What Life Is Actually Like in Gaza Today
At least twenty-one people, many of them children, were killed earlier this week after a building collapsed in Gaza City, highlighting the dangerous conditions that still exist in the Gaza Strip. The building, like much of the remaining infrastructure in Gaza, had been damaged by Israeli strikes in the war that began after the massacre of October 7, 2023, and which has now killed seventy-four thousand Palestinians. More than thirteen hundred of those deaths have occurred since last October, when a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect, and Israel was left in control of just over half of Gaza. (Since the ceasefire, Israel has expanded its territory and now controls around seventy per cent of the strip.) The Trump Administration, which broadly supports Israeli policy, has given authority to the so-called Board of Peace to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction. But last month the board’s high representative for Gaza took the surprising step of criticizing Israel for its continued military strikes in Gaza, and argued that such attacks threaten both the ceasefire and the chances of Hamas ever disarming.
I recently spoke by phone with Jaser AbuMousa, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and a non-resident policy adviser at the International Peace Institute, who was born and raised in Gaza. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what daily life in Gaza is like for Palestinians, what has and has not changed since the ceasefire, and his own family’s horrific experience throughout the past three years.
To what degree have Gazans been able to establish somewhat of a normal life over the past eleven months, since the ceasefire went into effect? How much have Gazans been able to start to rebuild their lives, and how much are they essentially still living in a war zone?
What we know is that, because Israel controls about seventy per cent of the territory of the Gaza Strip, some two million people are squeezed into thirty per cent of the territory. We know that eighty-one per cent of the Gaza Strip is damaged or destroyed, and more than three hundred thousand housing units were completely destroyed during the war, in addition to schools and other infrastructure, like clinics, hospitals, and mosques. But, after the ceasefire, and especially in January of 2026, when Israel recovered the last hostage’s remains, many people in Gaza were happy and thought that they would be able to start to restore their lives.
However, this did not happen. And then there was the Israeli condition that Hamas disarmament should come first, and then the rest of the promises outlined in the ceasefire could follow. If I were in Gaza right now, there is a fifty-per-cent chance that I would be living in a tent or living in the remains of my house. Many people prefer to live in the ruins of their houses instead of having tents because the tents do not protect them from any kind of rain or any kind of heat, and there are also rodents that spread diseases.
On the other side of things, some people have started to show some signs of civic engagement. They have started to reopen restaurants. There have been more weddings. But all of this did not cancel the fact that there is no construction material entering Gaza. There is no construction equipment to clear the rubble in Gaza. There are still a lot of constraints, even on food items like peanut butter. I was surprised to hear this directly from U.N. personnel, about peanut butter not being allowed into Gaza. So the people are striving to restore some sort of normal life, but they cannot do this because, first of all, hundreds of thousands of children are not going to school for the third year in a row, and the universities are destroyed, and there is unprecedented internal violence among the people in Gaza. I saw how people inflicted violence on each other during the war in 2014. And the magnitude of this war is much greater than in 2014, so it’s very much expected.
When you say you saw people in Gaza inflict violence on themselves, do you mean that there’s intra-Gaza conflict just because of how horrible the war has been?
Yes. For example, a couple of days ago, three people were killed in a water queue. They were filling water from a truck, and suddenly there was a problem and they killed each other. Every day, cases like this are registered. And, unfortunately, in addition to domestic violence, in addition to violence against vulnerable groups like women and children, this sort of thing is widespread. And, unfortunately, this is not going to change soon. I mean, we have a very damaged society in the Gaza Strip right now owing to the magnitude of violence and the restrictions that are imposed on people. And we have, let’s say, malbehavior. There is a phrase that has stuck with me: that the people of Gaza developed “lethal survival skills,” especially during the starvation that happened last year.
I read about the peanut butter. Aid workers and Palestinians are hoping to get peanut butter because it functions as a nutritional supplement for people who have not gotten enough nutrition, and it sounds insane, but the Israeli government is claiming that it is a“luxury.”
It is insane, because, on the other hand, they are allowing chocolates and they are allowing sugar into Gaza, but they do not allow something like peanut butter, which is nutritious. The U.N. was hoping that it would be helpful because of all the malnutrition that the people are suffering from. So their claim that it’s a luxury is nonsense.
When you said that eighty-one per cent of Gaza is unlivable, what did you mean?
Yes, eighty-one per cent of infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to U.N. statistics. One related issue we have is a very, very severe problem with sewage. There is no single sewage network that is still working. The only places it is working partially are places where everything was not destroyed.
What are the areas in Gaza that Israel has taken over since the ceasefire was put in place?
This has different layers. First of all, if we look at the map, it has the initial lines of the ceasefire, called the “Yellow Line” and demarcated by yellow cement blocks, which established that fifty-three per cent of Gaza would be under Israeli control and forty-seven per cent would be under Hamas control. After the ceasefire, Israel started to move to the west, and they started to move the yellow cement blocks. This created agricultural problems because the areas that Israel took control of after the ceasefire were the food basket of the Gaza Strip. And now the agricultural production level is, like, three per cent to five per cent of the level that it was before. So in some areas, Gaza was once self-sufficient, in terms of producing olive oil, olives, zucchini, eggplants, cucumbers, and peppers, and of course tomatoes. And at some points in recent years they were exporting tomatoes to Israel. So all of this is gone, and Gazans are not able to produce any kind of food for themselves. So they have to import it, and then that has to be under Israeli control.
