I work for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organisation that has been present in Gaza for more than 77 years. AFSC began its work in 1948 when the United Nations asked it to organise relief efforts for Palestinian refugees who had been expelled from their land by Zionist forces.
For two years, AFSC’s Gaza staff helped set up and run 10 refugee camps in al-Faluja, Bureij, Deir el-Balah, Gaza City, Jabalia, Maghazi, Nuseirat, Khan Younis and Rafah. They worked to provide food, shelter and sanitation as well as setting up educational programmes for children.
In the decades that followed, AFSC’s programmes have provided support for agricultural development, kindergartens, midwife training, humanitarian aid and trauma healing. Since the start of Israel’s genocide in 2023, AFSC staff members in Gaza have provided more than a million meals, food parcels, fresh vegetables, hygiene kits and other essential supplies.
Now, for the first time since 1948, AFSC along with dozens of other international organisations is threatened with a ban from the Israeli government that puts lifesaving humanitarian work in jeopardy. This would have a devastating effect on the people of Gaza. And it cannot come at a worse time.
A continuing genocide
The mass killing in Gaza has not stopped. Despite a ceasefire, Israeli forces are carrying out ongoing raids, air strikes and large-scale demolitions across Gaza. Since the ceasefire began on October 10, these attacks have killed more than 420 Palestinians and injured more than 1,150.
And it is not just the bombs. Floods in Gaza have destroyed tens of thousands of tents while badly damaged homes continue to collapse on residents. The absence of medicines and proper healthcare is killing people as well; about 600 kidney disease patients have died as a result of lack of treatment.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to prevent temporary shelters, medicines and other desperately needed supplies from entering.
These actions have reinforced a longstanding Israeli policy aimed at depopulating Gaza and annexing the land. Israel’s prohibitively restrictive new registration policies and efforts to prohibit or limit international aid are part of this effort. Silencing independent humanitarian voices and dismantling humanitarian infrastructure serve to create conditions on the ground that make life in Gaza impossible. Gaza cannot recover or thrive without comprehensive reconstruction that restores its health system, education sector and critical infrastructure.
Just two weeks before the ceasefire began, an Israeli air strike struck my family home, killing nine of my immediate relatives, including two of my siblings, their spouses and their children.
When I spoke to surviving family members shortly afterwards, they told me the “responsibility is light now” – a phrase they used to express that the number of people to care for is less now.
Since that phone call, I have not stopped thinking about what responsibility truly means. For me, it did not become lighter. It grew heavier. Nine children were left orphaned. With each life taken from my family, the weight of responsibility only increased – the responsibility to remember, to care for those left behind and to bear witness to what has been done.
But this responsibility is not mine alone. It belongs to every nation, institution and individual who has sat idly by while Gaza burns – and especially those nations who have sent the bombs that continue to kill and destroy.
From 1948 to 2026
I first learned about the history of AFSC from my friend Ahmad Alhaaj, who benefitted from its work when he was a young refugee in 1948.
Ahmad passed away in Gaza City in January 2024. It is heartbreaking that he lived his entire life as a refugee, recounting stories of Israel’s 1948 massacres, only to spend his final days enduring a genocide. He died under siege and bombardment, ultimately losing his life because essential medicines were unavailable.
The story of Ahmad in Gaza in 2024 is tragically similar to his story in 1948. Then, he was 16 years old, a barefoot refugee following evacuation orders to Gaza from his village of al-Sawafir. What changed were the years; what did not was the condition of dispossession, displacement and abandonment.
But Ahmad’s story is not just about displacement. Ahmad’s story is a story of love – love for his village. He lived his entire life in Gaza as a refugee in a rented house, refusing to own a home so he would never forget his village or the house his parents were forced to leave behind. For Ahmad, ownership elsewhere risked erasing memory; remaining a renter was an act of fidelity.
This same love has been embodied by many Palestinians who chose Gaza, even under fire. It is a devotion to place that defies siege, displacement and death. Ahmad’s love reminds me of the dedication of my mentor and friend Refaat Alareer, who became Gaza’s great storyteller, giving voice to its people and its pain. On December 6, 2023, Israel killed Refaat along with his brother, sister and nephews in a targeted strike on his apartment.
Like Ahmad, Refaat paid for this love – this unbreakable connection to land and memory – with his life.
His poem If I Must Die has become a testament to this love and to an enduring hope – a message that has travelled beyond Gaza and transformed into a global story. Born of siege and resistance, the poem carries Gaza’s humanity to the world, insisting on life, memory and dignity even in the face of death.
Gaza rising
In 1948, the Greater Gaza District was home to 34 villages. One of them was Ahmad’s. For our grandparents, Gaza was understood as something far larger than the narrow strip it later became. Their sense of place was expansive, rooted in villages, fields and continuous geography.
Our parents, however, witnessed Gaza steadily shrink. What had once been one of the largest districts in historic Palestine was reduced in 1948 to roughly 555sq km (215sq miles). It later shrank further, to about 365sq km (140sq miles) after Israel established a so-called demilitarised zone – land that was eventually annexed at the direct expense of Gaza’s people.
Today, Israel occupies more than half of Gaza. It has imposed what is known as the “yellow line”, which functions as a new de facto border that continues to expand, annexing new territory. Palestinians who cross it are executed. Even Fadi and Jumaa, ages 8 and 10, were not spared. Gaza is not just besieged; it is being physically erased, metre by metre, generation by generation.
The Gaza we love goes beyond lines and borders. Although the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are refugees from towns that today lie inside Israel, Gaza is the place we call home.
Today, Gaza has liberated the imaginations and consciences of people across the world. It transcends geography and the artificial lines drawn on maps – yellow or green.
Israel can ban international organisations and journalists, arrest our medical workers and bomb our poets. It can destroy lives and homes and cause suffering beyond measure. But it cannot ban our struggle for justice or our innate human desire to help one another survive. Despite the many obstacles and challenges we face, our work to support people in Gaza and across the occupied Palestinian territory will continue.
Gaza means liberty, sacrifice and love, even amid tents and rubble. And it will rise again from the ruins, as it has done throughout history.
