Nowara Diab was trying to drown out the sounds of airstrikes by listening to music, but it was not enough to shake the unsettled feeling in her gut. <\/p>\n
Then her phone rang. It was a friend, who said they had heard that Maimana Jarada \u2013 Diab\u2019s best friend \u2013 and her family had been killed by\u00a0Israeli bombardment. <\/p>\n
Her stomach was in knots as she felt herself panicking. Diab called Jarada\u2019s number repeatedly but when there was no answer, it dawned on her that it was true \u2013 Jarada had been killed. <\/p>\n
The 20-year-old says she broke down in tears as she felt the walls close in around her. The pain was even more intense for Diab because she had learned only 10 days earlier that another friend, Abraham Saidam, had also been killed by Israeli airstrikes. <\/p>\n
\u201cLiving without them is the worst thing I\u2019ve ever felt,\u201d Diab said. \u201cMy heart aches every single day thinking that they\u2019re not here and they\u2019re not going to be here for me anymore, it pains me.\u201d <\/p>\n
She recalls how she froze in disbelief and started crying when she received the text message about Saidam. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother looked at me to ask me what was wrong. I just covered my mouth with my hands and I was silent, everything was a blur and I was in complete shock.\u201d <\/p>\n
As Israel\u2019s war approaches its fourth month, sustained bombardment by Israeli forces in Gaza has had\u00a0a devastating impact on civilians there. United Nations Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres condemned the \u201cutterly unacceptable\u201d killing of civilians, renewing calls for an \u201cimmediate humanitarian ceasefire\u201d to relieve the suffering of Palestinians in the strip, after the death toll surpassed 25,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. <\/p>\n
Throughout Israel\u2019s war, launched in response to the October 7 Hamas attacks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly said that it only targets Hamas fighters, not civilians. <\/p>\n
The enclave is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with about 2.2 million inhabitants. <\/p>\n
At the outset of the war, Diab watched as bombs fell near her home in Gaza City. She and her family knew they had to leave for their own safety. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat night was dreadful, it was so scary, I was sure I was going to die,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
After fleeing multiple times, Diab and her family are now staying in Rafah, southern Gaza, and are among the nearly 1.9 million people displaced across the territory, according to data from the\u00a0United Nations\u2019 Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). <\/p>\n
The Israeli bombardment and the ensuing humanitarian crisis have made the situation in the enclave unbearable, with the UN children\u2019s agency, UNICEF, saying conditions for children are a\u00a0\u201cliving hell.\u201d\u00a0The UN agency has described Gaza as the most\u00a0dangerous place in the world\u00a0to be a child and said the ongoing violence is exposing young people to devastating\u00a0emotional trauma and psychological harm. <\/p>\n
Walking through the streets, Diab said, she looks at the faces of fellow <\/strong>residents of Gaza\u00a0and sees nothing but sadness and pain. <\/p>\n She says losing her best friends and being forced to leave behind the life she\u2019s known has impacted her own mental health. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m unable to feel anything, I don\u2019t feel happy or sad or anything,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know why but all of this has consumed my energy, I cry every now and then but not the way I used to cry before, it\u2019s very brief.\u201d <\/p>\n Before the war, Diab was in her final year of college studying English and French literature at Al Azhar University. Like most young\u00a0people, she enjoyed spending time with her friends and eating tasty food in the city. <\/p>\n Sometimes, when Diab closes her eyes, she can still remember the faint smell of her family home in northern Gaza, destroyed by bombing since October 7. \u201cEven the flaws hold memories,\u201d she said. \u201cIf my little sister drew something on the walls, it made my mother mad but it still holds a memory.\u201d <\/p>\n Diab says she longs for the kind of problems she had before the war, like missing the bus for college or being bored in lectures. \u201cI\u2019m not able to do this anymore because my college was bombed, my house was bombed and I lost my best friend,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Diab describes her situation as worse than a nightmare because she\u2019s unable to wake up from it. <\/p>\n \u201cI laugh at myself when I say \u2018my life\u2019 now, because this is not my life, this is far away from my life,\u201d she continued. \u201cThis is a sneak peek into hell.