The first days of 2026: Gaza awakens to tents, memories of genocide, and a wait for life

The year 2026 did not knock on Gaza’s doors with laughter or celebration. It entered on tiptoe, as if afraid of awakening a pain that had not yet subsided.

No glasses raised in Gaza

At the first dawn of the new year, no glasses were raised in celebration in Gaza. Instead, tent canvases were lifted to check what warmth remained. Clocks were not reset to welcome a different year, but to count another night that passed without bombing.

Here, more than two million people live in less than half the area of the Strip, as if geography has narrowed for its inhabitants. Nearly half of them have lost their homes, not on paper, but in memory; homes that have become rubble, and addresses that have become images stuck in the mind. Israel’s genocide consumed nearly 80% of the buildings and infrastructure, setting Gaza back many years, where survival itself has become a daily project.

By the beginning of 2026, the tent was no longer just a temporary shelter, but a whole way of life.

A thin piece of fabric separated the family from the cold and heat, and from long nights where the sound of the wind mingled with the memory of the bombing. The sector needs around 300,000 tents, but only 20,000 have actually arrived, leaving hundreds of thousands of families exposed to the elements and waiting for the unknown.

Water, which should be the most basic of human rights, has become a difficult journey. Children carry containers larger than themselves, and women wait for hours for drops of water that may not even be drinkable. Electricity is rarely available, so nights are plunged into darkness, and hospitals run on generators, as if life itself were hanging by a thread.

No new beginnings – only more death

In hospitals, the new year does not bring a new beginning. There is a shortage of medicines, not enough beds, and doctors working with weary hearts and hands that never rest. The chronically ill count their days in pain, and the wounded wait for treatment that may never come, under a siege that constricts the body as much as it constricts the place.

As for the children, they are Gaza’s most painful story. With the first days of 2026, many of them do not carry school bags, but buckets of water, and they do not run in playgrounds, but between tents. Israel has destroyed their schools or they have been turned into shelters, and their childhood has been postponed, like everything else in this land.

The economy is virtually at a standstill, and business has ground to a halt with the closure of factories and markets. Families that used to rely on daily income now depend on scarce aid, if it arrives at all. One meal a day has become an achievement, and dignity is tested every morning in the queues.

Yet Gaza still dreams. Its dream for 2026 is not luxury or distant wishes, but something very simple: a day without bombing, a child who can sleep without fear, a return to normal life as it once was. Gaza asks for nothing more than its natural right… to live.

Featured image via the Canary