In Gaza, the war of death may have ended – but the war for life has begun

The war of death has ended, but it has not taken its tools with it. The drones have mostly fallen silent, but the silence they have left behind is louder than the bombing. In Gaza today, no one fears death, because everyone has experienced it up close. What people truly fear is life itself: a life without homes, hospitals, schools, electricity, water, or security.

After two years of genocide, when the Israeli army withdrew and people began to return to their cities, they did not return to their homes, but to piles of rubble. Entire neighbourhoods have disappeared, and street landmarks no longer mean anything.

Gaza, once bustling with life, had become a faceless city, as if it had just emerged from the heart of a never-ending earthquake.

The siege on Gaza may have ended, but the battle for survival continues

Those who survived the bombing have found themselves in a new battle: the battle for survival.

Men sleep in the streets because Israel has reduced their homes to ashes, and mothers try to protect their children from the cold and darkness in torn tents.

The nights in Gaza are long, without electricity or peace of mind. They are interrupted only by the sound of a child crying because they are hungry or afraid, or because the light had completely disappeared and only darkness remained in their view.

In some hospitals that are still functioning, patients crowd together on the floor, waiting their turn in rooms without medicine or light. Doctors are working under pressure beyond their capacity, performing operations by the light of mobile phones or without anaesthesia. They face an impossible equation: who to save first? The wounded or the children? Those they can save or those who are about to die? Yet, in the midst of this devastation, life is being reborn.

In every destroyed street, there are those who are trying to build something, stone by stone, or a tent that can withstand the wind. Because the war that ended militarily has not ended humanely. Now, a war of a different kind has begun, a war to redefine the meaning of life in a city destroyed to its very foundations, a war without truce, fought by an unarmed people with all their remaining determination.

To live is an act of resistance

Gaza today does not ask for pity, but for justice. It does not ask only for aid, but for the right to live like others. It asks to sleep without fear, to open a school, or to light a small lamp at night without it being considered a luxury.

The war of death ended when the rockets stopped, but the war of life began, a daily war against poverty, against darkness, against oblivion, against the injustice and silence of the world.

The war of death ended, but the war of life began: a war that is not fought by an army or managed by political decisions, but led by a defenceless people who only want to live.

This war is the most difficult, because it is not measured by the number of martyrs, but by the number of those who continue to try to survive every day. In Gaza, life is not just a stolen right, it is resistance.

Feature image via BBC News/Youtube.