\u201d <\/p>\n There\u2019s rarely a moment when Jarada and Saidam leave Diab\u2019s mind, she says, and she thinks of them whenever she looks through photos on her phone or sees other people with their friends. <\/p>\n \u201cI just need her (Jarada) more than ever right now, but I know that she is in a better place,\u201d\u00a0Diab said. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd I know that Abraham is happy now, I just know it, but I miss them.\u201d <\/p>\n Jarada painted a sunflower for Diab\u2019s birthday last year. Diab says she accepted it unaware that this would be her friend\u2019s last gift to her before she died at age 20. <\/p>\n When Diab and her family fled Gaza City, she had to leave the painting behind. <\/p>\n At college, Diab\u2019s interest in the arts drew her to participate in a theater group, where she became good friends with Saidam after initially thinking he was quiet. <\/p>\n \u201cHe even looked like an introvert, but then we found out he\u2019s an extrovert and was so funny and so exceptional,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Diab recalls how they both participated in a play based on Homer\u2019s \u201cOdyssey.\u201d Saidam played King Odysseus and would make everybody laugh, she said. <\/p>\n The day Diab learned of her 27-year-old friend\u2019s death, she cried a lot, but resolved to be strong because there was nothing more she could do, she said. <\/p>\n In Rafah, all Diab tries to do is to survive another day, she said, searching for essential items like cooking gas and water, both in very short supply. <\/p>\n \u201cCan you imagine if you live your life without water? The most basic thing, just to drink, just to keep living,\u201d said Diab. \u201cNow everyone is being killed and if you\u2019re not going to die from (airstrikes) we\u2019re going to die from being hungry or thirsty.\u201d <\/p>\n But despite everything that is happening, she says she will never forget the generosity and kindness of neighbors where they\u2019ve sought refuge in Rafah and Khan Younis. <\/p>\n A neighbor\u00a0<\/strong>in Rafah would give them plates of food and let Diab\u2019s family shower at her home. \u201cTo see someone giving so much like this under these circumstances is surprising and she\u2019s so nice,\u201d Diab said. <\/p>\n \u201c(Another family) came over and offered water to shower and to charge our phones and within an hour, our phones came back fully charged,\u201d she said\u00a0\u2013\u00a0no small thing in Gaza, where fuel shortages mean electricity is hard to access. <\/p>\n Although aid has entered the enclave, it has done so under challenging conditions and the UN has repeatedly warned that the volume getting in remains\u00a0\u201cwoefully inadequate.\u201d <\/p>\n Diab says extreme thirst has driven her family to drink water suitable only for laundry or showering. <\/p>\n Families across Gaza are having to consume unclean water because of Israel\u2019s siege, adding to the risk of ill health. Earlier this month, UNICEF\u00a0warned\u00a0that the intensifying conflict has threatened the lives of over 1.1 million children, putting them in a deadly cycle of violence, malnutrition and disease. <\/p>\n With airstrikes pummeling southern Gaza, Diab fears for her safety in Rafah, saying there\u2019s not an inch in the enclave which is truly safe, despite Israel\u2019s declaration of a safe zone and regular announcements of times when they will stop bombing so people can move safely. <\/p>\n And although she wishes the war to be over, she lacks hope for the future. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to see Gaza City wiped out, we\u2019re gonna see it with our own eyes, which will be heartbreaking,\u201d she said of any future return to her home. <\/p>\n \u201cImagine going back, after all of this is over and there\u2019s going to be nothing to go back to, not a college, not a house, nothing. So even when this is over, there is more agony and pain waiting for us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Nowara Diab was trying to drown out the sounds of airstrikes by listening to music, but it was not enough to shake the unsettled feeling in her gut. Then her phone rang. It was a friend, who said they had heard that Maimana Jarada \u2013 Diab\u2019s best friend \u2013 and her family had been killed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018A sneak peek into hell\u2019<\/h2>\n
Best friends<\/h2>\n
\u2018Woefully inadequate\u2019 aid<\/h2>\n