By Wisam Zoghbour, for AhlulBayt News Agency- Abna, from Gaza
Displacement is not a fleeting event in a person’s life; it is an earthquake that uproots their roots from their land, their home, and their memory, pushing them into a forced journey with no known end in time or place.
Displacement is often reduced to a mere geographic move from one area to another, while in truth it is far deeper and heavier than that.
Today, the people of Gaza City are experiencing one of the ugliest forms of this forced displacement, having been compelled to leave their homes and neighborhoods toward the center and south of the Strip. The scene is not merely that of a compulsory transfer under bombardment, but of a collective uprooting from the mother city into a temporary life in schools or tents that provide no shelter from heat or cold. There, people crowd into narrow spaces, where the loss of privacy collides with the absence of safety and the intensification of daily needs.
The displaced person does not face only the hardship of the road, but crashes into a harsh psychological wall: losing their sense of stability and living in constant anxiety about the unknown. Images of the past collapse before their eyes, while they are besieged by dreams suspended on a reality that offers no chance to breathe. Every moment of displacement carries with it fear of tomorrow, and longing for a home that now exists only in memory.
What worsens the tragedy is that displacement is not only a psychological shock, but also a financial burden that drains what remains of families’ ability to endure. The costs of shelter, food, treatment, and transportation turn into unbearable loads, while networks of protection and effective support are absent. The displaced from Gaza to the south, as in other experiences, live a permanent temporary life: no stability and no clear future for their children.
The suffering of displacement reveals that the Palestinian tragedy is not merely a political issue or a negotiation file, but a human story saturated with pain. Every displaced person from Gaza City today is a miniature homeland, and every forced journey is a new chapter of loss and deprivation.
Yet, despite all this pain, forced displacement remains a witness to the resilience of the Palestinian, who refuses to turn absence into surrender. Just as the Nakba failed to erase the people’s identity, the repeated catastrophes of Gaza will not succeed in breaking the will to return. The tents of displacement today may be temporary, but the determination to endure remains, and the memory of place is too strong to be erased. From amidst the rubble and estrangement, a renewed promise arises: that every displacement must be followed by return, and that the land recognizes its owners, no matter how long the exile.
“We will continue to write our names on the walls of the wind, to plant our shadows in the sand, and to echo with Darwish: On this earth, there is what deserves life. And even if the road of displacement is long, our steps know the way back.”
Editing: Alexandre Rocha
Wisam Zoghbour is a journalist, member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate, and director of Radio Voice of the Homeland.
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