Hala used to work for ActionAid in Gaza. She had a rewarding job, a comfortable home, a husband, four children and a host of relatives living in her neighbourhood. Suddenly, when Israel began bombing the Strip, she, like many others, had to flee to the south, and it was there that she began writing her moving diary, describing her daily life, the lack of contact with some of her loved ones, the shock of a cousin seeing her home destroyed on the TV news, diseases that can’t be cured (an aunt of hers died for lack of dialysis), the difficulty of finding food, prices doubled from what they were before etc. She writes from her new home in an abandoned flat in the southern town of Rafah.
In the midst of a desperate life where everything is precarious, she’s made new friends, new neighbours that she would never have met in another situation. She decided that her experience had to be told and shared her diary with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The UN News website has published it. You can read it here.
To learn more, read our Israel/Palestine conflict factsheet
Cover photo: Hala, a displaced mother and humanitarian worker, fled her home in Gaza to stay in Rafah ©OCHA/Ziad Taleb
FDN/AV
