Two Years of Genocide: Gaza Will Remain the Most Beautiful Place on Earth

October 11, 2025

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people continue to return from the south and central Gaza Strip to their homes in Gaza City and the north. (Photo: via QNN)

By Shaimaa Eid

Despite all this pain, hope still lives within us, a small but stubborn hope that refuses to be erased, just as our streets were erased. 

Two years have passed since the genocidal war waged on Gaza, two years that felt like two centuries of pain and loss. In that time, we have lost loved ones, homes, dreams, and even the ability to be shocked by death.

Two years of an Israeli war of extermination that spared nothing and no one, erasing entire families from the records of life. Among those families was mine — the Eid family — which lost its most beautiful sons in a series of brutal crimes. Their names were erased from the rolls of the living, surviving only in the memories of those who remain.

Amid the devastation and chaos, I received the news that my father had been diagnosed with cancer. The pain was not only in the illness itself, but in the helplessness of facing it without access to proper treatment or medication. 

To this day, my father continues to suffer, deprived of the essential doses needed to keep his condition stable. I have watched him endure pain in silence, trying to smile so as not to deepen our sorrow, while we struggle to secure what little medicine remains at an unbearable cost.

My mother, that gentle woman who has carried us all her life, has been exhausted by the war. Her fragile heart could not endure the endless scenes of displacement, bombing, and loss. Today, she suffers from severe heart pain and urgently needs surgery, but like thousands of patients in Gaza, she cannot find the necessary medication or care. All we have are prayers, patience, and a faint hope that keeps us from total collapse.

Since the beginning of the genocide, we have been displaced three times. Each time, we left our home carrying whatever we could, our hearts still heavy with the losses of the previous flight. Displacement here is not simply a move from one place to another — it is a repeated uprooting of body and soul. In the end, we settled in Mawasi Khan Yunis, trying to protect what remains of our family and our dreams.

During these two years, we have also lost many journalist colleagues whom we loved — those who once filled our screens with their images and words, who filled the field with their courage and laughter that eased the weight of our work. We used to see them every day; now only their photos remain on our phones, silent witnesses to the truth that, in Gaza, words are written in blood.

Amid this immense pain, we were struck by an unprecedented famine. We no longer dreamed of the foods we loved, but of a single piece of bread to ease our hunger. We stood in long lines for a bag of flour or a liter of clean water. Hunger became woven into the details of daily life, as our bodies weakened and our spirits dimmed.

It was not only the famine that exhausted us, but the deep psychological wounds this genocide carved into our souls. We are a people who have lived through death and destruction moment by moment. We saw the remains before our eyes, smelled the stench of blood, and heard the screams of children buried beneath the rubble. We tried to hold ourselves together, but inside, so much broke beyond repair.

Fear, terror, and anxiety became part of our everyday existence. The sounds of nearby explosions deafened us; sometimes we temporarily lost our hearing from their sheer intensity. The fiery belt that wrapped Gaza’s sky at night became a familiar sight despite its horror. Houses collapsing beside us reminded us, again and again, that we are only temporary survivors.

In the displacement camps, we live through a slow, deliberate biological genocide. There is no clean water, no hygiene products, no disinfectants. 

Children and women suffer from persistent skin diseases and infections, while Israel continues to restrict the entry of essential supplies needed to preserve even the bare minimum of dignity. When small quantities do enter, they come at prices so high that few can afford them. To stay healthy here has become yet another battle we must fight each day.

Now, after two long years of genocide, and despite every attempt to adapt to the reality of war, life in the displacement tents has become unbearable. There is not enough water, no electricity, and none of the basic necessities of a dignified life. 

The night turns into a harsh test as the cold winds of autumn set in, and the day becomes an exhausting race, searching for food, water, or even a chance to bathe. Children are growing up too soon, and women bear the weight of survival alone, as everyone struggles to hold on to what remains of their humanity amid the total collapse of life.

And yet, despite all this pain, hope still lives within us, a small but stubborn hope that refuses to be erased, just as our streets were erased. We cling to it every morning as we carry a camera, a pen, or a loaf of bread, believing that telling the truth is itself an act of resistance.

We will continue to report from the heart of the rubble. We will return to the Gaza we love, to rebuild it stone by stone, to plant new life among its ruins.

Gaza, despite all its devastation, remains the most beautiful place on Earth: beautiful in the hearts of its people, in the laughter of its children, and in the patience of its women.

(The Palestine Chronicle)