Nedal Hamdouna, a Palestinian journalist, describes in searing detail the reality of what it means to live in Gaza under attack by the Israel Defense Forces in an exclusive dispatch for The Independent.
He and his wife have obeyed military evacuation orders seven times since the attacks began in response to the Hamas atrocities of October 2023. “We’ve criss-crossed the length and breadth of Gaza, trying to escape tanks, fighter jets, drones, and bombs,” he writes.
“We didn’t want to move again, but Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to take full military control of Gaza City. And last week Israel dropped leaflets from planes telling us that if we didn’t evacuate, we could be killed.”
So he told his three-year-old daughter: “We’re going south to camp in a tent. You can play in the sand.” He writes: “She laughed and got excited for the ‘holiday’, packing her favourite knapsack that has a purple stuffed sheep on the front. ‘To the south!’ she says, doing a little dance.”
His attempt to protect his daughter from the reality of war conceals the true nature of their journey to the south of the Gaza Strip; the cost of a tent, the price of renting a barren piece of land to pitch it on, the struggle for the essentials of life; and his own feelings, “a vortex of exhaustion and fear, moving constantly, waiting for the unknown”.
The Independent pledged to refuse to look away from Gaza, and we will continue to report the truth as we see it. This is hard enough in war zones, and it is particularly hard in Gaza, where the Israeli government refuses to allow journalists access – forcing international media to rely on Palestinian journalists such as Nedal.
Plainly, he is giving one side of the story. But unless the Israeli government allows access and does more to protect journalists from outside, we have to rely on voices such as his to give us the best idea of what life is actually like for the 2 million people who live in Gaza.
This is, as we have said repeatedly, a counterproductive war. We fear that Mr Netanyahu is prosecuting it for tactical political reasons, knowing that peace would mean the end of his premiership. We have said from the start that his war aim of destroying Hamas is unrealistic.
Hamas is a militant organisation sustained by an ideology that draws on the politics of Muslim grievance around the world. The Israeli assault on Gaza will only strengthen those beliefs, ensuring that whenever a Hamas leader is assassinated, another, often more ruthless and extreme, will take their place.
That is why we argue that the Israeli strike aimed at the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar was strategically inept. The way to secure the release of the remaining hostages is not to kill the people who are currently negotiating the terms of their release.
We fear that international pressure on Mr Netanyahu is not enough to dissuade him from pursuing a course that is contrary to the interests of the hostages and of the Israeli people more widely. Donald Trump, the US president, disapproved of the strike in Qatar, but will not break with America’s fundamental stance of support for the government of Israel come what may.
We believe that Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, will have come away from his visit to the United Kingdom in the past few days with no doubts about his country’s increasing isolation in world opinion.
But as long as President Trump stands by Mr Netanyahu, there will be no change to the Israeli government’s disastrous policy in Gaza.
The Independent, meanwhile, will continue to do all it can to inform the world about what this counterproductive war means on the ground in Gaza, and to try to keep the eyes of the world trained on the needless suffering there.
