“There is not a single day that passes without reading or watching Israelis kill Palestinians,” Eman Hamed, a mother of four, tells Tareq Hajjaj in a Gaza city park. “My 77-year-old mother always says that she has lived her entire life in wars. I was born in wars as well, and my four kids were born in war, so how could I say that the war ended?” 

Amid the latest Israeli onslaught, Gaza’s sole power plant shut down after Israel closed its border crossings with the besieged strip and cut off its fuel supply. “The state of electricity in Gaza is already terrible without the continuous bombardment, and with it darkness becomes another kind of war,” Gaza resident Khaled Hassan tells Mondoweiss.

Twelve Palestinians, including a five-year-old child, were killed after Israeli air strikes targeted a civilian tower and several locations in the besieged Gaza Strip.

For children, home is often the safest place on earth. But every few years in Gaza children’s homes are pushed into the front lines of war.

Cancer patients in Gaza have to overcome two hurdles to secure treatment – Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.

I was able until now to get myself out of sadness when I needed to. This time is different because I’m the one who lost his beloved one, my father. My rock, my idol. The one who I always brought out my best for, to keep him proud. 

Zainab al-Qolaq lost 22 family members during the 2021 war in Gaza. Now, she keeps their memory alive through painting.

“Is it time for this occupation to end? Morally speaking, how much should this military occupation go on, generation after generation?” Said Arikat asks the State Department after another humiliating incident: Israeli soldiers forced a Palestinian woman at a cagelike checkpoint to strip her three-year-old’s tshirt because it pictured a rifle.

Childhood in Gaza includes children gaining their first awareness of siege and occupation.

In his debut collection of poetry, “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza,” Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha writes about everyday life Gaza: the siege, wars, poverty, and unemployment. Mondoweiss interviewed Abu Toha at his home in Gaza City about his collection and the stories behind his poems.