The Electronic Intifada 25 September 2025
Mass displacement from Gaza City. (Ibrahim Nofal)
Riyad Nofal, a photographer from Jabaliya, has been displaced 14 times since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began almost two years ago.
Despite being constantly uprooted, Riyad remained within Gaza City most of the time. That changed earlier this month.
After the Israeli army launched a major ground invasion, threatening to take control of Gaza City, Riyad forcibly relocated to Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
Riyad, 69, worked as a photographer for 43 years and owned a studio, 12 shops and 14 apartments. All were located in Jabaliya, northern Gaza.
On 7 October 2023, Riyad’s eldest son Omar was killed in a massacre in Jabaliya and left behind nine children. Riyad has been taking care of them since then.
Another son of Riyad, the photojournalist Mohammad, was killed alongside his renowned colleague Anas Al-Sharif and five other journalists when Israel targeted their tent near Al-Shifa Hospital on 10 August 2025.
On 22 June 2025, Riyad’s wife died from wounds inflicted when Israeli shrapnel pierced her head a few days before.
For almost two years of Israeli genocide, Riyad “refused to abandon everything” he owned and leave Gaza City.
“But in the end,” Riyad said, “it was all destroyed – I lost my wife, my two sons and even my health.”
Riyad cannot bear all this loss, feeling like he has “aged 10 years in two years of war.”
“Sometimes I wish for death,” Riyad said, “because it is easier than this life.”
Homeland
To Riyad, Gaza City means life.
If the war ends, he said, he wants to return to Gaza City and pitch a tent even if on the rubble – only there will he feel alive again, surrounded by the scent of the people he loves.
Montaser Terzi, a 37-year-old Christian from Gaza City, shares the same feelings.
“Every time I hear the words ‘occupation of Gaza,’ I feel shaken inside,” Terzi told The Electronic Intifada.
For him, being displaced from the city – with Israel occupying it directly – is an existential fear.
“My life is tied to my home – the voices of my mother and father, family gatherings and the aroma of food during the holidays,” Terzi said.
When Israel attempted a ground invasion on Gaza in October 2023, Terzi found refuge at the Latin Catholic Church when bombardments grew too close to his house in al-Daraj neighborhood.
“Christians have ancient roots in this City,” he said. “It’s not just about life and death, but about our existence here.”
But this time, Terzi – again taking refuge at the Latin Catholic Church – is afraid the Christian community will lose their churches, memories and their presence.
Despite the destruction, people always returned. But this time, Terzi said, people are afraid they won’t be allowed back.
“Gaza is my homeland – I cannot imagine my life away from it,” Terzi said. “I believe we will return no matter what.”
Collective memory
For 22 months of Israeli genocide, Ahmad Mortaja, 30, a child protection and psychosocial support coordinator from the Shujaiya neighborhood, has refused to leave Gaza City and relocate to southern parts of the Strip.
He lost his two houses in Shujaiya at the first months of the genocide. The first was the house he was raised in and the second was the one his father had built and they grew up in.
“Our existence has become meaningless – we own nothing in this city,” he said. “The war has devoured both our homes, not caring about us or the memories and belongings we carried inside.”
Though he has been displaced within Gaza City itself, each time Mortaja left, he said, he left a piece of himself behind.
Before he stopped counting, Mortaja had been displaced more than 15 times. Displaying dark humor, his friends joke that he deserves an award for being the most displaced.
Mortaja’s last displacement was on 1 June 2025.
“I’m displaced in the west of the city, in one of the high-rise towers, to which eyes have recently turned,” he said, referring to Israel’s campaign to level Gaza’s high-rise towers.
People in Gaza City are, Mortaja said, exhausted and move south driven by their fear.
Mortaja and his family – just like the majority in Gaza that feel helpless – couldn’t find a place for themselves to evacuate to in the south.
What shapes the people of Gaza City, Mortaja said, is their memory.
His greatest fear is losing his memory – and with it, losing the city itself, along with himself, his friends and his family.
“If I leave to the south,” he said, “I won’t be able to convince my memory to leave with me – it will surely flee through the city streets, beyond my reach.”
Bittersweet love
Memory for Nadra al-Tibi is also what roots her in Gaza City.
Al-Tibi, 25, a freelance correspondent for China’s CGTN, left her house in Nasr neighborhood and is still displaced in Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, refusing to leave the city altogether.
“Every corner of the house holds a small memory: a laugh hanging in the corners, my mother’s prayers in the kitchen, my first steps in the hallway and the winter nights,” al-Tibi said. “It’s all these simple details that keep me rooted in this place.”
Al-Tibi – who was displaced at least six times inside Gaza City and then to southern Gaza for 400 days – felt like each displacement involved leaving pieces of her heart behind.
When a ceasefire was announced on 19 January 2025, and the road north reopened on 27 January, al-Tibi returned to Gaza City.
For al-Tibi, Gaza City is a mirror of her dreams, but it is also a mirror of her patience and hunger.
“Gaza is an open wound that teaches people the meaning of life and resistance and makes them believe that identity can grow even from beneath the rubble,” she said.
If Gaza City is lost, al-Tibi fears she will lose her sense of belonging – a sense that Gaza, despite its cruelty, is her home.
With every news story about a journalist being targeted, al-Tibi remembers that she could be the next journalist to be targeted.
“This feeling never leaves me,” she said. “But instead of silencing me, it makes me cling to my language, my pen and my voice more.”
The invasion of Gaza City, al-Tibi said, is not only about stealing the land, about stealing street names, the voices of children in the alleys and memory itself.
Sara Awad, an English literature student, says she is losing her memory after leaving Gaza City.
“I feel like my memories are disappearing and parts of me are shrinking,” Awad said.
On 11 September, Awad, 21, left her house in Sheikh Radwan, a neighborhood in the northern part of Gaza City, where she lived for 20 years, and moved to a tent in al-Zawayda, central Gaza.
Awad thought Israel’s campaign to invade and take direct control of Gaza City was just a “psychological war,” never believing she would be forced out of her neighborhood or house.
“This is my home, my room, our kitchen, our living room, our stairs, our roof and our garden, where my grandfather used to plant crops before he died,” she said. “I feel like Israel is occupying me and killing me – not just my city.”
Awad’s grandfather, Rafeeq, was 73 when he succumbed to cancer on 21 October 2023 due to the lack of vital treatment.
Israel is trying to make people in Gaza hate living there by bombing the places they love and belong to – restaurants, cafes, schools, universities and mosques.
“I hear [on the news] about the blowing up of houses in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood,” Awad said, referring to Israel’s use of explosive-laden robots to obliterate houses.
Though Awad has been displaced three times since October 2023, this displacement, she said, is different and worse since there is no coming back to the house.
“We will return because the land is ours, but I have no hope that I will return and find my house,” Awad said.
In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, the protagonist declares: “I must be cruel only to be kind.” He meant that causing pain could at times serve a greater good.
Gaza and Hamlet are alike.
“Gaza is the mother who can be cruel to her children,” said Ahmad Mortaja. “Yet no matter what she does to them, her children continue to love her and remain attached to her.”
It is a phoenix, Mortaja said, always rising from the ashes, declaring that hope still lies beneath the rubble.
“When Gaza rises again,” Mortaja said, “we must dust it off and live once more.”
Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, once wrote: “We have on this land what makes life worth living.”
Mortaja affirmed: “And who deserves life more than us.”
Huda Skaik is a student of English and a journalist based in Gaza.