I’m sure you’re still in touch with people in Gaza. What is the tone of those conversations now, and how do they differ from how they were during the war and how they were earlier on in the ceasefire?
Do you know what happened with me, or not?
I know that your wife and two of your kids were killed early on in the war.
Yeah. And later on, in July, 2025, my mother and my sister and her children were also killed. And when they were seeking refuge at my uncle’s house, he was killed, too, with his wife.
I’m sorry to hear that.
Thank you. So I’m still in contact with people. My brother was in prison for twenty months. He was a doctor in a hospital. He also lost his son. He was taken from Nasser Hospital when the Israeli troops stormed the hospital in February, 2024, and he was released on the day of the ceasefire. But of course I still have family. I still have friends. The tone is completely desperate, to be honest. I mean, the waiting without anything moving is making people angry, and they cannot respond positively. I mean, they cannot engage in a normal conversation. I understand this. I totally understand this.
I will give you an example of this. In July, 2025, two days or two nights before my mother was killed, I called her. My mother was seventy-five years old. She had a car accident years ago, and she was suffering from bad legs and her right arm was totally paralyzed, and I told her that the Israeli tanks were around her area and she needed to move. She said, “No, I’m not moving. Whatever happens, happens. I will not move this time.” My mother was displaced six times with this health condition, and, eventually, she was desperate. She was saying, “No, not anymore.” And she chose to die, apparently. This kind of atmosphere is prevailing in Gaza, and everyone that I’m talking to in Gaza is wishing to get out of Gaza. Everyone—literally everyone. And people are paying a lot of money to get access to bad medical reports so they can be evacuated medically or be accepted for a scholarship or something. I mean, three years. It’s been three years right now with life totally on hold.
When your mother said that to you, what did you say to her, if you don't mind me asking?
I was speechless, and I did not argue with her because, two weeks before that call, I think it was the second Eid of Muslims, and I knew, even though she did not tell me, that she had spent that night in the street, because they were forced to leave the area she was in at night. And I could not argue. I mean, I was not in her shoes. I left Gaza after two months. I was not displaced. I did not experience any kind of starvation. But my mother had. My mother had been displaced and had been starved, and I cannot blame anyone in these conditions, whatever their decision is. Yeah.
Why was your brother in prison?
He was just taken from the hospital, and he was tried four times before a military judge, and every time he was told that they didn’t have anything on him. But they also said, “You will not be released before the ceasefire.” And this message was given to many other medical staff, actually, because they wanted to deliberately deprive the medical institutions of staff. [While Israel has denied intentionally attacking Gaza’s health-care system, human-rights organizations and the United Nations have found that Gaza’s health system has been targeted.] He was taken because he was a doctor. And they kept him in prison without any charges.
And you can look at Hussam Abu Safiya’s case. He is another doctor who has been held without charges.
I just have one more question for you, and if it’s too personal, please—
Sure.
You have obviously been through just horrific tragedy, and you’re also someone who works on this subject. You think about this subject most of the day, I imagine, and not just the interpersonal dynamics but the geopolitics and the larger questions involved. And I’m just curious what that’s been like for you to continue writing and doing work on this subject while at the same time going through such awful horror. Is it therapeutic? Is it helpful?
First of all, it is therapeutic, and I appreciate everyone who has encouraged me to write. And the first one was my wife, Heba, many long years ago. She said, “You can be a good writer.” I did not believe her because she was a poet and she was a novelist, and, when I compared myself to her, it was a vast difference. But, I mean, she’s the one who encouraged me a long time ago to write. This is one. Second, I try to write things that seek a solution. I’m working with the Middle East Institute. I’m also working with the International Peace Institute, and we are trying to promote some solutions. We are also working with the group A Land for All, which is made up of Israelis and Palestinians. We also work with the group Standing Together. And I also do speaking engagements with an Israeli co-host. We have a podcast as well. So we are promoting something that we hope lasts. We want this to end. The people want it to end and to stop burying their children.
I’m also doing this for my kids. I want to give them some sort of normality and some sort of mutuality, and so I am telling them that what happened on the seventh of October and after was not normal. It is the exception. So this is what I’m trying to do. I’m partnering with an Israeli American writer in Boston. She and I are translating my wife’s work into English. So my wife has, or had, a poetry collection, and we had a reading in Cambridge in June, and the place was fully packed with people.
It is wonderful to hear that. How many kids did you have?
I had four. I lost the eldest and the youngest.
How old were they?
Hmaid was eighteen, and Abdulrahman was eight.
And you’re with your two middle kids now?
Yeah, Abdallah, now nineteen, and Sham, now fifteen, are with me. We came in January, 2025, and Sham did not speak English when we came here. And in June she graduated from middle school, and she was chosen to deliver the promotional speech at the school’s ceremony. I think that was a moment. That was a very, very good moment. ♦