Palestine Letter: Reporting on one crisis after another

There is a strange cyclical pattern to how crises surface, fade away, and reemerge in Gaza. After reporting on Gaza for nearly a decade, it’s become clear to me that the cycle isn’t arbitrary. It is part of a deliberate Israeli policy.

I write throughout the year, every week, and sometimes every day. There are no real days off in journalism. Even when we manage to take a break from work, the news and the stories do not stop.

And when a story lands on our desks but we aren’t able to report on it right away, as journalists, it does not mean we are detached from it. We keep it in the back of our minds. We start looking into it, gathering information, and following its developments because we know we will return to working on the same story soon. Because the story has no end date.

Over these years of reporting, I have noticed a striking pattern in how these crises unfold: they keep the Strip permanently on the edge of deprivation and need, making it impossible for its residents to manage their lives without depending on the occupying power.

This is not a coincidence. It is an Israeli policy that has been pursued to keep this small strip of land permanently under Israeli control. Over the years, I have watched this pattern repeat itself. Every year, the number of crises changes, but the pattern remains.

Several medical crises can, for example, emerge over the course of a single year. It begins with shortages of medicines. Then comes the danger created by those shortages: patients whose lives depend on medications that are no longer available. Then oxygen stations stop operating. Then come the critical medical cases that need to be transferred outside Gaza for treatment.

 One crisis follows another. And when the medical crisis, which is rarely resolved so much as it is allowed to fade — because the underlying needs remain unmet — another crisis replaces it. 

Drinking water becomes scarce, and people struggle to obtain enough for their daily needs. After the alarms are sounded and Israel eases access to water ever so slightly, the crisis begins to recede. Then a food crisis emerges. Then, as that crisis begins to fade, there is a waste crisis: garbage piling up, landfills overflowing, and sanitation systems becoming increasingly inadequate.

And so it continues, without end, one crisis after another.

The Israeli occupation has deliberately kept Gaza in this position of permanent need.

Even before the genocide, these crises would emerge at particular intervals. The siege would tighten, the list of prohibited items would grow.

But people adapt to every circumstance. That does not mean they accept or welcome what is happening to them, but they learn to survive with whatever remains. They adjust, endure, and remain.

History shows that occupations do not last forever. A people that remains rooted in its land, that loves it, and that is willing to endure such enormous sacrifices cannot be kept under occupation indefinitely.

Gaza has endured crisis after crisis for decades. And yet, it remains.