As the world welcomes a new year, we in Gaza fear what it has in store | Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Another year has passed and life in Gaza is still caught between Israel’s killing machine and the world’s growing indifference. It’s another year added to our unique calendar of loss, destruction and death.

In March, I wrote about my fears that Israel could go even further in its genocidal campaign than it had already done. And that’s what happened. Israel has gone beyond my darkest expectations, reaching an unimaginable level of evil. This evil has marked the whole year for us in Gaza.

As I see many people posting recaps of their favorite moments of 2025, I thought I’d share my own version. This is what this year looked like for me.

It began with a 45-day ceasefire; the brief respite from the bombs was not even enough for us to mentally process the 15 months of relentless slaughter and destruction that preceded it.

In February, I met many Palestinian captives released under the truce and listened to the horror stories they told about their time of forced disappearance by the Israeli army. Among them was my high school teacher, Antar al-Agha. When I first saw him, I couldn’t believe it was him. He was so pale and gaunt that he couldn’t reach out to shake my hand.

He told me about the long time he spent in what they call the “scabies room” in the Israeli detention center – a room designated to serve as an incubator for scabies. “At one dawn, I was finally allowed to wash my hands, but it did not prove to be a relief for me. Once the water hit my hand, the skin started peeling as if it were a boiled potato. Blood gushed out all over my hands. I can still feel the pain,” he said.

In March, Israel resumed the genocide, killing more than 400 people in one fell swoop in the middle of the month. He blocked all crossings into the Gaza Strip.

In April, the first signs of mass famine began to appear.

In May, the Israeli army forcibly evicted me and my family from our home east of Khan Younis.

At the end of that month, Israel orchestrated a creative new form of mass murder and humiliation, cynically calling it the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.” Launched with the help of the United States, this entity began distributing food to hungry Palestinians in the form of “hunger games.”

In June, due to extreme hunger, I too went to a GHF point. There I saw my people crawling on the burning sand to look for food. I saw a young man protect himself from bullets by taking cover behind another person. I saw young men stab themselves to death over a kilo of flour.

In July, the Israeli army razed my house and my entire neighborhood.

In August, the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) officially confirmed that Gaza was experiencing famine. At that point we had nothing left to eat, not even flour. We prepared bread in thin layers by grinding red lentils or rice for the birds. Part of this was my only meal of the day.

In September, the Israeli army ordered another massive displacement from northern Gaza to the south, plunging hundreds of thousands of people into the misery of having to move again.

In October, another ceasefire agreement was announced. At that point, I no longer had the energy to feel anything. I had already been consumed by grief over losing many of my relatives and close friends, my home and my entire town. I lost both of my freelance content writing contracts because I couldn’t keep up with my work due to the inhumane traveling conditions.

Deep down, I knew that Israel would not respect its commitments in the truce agreement, and that this would not be the last loss.

In November, my suspicions were confirmed. Israel continued to bomb us. The genocide has just transformed from a noisy and intense campaign of massacres into a quieter version. Israel’s land grab continued, with the so-called “yellow line” constantly expanding and swallowing up more and more land, including what remained of my neighborhood. That month, the world’s indifference became even more apparent when governments refused to condemn Israel’s ceasefire violations and instead showered it with rewards, such as a $35 billion gas deal.

In December, the cruel winter struck, flooding tents and collapsing buildings. Babies started dying from hypothermia.

If I could remove from my memory one event from this year of misery, it would be my visit to the GHF site. The scenes I saw there represented what I believe to be the peak level of evil. I still can’t shake the feeling of fear as I pass by the places I passed on my way to and from the GHF site.

Today, as I wander the narrow streets of my rain-drenched tent camp, I wonder: what drives all these people to continue to cling to life after losing their homes, their jobs and their loved ones?

As far as I know, this is not hope; it is a mixture of helplessness and abandonment to fate.

Perhaps it’s because in Gaza, time has frozen. Here, the past, present and future occur simultaneously.

Here, time is not an arrow – it does not fly. It is a circle that merges beginnings and endings, and between them are endless episodes of horrible agony.

Like the fundamental laws of physics, which make no distinction between the past and the present, the Gaza tragedy makes no distinction either.

A movement of a pendulum from right to left is the same movement in the opposite direction, with the same energy and momentum. Unless we initiate the process, the past and future would not be identifiable.

Recently, I began to entertain the idea of ​​retrocausality in Gaza, where the future affects the past, or where the effect occurs before the cause. Watching the buildings collapse on their own, I imagine how Israeli planes will bomb them in the future, but we see them disintegrating now.

Of course, one could argue that buildings continue to collapse in Gaza because they have already been damaged by Israeli bombing. But it is also true that Israel continues to bomb what the Palestinians are rebuilding. The same building would be bombed and restored again and again, so it is not far-fetched to imagine how the current Palestinian rubble will be destroyed in the future by an Israeli bomb.

As the world looks to a new year and a brighter future, we in Gaza fear what is to come. We are caught between a past we dare not remember and a future we dare not imagine.

We can’t even make New Year’s resolutions because we have no control over our lives.

I want to eat less sugar, but Israel could do that for me by preventing all food from entering Gaza again.

I want to learn to swim, but Israel might shoot me if I set foot in the sea.

I want to replant my garden, but I can’t even get close.

I want to take my mother to Umrah, to visit Masjid al-Haram, the Grand Mosque of Mecca, but Israel does not allow us to travel.

Probably the only New Year’s resolution I can make is to get used to cold showers; the lack of gas and firewood could make this wish even easier to achieve.

In Gaza, there is nothing to plan and there is everything to wish for.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.