Palestinians Watch Another War Unfold
Amid Israel-Iran confrontation, many feel that their own plight is being forgotten.
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Gaza: “Each Day Seems Darker Than the Last”
A Palestinian journalist describes trying to report amid the danger and chaos of the war.
For Palestinians living under occupation or in neglected towns across Israel, the war between Israel and Iran only reinforced an old reality: their lives remain on the margins, even as bombs fall.
In northern Gaza, Mohammad Abdullah, 23, once a student, now hauls water and collects firewood. He was in his third year studying commerce at university when war shattered his life.
“From the first day of the war, nothing stayed the same,” he told IWPR. “There was no time to study or even think about the future. You only think about getting water, food, sheltering yourself from bombardment and where to evacuate next time.”
Mohammad lives in Jabalia, an area long devastated by Israeli strikes. He said that he had lost nearly everyone dear to him: his older brother, his grandparents, his aunt, and close friends.
“All killed,” he said.
Now, as Gaza slips further into famine and aid dwindles, he watches another war unfold - this time between Israel and Iran - while nothing in Gaza improves.
If anything, it was getting worse, he said.
“The bombing in Gaza hasn’t stopped. The death toll is still rising,” he continued. “The starvation is spreading. Prices are skyrocketing. Goods are running out. Nothing's gotten any better - the opposite, the situation is deteriorating.”
Some speculated that an Iran-Israel war might force a broader political solution, but Mohammad said that he hoped this would not happen.
“For Gaza, no real solution will come unless the entire crisis is resolved from the root. And we are the root.”
A few kilometres away in northern Gaza City, 26-year-old Helmy shares a similar despair.
“The cost of living is insane,” he said. “Everything now is at least five times more expensive than it was during the early months of the war, back when the border crossings were partially open and goods could still enter.”
He continued, “There’s no work. No income. If someone outside Gaza sends us money, we lose a huge chunk of it to fees-sometimes up to 50 per cent. Then the banks take another cut just for withdrawing it.”
Helmy, like Mohammad, watches the erratic trickle of aid trucks entering Gaza through dangerous crossings.
“Some days they come. Some days they don’t,” he said, adding that Israeli forces often shot at the convoys.
He recalls braving the chaos to get a bag of flour.
“People have to fight like it’s a jungle just to get food…Just yesterday, a truck full of injured people passed by us, all of them covered in blood. They were being transported from an area where trucks are supposed to enter.”
While the escalation between Israel and Iran brought a temporary slowdown in bombing, Helmy says Gaza still burns.
“Massacres are still happening. Just last night, they bombed a house near us… it was a bloodbath.”
And yet, he admits something uncomfortable: the Iran-Israel war had helped, in a way, by lowering the intensity of attacks on Gaza.
“People say the world stopped talking about us, but that doesn’t matter,” Helmy continued. “We never gained anything from their talk. What mattered is that the bombing eased.”
What Helmy fears most is that if a diplomatic resolution between Israel and Iran follows the current, fragile ceasefire, it could restore the full weight of Israeli force on Gaza.
“If there’s a political solution between them, we go back to square one,” he said. “Back to the constant bombing. Back to the full blockade.”
In the hills of the occupied West Bank, another – less reported - battle rages.
Alaa Hathleen, 26, lives in the village of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, an area under constant threat from settler violence and military raids.
“This is the hardest year, and hardest days of my life,” he said. “War, poverty, settlers attacks, raids-I feel miserable.”
A physical therapist by training, Alaa once ran a small clinic in Bethlehem but had to shut it down after Israeli checkpoints and raids made travel impossible and rent unaffordable.
“Even though our land is recognised as Palestinian, we’re not allowed to build on it or fix our homes,” he said. “Settlers, on the other hand, get full support from the government.”
“Masafer Yatta is legally considered Palestinian territory but we’re not allowed to build, to expand, or even repair our homes,” he explained. “We have an illegal settlement glued to Masafer Yatta with infrastructure, lighting and electricity, a water system - we have nothing.”
With the world’s attention fixed on the Iranian missiles, settler attacks in Masafer Yatta had grown more aggressive, Alaa said.
“They’re armed, organised, and funded, even down to the vehicles they use. They have one goal – to drive us out.”
Daily violence is the norm.
“People are beaten, their sheep are stolen. The army and police are witnesses, but they do nothing. We’re told, ‘Don’t think the law protects you. You and the Israelis are not equal in the eyes of the law.’ We hear that sentence every day.”
When Iran fired missiles at Israel, Israeli citizens were protected, while Palestinians in Umm al-Khair were left totally exposed.
“There are sirens for the settlements near us, but not for us. We live in tents. We have no shelters. Nowhere to go.”
Alaa described local children simply looking at the sky and counting the missiles.
“It is not normal to talk or be like this,” he continued.
The psychological toll is crushing. Alaa's mother was attacked by settlers and needed surgery that left the family deep in debt. His siblings have been arrested. He himself is regularly detained.
“I miss the version of myself I used to be. The version that believed things could change.”
Once firm in his decision to stay, Alaa said that for the first time he now contemplates leaving and finding work abroad, sending money home to his family “to help them survive”.
“My message hasn’t changed: we want to live in peace, with dignity, on our land,” he said. “Someone has to stand up to Israel and say: you are violating every right,” he said. “We want our children to grow up without trauma and constant fear.”
Across the Green Line, some Palestinians lack access to public shelters, especially in mixed cities and Jewish-majority areas, while others face an even more precarious reality: they simply have no shelters at all.
In Bedouin villages and other Arab towns across Israel, entire communities live without access to reinforced rooms, public shelters or evacuation infrastructure. Whether due to years of systematic underinvestment or unrecognised village status, these areas remain unprotected. For many residents, survival relies not on state protection, but on sheer chance.
Sham, a 23-year-old Palestinian engineering student, left her dorm in the city of Be’er Sheva when the Iranian missiles began to fall. She returned to her family’s home in Laqiyya, a Bedouin town in southern Israel, where she found a terrifying lack of infrastructure.
“In the outskirts of town, or in the more remote areas, homes are either unlicensed or not built to include shelters-so they simply don’t have any,” she explained. “The state put up some of those small reinforced rooms-the ones you see on sidewalks-but not everyone gets access to them.”
Many people had sought safety by sleeping schools, she said.
“Others just stay put, because they have nowhere else to go. In the unrecognised Bedouin towns, they only rely on Allah’s protection - no one is there for them.”
She remembers how, in 2021, the state provided the town with large sewer pipes and labeled them “shelters.”
“But they don’t even protect you from the wind, let alone a missile.”
One moment stuck with her. During a university photography workshop, her professor got a call from residents of Umm Mitnan, an unrecognised Bedouin village. Their homes had just been demolished. The group diverted their plans and went to document it.
“It felt wrong,” Sham says. “Seeing people forced to pitch tents on the rubble of their demolished homes, and we were there to photograph it like it was some noble, aesthetic resistance. I kept thinking: are we archiving their trauma or romanticising it?”
Sham said that by now she had got used to the sounds of bombing.
“The only difference is that the Iranian missiles are stronger. They hit more significant places,” she continued. And the trauma continues to be relentless.
“We can hear the bombing in Gaza from here,” Sham said. “There’s always this tension in the air. Always.”
