For a thousand days, I have been living the genocide of my people in Gaza

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My name is Mayss. For a thousand days, I've been living through the genocide of my people in Gaza. For a thousand days, I've been living in an unending and exhausting cycle of constant terror, mental distraction, immense psychological pressure, and profound loss that devours my soul. I've reached a point where I can no longer define why I'm living or what my goals are. My greatest dream now is simply for my day to pass in peace without losing more loved ones.

For 1,000 days, time in Gaza has ceased to be measured in hours or months; it is instead calculated by the heavy toll of losses, the persistent echo of airstrikes, and the suffocating space between life and death. What the world observes from afar as a protracted political conflict or as sterile statistics is, for us, a reality we breathe, struggle within, and die in a thousand times each and every day.

Today in Gaza our population It is concentrated in less than 30% of the area where we lived a thousand days ago. Today we live under a calculated policy of forced displacement and Fame systemic, where there is no safe haven anywhere.

This genocide has not only brought us back to square one, but pushed us well below it. I lost some of my family members. I lost our home, my room which was my safe haven, we lost my father's car, which was our family's main and only source of income. Today I live as an internally displaced person right in front of my bombed-out home, forced to look at its ruins and face my shattered memories every single morning.

No member of my family has been spared this suffering. My father, who already suffers from chronic high blood pressure, has suffered a severe loss of hearing due to the constant carpet-bombing, barrages of fire and terrifying explosions, which have left him with only 40% of his hearing capacity, not to mention the heavy burden of constant anxiety about our fate. As for my mother, her spirit could not bear the weight of such immense grief; after tragically losing her brother, his wife, their daughter and then her own sister, she suffered a Psychological trauma deep and sharp, from which he cannot free himself or overcome it even today, living like a body without a soul.

Even innocence has been crushed under the rubble.

My little sister, who was only two years old before the war began, grew up and gained awareness amidst bombings and displacement — not in kindergarten, not at school, nor in security di casa sua. Non ha mai conosciuto un solo giorno di stabilità o di serenità. Il terrore assoluto le ha causato un trauma profound, making their behaviour increasingly aggressive: this is the painful reality for all the children of Gaza who have aged a million years before their time. Many of them are now scattered throughout the streets, working in small stalls to ensure a meagre income for their families. Children who, in many tragic cases, have already lost both parents.

I graduated from high school and pursued my passion by enrolling in university, but today I'm a prisoner of screens, studying entirely online. How I long for real, in-person lessons; how I crave to live the normal details of a university student attending an 8:00 AM class. But how can this happen if my beautiful university has been transformed into a crowded shelter, full of thousands of displaced people, homeless individuals, and mourners? We have been deprived of even our most fundamental right: that of learning and growing.

My family's story is but a mirror reflecting the lives of two million people in Gaza, all united by the same, meticulous tragedy. Today, here, the simplest means of survival have become exhausting daily battles. Endless queues of people stand for long, heartbreaking hours under the scorching sun or freezing cold, clutching empty containers, waiting to obtain a single drop of Drinking water oz of water for basic hygiene.

Life has become an exhausting ritual in search of non-existent cooking gas, forcing us to rely solely on firewood, which emits suffocating smoke that tears at the lungs of children and mothers within tattered tents; tents that have become the new face of our devastated city, unable to offer any protection neither from the summer heat nor from the winter cold.

We live in an environment that is completely contaminated and unfit for human habitation, where skin diseases and intestinal epidemics are rife amongst the displaced population due to the total absence of sewerage systems and a severe shortage of hygiene products. This is happening at a time when medical and civilian infrastructure has been systematically destroyed, forcing the majority of hospitals to close its doors. The wounded and the sick are dying in silence due to the lack of a single dose of medicine or an available hospital bed, a situation exacerbated by the suffocating blockade imposed on the movement of people and goods, which prevents them from travelling abroad to receive treatment. Even the constant hum of the Banana (the drones) never leave the sky, not even for a second, etching a constant, agonising noise and deep psychological trauma into people’s minds, leaving us no sleep to relieve our weariness nor any peace to soothe our hearts.

We have endured repeated forced displacements, a constant lack of a permanent home, and a famine that has ravaged our bodies. The darkest period of these 1,000 days was the famine; there were long days when I had nothing but a single cup of water to survive on, yet I was expected to stay strong and hold on. I will never forget the day I collapsed and fainted in the middle of the market: my body was not just ill, it was completely drained, with no food left to burn, not even enough to keep me on my feet.

Behind my story and those of our families lie the bitter and terrifying statistics recorded by Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). L’assalto in corso, scrivono, ha provocato il martirio di 73.066 palestinesi (secondo le cifre ufficiali) e il ferimento di altri 173.514 dall’inizio dell’attacco, il 7 ottobre 2023. Persino gli annunci e le promesse di ceasefire the international measures rumoured on 10 October 2025 were nothing more than ink on paper; the systematic policies of killing and destruction have continued, claiming a further 1,053 lives and injuring a further 3,406, whilst the bodies of 786 victims were recovered from the rubble following various attacks. Taken together, these systematic policies fulfil the constituent elements of the crime of genocide under international law.

Today, as we mark this grim milestone of 1,000 days of continuous suffering and escalating aggression, we ask not much of the world: only to look at us as human beings.

Today, as we mark this sad milestone of 1,000 days of continuous suffering and escalating aggression, we do not ask much from the world: only that you see us as human beings. Human beings who nurture quiet dreams and have loving families that have been torn apart. Writing these lines is not just a documentation of pain or a reminder of the profound failure of the international community to take effective action to stop these crimes; it is a desperate attempt to hold onto life. It is an affirmation of the fact that the details of my home, my family's pain, and my small story are not just fleeting numbers in reports. We are living stories that deserve to be heard, and we deserve to live in peace.

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