Israel, Gaza, and the ‘power of human existence’

What does it mean to live in a war zone?

For those of us who have never woken up to bomb blasts or endured missile strikes, it’s nearly impossible to imagine. Sure, we’ve seen battle footage and read accounts of the devastation and grief left behind. In today’s ever-connected world, that kind of loss can be felt around the globe. 

But what’s harder to fathom is the sheer will and resilience required to carry on. 

At its heart, that is what the pairing of cover stories in the April 15 Monitor Weekly magazine is all about. Taken together, the two accounts paint a complex portrait of life at war in Israel and the Gaza Strip, as told through the lens of women.

Special correspondent Taylor Luck starts us off in Israel, where the war began with the Oct. 7 attack orchestrated by Hamas.

Israelis have been locked in conflict with Palestinians since the state of Israel was founded in 1948. But for the majority of the population, the conflict felt relatively distant, Taylor tells me. Many Israelis had become inured to the sound of aerial blasts, as the formidable Iron Dome shielded citizens from missile strikes. But the coordinated incursion into towns, kibbutzim, and even a music festival brought the conflict home for Israelis in a way that previous surges in violence have not, Taylor says. 

“Everyone knew someone who was either taken hostage or killed,” says Taylor. As a result, the entire society is now “at war in a way which they never have been before,” he adds.

In our second story, special contributor Ghada Abdulfattah brings us to the Gaza Strip, where 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced by retaliation strikes from Israel. Here, too, people are used to conflict. But the scale and violence of this war mean that Palestinians are also learning anew what it means to scratch out a life in a war zone. Neighborhoods are gone. The threat of famine is a reality. And humanitarian aid is scant. 

It’s a struggle that Ghada knows all too well. She and her family have had to flee their home in Deir al-Balah several times. We’ve published her account of those flights in these pages.

“The United Nations estimates that nearly 2 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are internally displaced. We are now among them,” she wrote in January. “We all have friends who have lost relatives, killed along the so-called safe corridor. We quietly prayed we would not get hit by an airstrike or drive in front of gunfire.”

Yet she reports and she writes so that the world can know and understand what Palestinians are going through. It’s a level of determination that is almost hard to believe – until you read her story. 

That same tenacity, informed by love and tenderness, shines through each account in Ghada’s story this week.

“That is the incredible power of human existence,” says Taylor.