports to verify our identity. How can we prove who we are when the world has destroyed our papers and our connections?
I am tired to my bones.
English (US)