Elisabeth Rowland
Arwa and I are very similar. Both of us women navigating our mid-twenties, contemplating our academic and professional futures. We both enjoy coconut scented shampoo, write our to-do lists on the back of our hands, and are close with our mothers. In fact, we have a group chat with my mum, where the three of us share photos of the sunset, from Skåne, Wales, and Gaza.
It’s a comforting reminder that we are all under the same sky. We are also, of course, worlds apart.
I met Arwa in May, when I started Arabic lessons. Part of the puzzle of resistance is the preservation of language, and I was searching for a teacher from Palestine. An English literature graduate, Arwa is one of six siblings and lives with her family in Khan Younis. They have been displaced six times since the 7th of October.
Over the past five months, we have spoken almost every day. I am grateful for the insight into Palestinian idiosyncrasies and for insight into day-to-day life in the enclave. I will never forget Arwa postponing our second lesson since she and her family had been ordered by the Israelis to evacuate. Having watched the genocide unfold over the eighteen months prior, this was the first time I had been confronted by the consequences of Israel’s aggression so directly. It brought home the fact that behind every single story of displacement, injury, family and death, there is a regular person with the same needs and emotions as you and me, living a life of forced resistance.
The combination of the mainstream media’s passive voice or outright vilification of Palestinians, and the shock factor favoured by algorithms, obscures the human core of Gaza that has been so shaken. In an attempt to cut through this and to foster an understanding of the realities of life amongst a larger audience, Arwa recently shared some of her reflections with the International Human Rights Law cohort here in Lund.
A natural and evocative storyteller, despite some technical difficulties and a location change, Arwa gave a candid and in-depth account of what has been changed, lost or restricted over the last two years. Grounding the discussion in day-to-day life, albeit in the context of something incomprehensible, Arwa bridged some of the disconnect between our studies and activism, and reality on the ground.
I share some of the reflections that emerged from our interview here, and I urge the reader to meditate on the examples, to try and envisage living without so much of what we take for granted. I also encourage everybody to continue to seek out and platform Palestinians giving their own accounts. At some point, international journalists will be allowed back into Gaza, and mainstream media will be flooded with images of the extent of the destruction. However, Israel has killed over 240 Palestinian journalists since the genocide began, and the world has treated Gazans with incredulity. It is thus imperative that we do not forget that they have been telling their own stories for the past two years.
Living inside what can best be described as a large plastic bag is dehumanising. The last time she lived in a house, Arwa felt a sense of security. Airstrikes always posed a threat, but at least concrete can withstand the rain. In a house, you don’t fear waking up feeling like you’re being drowned by a torrential downpour that collapses your tent, or that you will watch your belongings being swept away in a flood. Entering the third winter since the genocide began, these fears are once again augmented.
Notwithstanding the doubt about whether you will live to see the next day, sleep is scarce in Gaza. Staying in a house makes it easier to find something proper to sleep on, or at least to rest your back against. Arwa’s friend from Gaza City described the relief of returning home and finding her house still standing. For 18 months, she had slept on a blanket, rolled up at the top to make a pillow. On finding her mattress, she had remarked, “I feel human again, I cannot believe that the bed that held me as I grew up is here. I never thought I would be sitting on this bed again thinking ‘I am human.’”
Gaza can also be a place without light. If your phone isn’t charged – and there’s a high chance that it isn’t, since power outages are common and sockets scarce – after 6 p.m., you are plunged into darkness. If your phone is charged, then at best you can rely on your torch. That’s to get ready for bed, to make an evening meal, to pray and to read. For most people, there is also no internet; it is only accessible for those with solar panels and routers. The lack of power also means that it is necessary to hand-wash clothes. This is tedious at the best of times, and is made worse by a scarcity of hot water. Denial of the convenience of modern living in this way is also reflective of the broader effects of the siege. Once Arwa told me that when she was handwashing heavy clothes, she was thinking about all the things that she could have been doing instead- reading, learning, seeing friends. These opportunity costs reflect profoundly the way that in confining a people to the activities necessary for bare survival, their capacity for fostering development, connection and growth is also curtailed.
This is also reflected in the impact on education. Arwa’s sisters were 10 and 12 when the aggression began, and do not know anything about picking up a pen and writing. She needed to teach her own students how to learn, their focus impeded by thoughts of their families’ survival, hunger and exhaustion. High schoolers had to sit their exams after two years without formal classes, still determined and sat crowded around Wi-Fi sources.
Education and language are central to the preservation of culture, as are traditions themselves, which in Palestine often centre around food. In Palestine, every occasion should feature meals cooked with love, but food has, of course, also been weaponised by Israel. Prices in the market are volatile. At one point in the summer, Arwa had mentioned that a single meal had cost $70. Further, since the tents do not have refrigerators, and there is little fresh food, children born since October 2023 know nothing but canned food. When food is made available and prices come down, there is a fear of getting used to it, since it can change again so quickly. The fact that food can be taken away just as easily as it is made available is illustrative of the control Israel exerts over every aspect of life under siege, fostering hypervigilance and compounding the distress that the threat to life brings.
Arwa also spoke of displacement. While there is not space to give a full account of that here, the reader is invited to consider what making the long journey on foot, for up to ten hours at a time, might look like for disabled people, or mothers with young children, or in the middle of winter, for those who have had to leave most of their clothes behind.
In a Q&A following the talk, Arwa was asked what change she wishes for Gaza for the next year. She mentioned the work beginning on cleaning the rubble, for injured people to get medical care and a wish that Gazans receive psychological help – the world cannot expect them to go on as normal after everything that has happened. However, after the talk, Arwa reflected that she is not thinking in terms of the next year; that is exhausting. It is about the relief of the moment, seeking respite from the constant hypervigilance. I hope that in this brief overview of Arwa’s reflections, the difficulty of achieving this when absolutely every aspect of life is touched by the violence.
In terms of practical support, Arwa suggested that something we can offer as students is reaching out to Palestinian students to support in Scholarship applications, and, where possible, to hire Palestinians – whether as language tutors or for other remote work. Ultimately, it is imperative that we never stop speaking about Palestine.
LINK TO GOFUNDME: https://www.gofundme.com/f/arwa-and-her-family-to-leave-the-gaza-strip