For two years, the people of Gaza have endured one of the most devastating bombardments and humanitarian catastrophes of our time.
Israel’s offensive and siege of the enclave, launched in the bloody aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attacks, has killed over 67,000 people, including 19,000 children, according to local officials.
A United Nations-backed global hunger monitor has concluded that the bombing and blockade have led to famine spreading across the strip.
Nearly the entire population of 2.3 million have been forced to flee – often multiple times – and more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s homes have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
The situation is so dire that a UN commission of inquiry concluded last month that Israel has committed, and continues to commit, genocide in Gaza—a charge the Israeli government vehemently denies.
On the two-year anniversary of the start of this unprecedented bloodshed, families in Gaza describe a “glimmer of hope” as negotiators from Hamas and Israel meet in Egypt to try and reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal, off the back of US president Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan.
As Basel al-Saqa, 32 a father of two, tells The Independent from his tent in southern Gaza: “A ceasefire means that the land that has burned for so long can breathe again.”
As the world hopes for a breakthrough, families describe their struggle over the last two years and their desperation for an end to the nightmare.
Running a hospital under siege, bombing and disappearances
Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza.
Dr Abu Salmiya not only manages one of most important hospitals in Gaza which Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed, besieged and raided, but he says he has been arrested, detained and abused by Israel for months. His staff members and colleagues like Dr Adnan al-Bursh, the celebrated head of orthopaedics, died in Israeli detention in 2024, reportedly from torture.
But despite this, after Dr Salmiya was released back into Gaza last year, the iconic medic has remained at the helm of al-Shifa, rebuilding it from the ashes in Gaza City, which became the epicentre of Netanyahu’s widely condemned new offensive.
Israel has repeatedly denied targeting Gaza’s medical facilities . But Israeli attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medics are so acute a UN Commission of Enquiry concluded at the end of 2024 that Israel has committed war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination as it pursued “a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system”.
Al-Shifa first became the focus of ferocious assault early on in the war, after Israel accused Hamas of using it as a main military command and control centre despite providing little credible evidence.
It was raided, besieged and then emptied by the end 2023. Dr Salmiya was arrested alongside other doctors and detained for seven months – wehnwhenreleased he spoke of torture and abuse behind bars.
In the last ceasefire this January, after his release, Dr Abu Salimya returned north to rebuild the destroyed medical complex “from scratch”.
“When we returned there was nothing recognisable . But we restored the emergency department, the dialysis department, and opened 300 beds, a 13-bed intensive care unit, and operating room,” he continues via voice notes.
Since then he describe “ferrying premature newborns” around the complex as it was bombed and as they were chased by quadcopters. Now he worries about the future as the violence has not abated despite talks for a truce underway in Egypt.
“During the last four days it has been impossible. We found no food, no drink, no bread. We survived on a few dates, staff and patient,” he adds.
“After Israel invaded Gaza City recently we were shocked. Now, our fears are that the occupation will come and destroy the hospital again.”
Giving birth during famine and a bombing raid
Buthaina Al-Attar, 26, is a mother of four children, displaced from northern Gaza.
Buthaina lived through the unimaginable horror of being pregnant during a UN-declared famine and giving birth in a hospital as it was bombed. The danger was so acute that the day after her emergency C-section in May, the starved mother was stitched up and forced to flee the hospital on foot, with only limited pain relief.
The United Nations has reported that due to Israel’s bombardment repeated full blockades on Gaza sparking widespread famine, a quarter of all pregnant women are acutely malnourished, with risk of miscarriages. Images of emaciated babies and children, their bones cutting through their skin, have been shared shocking the world.
Buthaina says she survived on a single plate of rice and scraps of pasta she shared with her children but hunger devastated her health and stunted the growth of her baby. When he was born he weighed just two kilograms, less than half the average weight of a newborn in the UK.
“It was a moment filled with fear, terror, and anxiety,” she recalls, describing giving birth under fire. As her baby was delivered by emergency C-section at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, an Israeli tank shell struck the obstetrics and gynaecology department. Minutes later, a four-storey building next to the hospital was also targeted.
“Glass and rubble from the blast fell onto the hospital,” she say. “At that point, the doctor told us we had to leave because the situation was too dangerous. The ambulances were overwhelmed.”
Barely recovered from major surgery, she had to leave on foot: “I walked like a toddler taking her first steps, suffering from severe pain.”
Buthaina spent days on the move, trying to find a tent or any kind of shelter. Sick with a severe infection from surgery and malnourished, she couldn’t breastfeed and had no access to baby formula.
Twenty days after her son was born, her mother – who had been helping with the children – returned to northern Gaza to try to find food. She never came back. The family still doesn’t know what happened; whether she was taken or killed.
Now, Buthaina is desperate for a ceasefire: “We need a ceasefire as soon as possible. So that we can return to normal life and raise our children away from war, hunger and thirst.”
Reporting and living in a war zone
Fatima Abu Nadi, 35, is a journalist working for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Mujtama.
For nearly two years, Fatima has not only reported on the war in Gaza, but lived it – suffering multiple losses, including the killing of her father.
According to Amnesty International, Israeli strikes have killed over 240 journalists and media workers since Israel launched its heaviest-ever bombardment of Gaza in October 2023, following Hamas militants’ deadly attacks in southern Israel.
The global rights group added that no conflict in modern history has seen a higher number of journalists killed, making Gaza the deadliest place on earth for reporters.
Fatima began the war working for a French news agency, which abruptly dropped her and cut communication while she was reporting on rising malnutrition in Nasser Hospital in central Gaza in November 2023, amid growing chaos and an unfolding famine.
With no salary and no severance, she struggled to support 15 family members. Basic necessities, like baby nappies for her nephew, were costing $100.
The job loss came just a month after her father was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip. At the time, Fatima and her family had been displaced to Rafah. Her father had insisted on staying behind to protect their property.
She said his body was so badly mutilated by the strike that medics shielded the family from seeing the photos.
“He was a part of my soul, and I lost it,” she says. “He supported me in my masters, my education, and in the beginning of my journalism career.”
Despite the difficulties, she remains a journalist: honouring his last request to her, made in their final phone call days before his death, to continue her work and to help others.
But after surviving so many displacements, one night recently she collapsed. She sobbed uncontrollably until her mother found her and tried to calm her down.
“These moments are beyond capacity, energy, and patience,” she says. “I’ve stopped crying, but my heart still aches.”
“Now we are on the second anniversary of the war. Our greatest hope is that it will end,” she says.
