“The next phase of Gaza’s life must be shaped by those who have lived through its collapse.” @mohamhawish.bsky.social writes about Donald Trump’s peace plan and the future of Palestine.

Latest: "Rebuilding a life in exile feels like trying to reassemble a shattered mosaic, the pieces scattered across distances that can’t be bridged. I’ve learned how to live in two places at once and belong fully to neither."

I recently helped co-produce a film on Gaza called Severed, a short documentary that follows the story of Mohamad Saleh, an eighteen-year-old amputee from Gaza.

I wrote for The New Yorker about Gaza’s mental health crisis, and spoke with therapists and psychologists still trying to help others through relentless trauma, while they themselves are displaced, grieving, and surviving day by day. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

The world will only let us live if we are dying beautifully, if our corpses can teach something, if our pain can be folded into their politics. Our lives are useful to them only when they are ending.

Every day I watch death arrive in numbers, twenty bodies before breakfast, fifty more by noon, a hundred before the sky darkens, and somehow, the count resets and begins again the next morning like it’s routine now. Latest post now live:

For parents like me, who have lived this war with our children, fled bombings, rationed food، and buried friends and relatives, Ms. Rachel's voice has felt like a crack of light breaking through an otherwise impenetrable silence.

I didn’t expect my 3-year-old son to find comfort in a YouTube screen while we were surviving a war. But during the long, hunger-filled days of displacement in Gaza, with bombs overhead and no clean water in our mouths, he would whisper her name like a lifeline: “Ms. Rachel.”

The icon @mohamhawish.bsky.social is on THIS AMERICAN FREAKING LIFE this week, hosting a segment about starvation in Gaza that is brilliant and humane and filled with love. Listen listen listen: www.thisamericanlife.org/861/group-ch...

This week on @ThisAmerLife: I reported on Gaza’s severe food shortages and what it means to live through starvation. Features my own experience and voices from those surviving it now.

Her name was Sameera and she was sixty-two. Her husband was too sick to walk and she couldn’t carry him. “If we leave, we die on the road. If we stay, we die here,” she said. “At least here I know the ground. I know which walls will fall on me.”

I don’t write this from a place of survivor’s pride but survivor’s shame. While I am alive and safe, my colleagues are not only risking their lives; they are doing so under conditions that defy imagination. And it leaves me asking: What does freedom of the press mean when it is met with a missile?

A year ago, I was living the same nightmare that 2.2 million people in Gaza are currently living: constant exhaustion, dehydration, rapid weight loss. Just wrote on what it feels like to be starving — and slowly being deprived of the necessities to survive.

Most of the stories that brought me here were written in darkness — literal and figurative — without power, protection, and barely enough to survive. This honor is for those who kept writing anyway.

Traumatized and weary, journalists in Gaza file stories between airstrikes, capturing what remains of lives and landscapes before they, too, are erased.

Just wrote a little something here...

“I found her ring in the rubble, blackened, but I could still see our names engraved inside. I held it so tight it cut my palm. I didn’t feel it. All I felt was her absence.” I talked with twenty people in Gaza after the ceasefire, who shared raw, heart-wrenching stories of grief, loss, and hope.

I can’t describe this storm of emotions—joy, tears, scenes of families reuniting, finally returning home. For every Palestinian, for Gaza, this moment is just breathtaking.🕊️❤️

NEW: As a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Gaza takes hold, Palestinian father and journalist @mohamhawish.bsky.social reflects on survival amid unimaginable loss and the uncertainty around returning home. newlinesmag.com/spotlight/re...

As a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Gaza takes hold, my friend @mohamhawish.bsky.social reflects for @newlinesmag.bsky.social on survival amid unimaginable loss and the uncertainty around returning home. newlinesmag.com/spotlight/re...

Is it a dream? Are we dreaming? Is it all over—counting the dead, uncovering scattered bodies of children, reporting on our own homes and families getting bombed, surviving displacement and starvation at once? Is it all over now?

🚨 BREAKING: Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister confirms the Gaza ceasefire agreement will take effect on Sunday, January 19.

I am in tears. I am literally crying. For months I've dreamt of this moment... Can't believe it's finally over.

🚨🚨I can confirm Gaza ceasefire deal has just been accepted and signed by Israel and Hamas. Announcement will be out soon. Qatar, US, and Egypt will guarantee the phased plan implementation. This is a developing story… further updates will follow.

🚨Breaking: Hamas has officially submitted its approval to mediators for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement.

🧵 A friend in Gaza told me “The first thing I will do after the ceasefire is go to my mother’s grave and share the news with her. I wish she were here with me in this moment.”

The iconic Palestinian writer and teacher Refaat Alareer was murdered by Israel one year ago today. Please read the stunning remembrance from @mohamhawish.bsky.social that we ran in @thenation.com in October. www.thenation.com/article/worl...

I wish I could say I see the light at the end of this tunnel, but the truth is, I don’t. Twenty-five years of war, of loss, of survival — it’s hard to keep carrying the weight when you don’t know if there’s ever a finish line.

Survival isn't a win; not even close. It's a burden that I’m forced to carry, piece by piece, memory by memory, day after day, one word at a time, something I feel in my chest, my bones, my coffee—a heaviness that never goes away. It's messy, twisted, something both holy and haunted. I’ve tasted it

Okay so so far we have starter packs for Lebanon bsky.app/starter-pack... Palestine bsky.app/starter-pack... via @danaelkurd.bsky.social Egypt bsky.app/starter-pack... via @maitelsadany.bsky.social

So honored to say I’m now officially a contributing writer for @TheNation.com 🎉 From Gaza to the pages of a publication I’ve long admired, this journey has been humbling. Grateful to everyone who’s supported my voice along the way. Here’s to telling more stories that matter! ✍🏼

Refaat Alareer was my friend, colleague, professor. I have so, so many memories of him. But the one I keep lingering on is from the last time I saw him. I had just come back to Gaza from abroad, and we met up for coffee. The date: October 6, 2023.