I write from the heart of Gaza. This place is not just a geographical zone: it is a living memory made of streets, voices, mosques, olive trees, and stories. When these places are destroyed, it is an entire collective identity that is under attack.
On January 29, 2024, my family and I endured nine days of siege. Tanks surrounded our neighborhood, bulldozers tore apart the streets, helicopters roared above our heads. Soldiers humiliated my father, my brother, my uncle, and my cousins before blowing up our home. This was not an accident, but a strategy: to make life impossible and erase every trace of a people.
Even today, massive evacuation orders, indiscriminate bombings, and forced displacements toward so-called “safe zones” — which are themselves bombed — reveal a policy of systematic dispossession. We fear a permanent exile, just like our grandparents in 1948, who died still holding the keys to their homes.
Living like this means learning to savor each act as if it were the last: drinking coffee, watching the sunset, exchanging a farewell glance. But bearing witness is also resistance. I write to say that we are not leaving voluntarily; we are being expelled.
Peace is not impossible. The history of once-unthinkable reconciliations — from France and Germany after 1945 to post-apartheid South Africa — reminds us that hatred is not destiny. But for peace to be real, injustice must first be acknowledged.
I sign these lines from Al-Rimal. If tomorrow I can no longer write, remember this: Gaza was never an empty land. It was a living homeland, loved and inhabited.
Kader Tahri Committed columnist, concerned observer "We must tell things as they are, but refuse to let them be like that."
https://kadertahri.blogspot.com/
