Why I won’t stop telling Gaza’s stories

I've grown accustomed to a certain look—the wide eyes of children when they see me, wearing a journalist's vest and holding a microphone. It's not curiosity, but a hope, a fragile and desperate hope that perhaps I hold the answers they lack.

"When will this war end?" a boy once asked, tugging at my sleeve while I was filming at a shelter near his home. He looked no older than five, barefoot and covered in dust. His friends surrounded him, watching me as if I held the secret key to the future. "When can we go home?" they asked.

I didn't know what to say. I never do. Because, like them, I am also displaced. Like them, I don't know when, or even if, this war will end. But in their eyes, I seem to be the one who knows. Someone who, just by being there with a camera, can change things. So, they cling to me. They follow me through the rubble, down broken streets, asking questions I can't answer. Sometimes, they say nothing, just walking quietly beside me as if my presence alone is enough to fill the silence left by war.

I can't count the number of times a mother has pulled me aside after an interview, gripped my hand tightly, and whispered, "Please...can you help us?" Their voices tremble, not with anger, but with exhaustion—a deep, bone-weary exhaustion. They don't ask for much, just for a few more blankets, some soap, medicine for their children. And I stand there, the camera still rolling, nodding, trying to explain that I'm here to tell their stories, not to provide aid. But what is a story to a mother who doesn't even have a mattress, let alone something for her newborn?

Every time I sit down to write, these moments replay in my mind, like echoes—each face, each voice. With every word I write, I wonder if it will make a difference. I wonder if the people who read my words, who watch my reports, will understand that behind the politics and the headlines, there are scenes like these: a woman washing her baby's clothes in sewage water, a boy scavenging through piles of trash for something to sell, a girl who can't go to school because she can't afford sanitary pads.

I don't report on politics; I don't need to. The war speaks for itself in the smallest details. It's in the crisscrossed feet under the tents, in the families crammed into spaces too small to breathe. It's in the children's coughs at night, their chests heavy with dampness and cold. It's in the fathers standing by the sea, staring into the distance as if the waves could carry away their burdens. There is a sadness here that doesn't scream, it lingers in every corner of life, gentle and persistent.

One day, while reporting near a neglected tent area, a girl handed me a drawing she'd made on the back of an old cereal box. The drawing was simple—flowers and birds—but in the middle, she had drawn a house, whole and undamaged. "This is my house," she told me, "before." "Before." The word carries so much weight in Gaza. Before the airstrikes, before the displacement, before the war stripped everything away, leaving only survival.

I write these stories not because I believe they will end the war, but because they are proof that we existed. That even in the face of everything, we held onto something. Dignity, resilience, hope. I often think of a scene: a woman standing at the entrance of her shelter, running her fingers through her daughter's hair because she couldn't afford a comb. She hummed a lullaby softly, drowning out the terrible sounds of nearby airstrikes and distant shelling. Her daughter nestled against her, eyes half-closed, safe for the moment.

I don't know what peace looks like, but I think it might look like that. This is the Gaza I know. This is the Gaza I write about. No matter how many times I tell these stories, I will continue to tell them because they matter. Because, I hope that one day, when a child asks me when the war will end, I can finally give them the answer they have been waiting for. Until then, I will carry their voices, and I will make sure the world hears them.