The Electronic Intifada 12 September 2025
The grim scene after yet another Israeli airstrike on Gaza City.
APA imagesEvery morning when I wake up, I think about the front door of our house.
It was blown up in November 2023 when the Israeli army launched its ground invasion of Gaza City’s al-Nasr neighborhood.
I finally decided to repair the door to secure the house from thieves before we relocate.
With news spreading about a complete displacement and tanks only a few kilometers away, it feels as though displacement is inevitable.
Repairing it would have cost me no more than $60 before the genocide, but now it cost about $360.
On 5 September, I brought in a blacksmith around midday so he could run his equipment on solar power.
I stood behind him, watching as he worked.
My neighbor Abu Ahmad, 44, who lives in the same building, passed by laughing.
“Keep your money in your pocket. Don’t bother fixing it,” he told me.
“Who knows if we’ll even find the building still standing? Who knows if we’ll even return to our neighborhood?”
His words struck a truth I didn’t want to face. Still I looked at him and laughed.
That dark humor reflects the tragedy of life in our neighborhood in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops advance toward us day by day.
In October 2024, Israel attempted again – its first attempt was in October 2023 – to invade and forcibly displace people in northern territories in a mass exodus toward southern Gaza.
But that attempt failed.
Israel is trying again – this time with even greater ferocity.
Leaving to the south?
My neighbors’ conversations revolve around a single question: Should we stay and endure, or evacuate to the south?
“Yousef, you didn’t leave the first time,” they ask me. “Will you leave now?”
Others who had previously evacuated to the south – like my neighbor Ziyad – tell me that they prefer “the hell of the north to the paradise of the south.”
I laughed and teased him, saying, “Ziyad, I bet you’ll be the first one heading back there.”
But displacement has never been a choice – it was rather a forced abandonment of your home as danger approached.
Today, however, we have reached a new stage in this war: even displacement has become impossible.
People do not stay here because they feel safe, but because they cannot afford relocating there to a new place.
Maybe some people have started moving their belongings to the south in a precautionary move, with transportation prices soaring as high as $600 per vehicle.
Other people – like my aunt, unable to bear this extremely high cost – have begun selling their furniture and belongings to save some cash.
On 6 September, my aunt – who lives in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood – called my mother to tell her that she was selling her bedroom furniture as firewood for the fire.
The furniture – weighing about 200 kilos – had once cost her around $2,000 when she bought it.
But now she was offered only $2 per kilo – meaning she would get around $400 for all of it.
She kept the rest of the house furniture to burn herself for firewood.
Even if people wanted to move south of the Strip, there isn’t much space there, and if there is, the rent is exorbitant.
Abu Hussam, 52 – my neighbor in the same building I live in – went south looking for an apartment to rent.
He only found one apartment from $1000 to $1,500 monthly rent – a budget beyond Abu Hussam’s ability to afford.
Abu Hussam even went to his previous place in Deir al-Balah, southern Gaza, when he first time got displaced in November 2023.
He planned to set up a tent again in the same spot as before, but was shocked to find it already taken – with no space left for even a single tent.
A tent now costs about $900.
Even if I could afford one, I don’t know what awaits me there as I have never lived in a tent before.
I have never endured water leaking through the tent when it rains, the bitter cold of winter or the suffocating heat of summer.
Bearing in the north?
Staying here is never easy either.
At 6 am, the Israeli “early bird” military begins shelling, bombing and demolishing houses – a routine people have memorized well.
On 7 September, I woke in a panic from the sound of booby-trapped robots being exploded.
I checked the time – 5.30 am.
I wanted to get up and go check on my mom just to find she had already come to my room after hearing the loud sound of the bombing.
“It looks like they are starting the party early,” I joked.
“I told you we should prepare the emergency bags in case we must leave suddenly,” I said.
I could see my mother’s tired looks.
“Not again,” she replied.
“And what should we pack? Summer clothes or winter ones?”
Silent usurped me as my mother was right.
What should we take when we don’t even know if we will actually have any shelter at all?
At noon the same day, I went down to the neighborhood to find most of the people in the street staring at the sky – among them my friend Osama, 24.
I stood next to him and looked up, catching sight of a strange V-shaped drone slowly circling overhead, blaring an automated message ordering people to go south.
Moments later, it dropped leaflets.
I caught one; Osama caught another.
We read that they ordered us to leave northern Gaza.
Osama giggled and said, “Let’s buy some halab and use this paper to wrap them.”
Halab are semolina-based sweets.
I looked at Osama and laughed, thinking he was joking. But he was serious.
Even in the worst moments, we tell jokes and cling to life with humor.
But deep down, I felt the weight of Osama’s message – the coming days will get difficult, so let us enjoy what we have left.
The occupation didn’t just drop their usual eviction order leaflets but maps this time – maps showing the towers they will target next.
Imagine how terrifying it is to see your home circled on a map from the sky?
In a moment, entire families are displaced and entire neighborhoods vanish when that tower is demolished.
One of those towers was the Soussi tower which was destroyed on 6 September – the previous day.
The tower contained 10 apartments belonging to my relatives from the extended Alnono family – each one home to a separate family.
Predestined death
Every day in Gaza, death – ever persona non grata – waits a single step away, poised to snatch our souls.
On 30 August, I was at Branch Hub – a spot in Gaza City’s al-Rimal neighborhood where I regularly go to find electricity and internet – when more than four explosions shook everything around me.
The world went dark and at first I thought we had been hit. Then I realized the building next to us had been struck.
The smoke was so thick I could hardly see.
When I went outside, I saw a girl I had noticed minutes before, standing at the door. She had lost most of her leg; part of it was still attached to her body by a small piece of skin.
She was screaming to me, “My foot! My foot!”
I was frozen, unable to help her. Another girl lay wounded, unable to move after shrapnel struck her waist and foot.
Human remains were scattered everywhere.
In the street, I saw Abu Ahmad – the owner of a small biscuit stand where I often bought snacks – killed.
His son stood nearby, covered in the remains of his father.
The Israeli army later claimed it was the house of Abu Obeida, the spokesperson of Qassam Brigades.
I will never forget that scene when I got out of the hub: furniture scattered across the ground.
People told me that, moments before the strikes, a vehicle had passed by transporting a family and their furniture and belongings to the south.
Seconds later, when the strike hit, the whole family had been killed, and their furniture lay scattered on the ground.
I stood frozen and whispered to myself: “It’s better to stay here than to die on the road to the south.”
I felt that God had granted me a new life at that moment.
I came to the realization – one shared by nearly everyone in Gaza in these trying days – that death awaits me both here in the north and there in the south.
Whether I fix my broken door and remain in northern Gaza or obey Israeli orders and relocate south – whether I carry my summer clothes, my winter ones or even try to take both – death is predestined wherever I go.
Yousef Alnono is a writer from the Gaza Strip.
