Israel’s Bombs Rained Down at 2 am, Killing Hundreds Around Me in Gaza

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

I was jolted awake at 2 am this morning by the deafening sound of explosions and relentless bombardment here in the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza where I live. The noise was so overwhelming, I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

I was in a deep sleep, as I am every night, worn out by the constant anguish we live through. There is no life for us — only survival in the temporary silence of a ceasefire.

During the ceasefire we still struggled to eat, to keep breathing, to find shelter. At least we could rest for a moment, believing we might wake up alive, not to the sound of missiles and blasts. But then, something changed. What happened?

During the 2 am bombardment, the earth itself seemed to shake under the force of each blast. Fear gripped my heart, and my family and I scrambled to make sense of the chaos. What was happening? We were paralyzed by the shock, as if we were reliving the horror of war all over again. We couldn’t believe it. Had the war truly returned?

In disbelief, we reached out to friends and turned on the news, desperate for answers. The response was clear — yes, the Israeli military’s airstrikes had resumed, raining down across Gaza from north to south. Death has returned like a shadow that followed us. Today is not October 7, but this is the same nightmare in a different moment, a different hour, a different year. New questions haunt us: Will this nightmare stretch beyond a year, like the war did before this broken ceasefire, or will we be consumed from the very beginning? Will this Ramadan mirror the one we barely survived? Will it bring more sorrow, more despair, as we find ourselves trapped in a cycle that refuses to end?

In the midst of these terrifying moments, my mind drifts back to the previous Ramadan. How we lived each day as if it were our last, constantly bracing ourselves for the worst.

Despite the temporary nature of the recent ceasefire and the grim conditions of destruction, blockade and famine, this year I had a glimmer of hope. Now, with the brutal return of genocide, my feelings of despair have deepened.

I wonder: Where will I escape this time? Who will I lose? Will I ever get to graduate with my bachelor’s degree in English translation from the Islamic University of Gaza? The war and siege have delayed my graduation, but I’ve never stopped learning or writing, even as everything has been postponed because of the war. Even as I write these words, the sound of explosions reverberates, amplifying my anxiety and fear.

I turned 22 during the war, on February 9, 2024, and turned 23 last month during the ceasefire. Unfortunately, with every passing year, I feel like I’m living a tragedy. How many more years will we grow older while only surviving Israel’s wars on us? With every year that adds another number to my age, I remember the wars I’ve lived through, enduring both Ramadan and Eid under the shadow of destruction.

Even as I write these words, the sound of explosions reverberates, amplifying my anxiety and fear.

The war that I survived in 2014 lasted for 51 days. I was just 12 years old, but I was fully aware that we were living through genocide. The Israeli military completely destroyed the Shujayea neighborhood of Gaza. In 2018 and 2019, many other escalations occurred, and the security situation in Gaza was unstable, especially along the borders, where many innocent people were killed, including protesters demanding an end to Israel’s blockade and the right to return to their ancestral homes.

Then, in 2021, as I was preparing for my university exams, the Israeli military rained destruction on Gaza for 11 days. It was one of the hardest wars I’ve lived through: Israel deployed weapons it had never used before. That war also marked the beginning of the use of “fire belts,” an Israeli tactic in which a warplane pummels a single location with many missiles. The war reached its peak during Eid al-Fitr, and it was a terrifying time, especially since I had become more aware of the horrors around me.

I remember how my friend Zainab Al-Qouluq, who lived on al-Wehda street in the Rimal neighborhood, lost her mother, her sisters and also her brother. Her story was heartbreaking. On that same street where she lived, the Abu Al-Awf family was struck by a fire belt, and some of its members were killed. That war ended, but little did we know, the worst was yet to come.

In the October 7 war, the Israeli military’s use of fire belts advanced to the point where an entire neighborhood could be wiped out. The war was not confined to just one area; it was a war across all of Gaza. In 2024, we also lived through Ramadan and Eid in the middle of war. I remember desperately needing to leave the house on the first day of Eid.

As I walked down the street in my neighborhood, I saw a house completely demolished with a message written in black pen on its wall: “I know you can hear me, wishing you all the best every year.”

I asked some neighbors who hadn’t evacuated about it, and they told me that a young man had lost his entire family, and they were still buried under the rubble. He wrote that message because he was completely alone.

I had hoped we’d make it through Ramadan in relative peace, under the fragile ceasefire. But it has become painfully clear — this nightmare from October 7, which had never truly ended, has returned with its full force. The terror, the destruction, the uncertainty… it’s back, relentless and unforgiving. The war has come back, stronger than before. It erupted again at 2 am, and by morning the Israeli military had murdered more than 400 people in Gaza, including many children. In those terrible hours, lives were shattered, futures obliterated — an unimaginable horror unfolding once again. The numbers, the loss — it’s more than any soul can endure!

We haven’t even begun to recover from all of the wars that came before. Many, like Zainab, have been left shattered, their lives forever altered. And then there are those families — at least 1,200 of them — who have been erased entirely, wiped off the map, their names no longer etched in history. Not a single soul remains. Today, on March 18, the Zain al-Din family was erased too — destroyed with the return of the genocide, as the nightmare continues to claim everything in its path.

We held onto the hope that the ceasefire would last, desperate for a moment of peace — a chance to wake up to calm, despite the internal struggles and the obstacles we face as a result of this war. But how much longer must we live through this endless cycle of violence? How many more years will we carry the weight of this war on our shoulders?

Will Gaza ever know peace, or will refuge from endless war only echo in the stillness of death?