Inside Gaza: How one young man is holding up after Israel resumes airstrikes

More than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in October 2023, according to Gaza health officials.

The death toll continues to rise with Israeli forces renewing their military campaign in the region after Israel broke the nearly two-month-long ceasefire last Tuesday. Israel has ordered mass evacuations of Palestinians across Gaza as it launched a new offensive in Rafah. People in Gaza are once again being forced to evacuate the homes they only recently returned to after the ceasefire, following months of displacement.

Mohammed Hatem, a young man in Gaza, says the evacuation zone is only a few hundred yards away from his home.

“Right now, we have all of our stuff packed,” Hatem said. “Just in case anything happens, we will be ready to leave.”

Here & Now spoke with Hatem a few months ago, before the brief ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was implemented. Back then, he told us he struggled to get the nutrition he needed to not only achieve his fitness goals but to survive. He tracks his routine on his Instagram page, Gymrat in Gaza. During the ceasefire, he explained, the situation got a little better, with more aid being regularly let into the region.

But with the ceasefire no longer in effect, he said the situation on the ground has regressed.

“There are multiple airstrikes happening almost every hour or so [throughout] the day,” Hatem said. “The situation is extremely unstable right now in terms of airstrikes, in terms of evacuation orders. Everything is just back as it was before the ceasefire.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

How do you know when or if you’ll have to evacuate?

“For the first evacuation orders that were dropped in the area close to us, there were flyers. But for the second evacuation orders … it was just a post going around on social media; that's how we know that an area is asked to evacuate.

“Sometimes, when evacuation orders drop, we have to call some of our relatives and some of our friends that we know don't have an internet connection just to make sure that they know about it. Because sometimes some people don't even know about the evacuation orders until … they just find themselves under fire without knowing anything about what's going on.”

What are you hearing from people around you in reaction to the latest reporting about Israel’s plans for a full ground invasion and military occupation in the Gaza strip?

“I've heard about that a lot in the past couple of days, especially with the beginning of multiple ground operations in different areas in the Gaza Strip … since people are expecting this to be the case again, a lot of people are sending some of their stuff — their bags, some of their solar panels, batteries and all of that stuff that they might need when they evacuate — to either tents or to relative's houses in the west of Khan Younis. Just in case that, when they evacuate, they are going to have some stuff already being sent there.

“A lot of people now barely have anything in their houses. So, the idea that they might have to evacuate and even leave this so little that they have in their houses and leave with absolutely nothing is just crazy to think.”

How do you and other Palestinians in Gaza feel about those who, including the sitting U.S. president, say that you should leave and go to other countries?

“This is not the first time that we Palestinians are asked to leave our houses and to be expelled from our original country and original homes. For us, we will still rather stay in our homes and stay in Gaza and start rebuilding it with our own hands until we get it back like it was. We would much prefer that than actually being displaced or expelled to other countries and have the ‘beautiful houses and lifestyles’ that they are promising. Because, at the end of the day, it's not about our lives and how they would look like, rather [it’s about] how we feel about it. And for us, there is no better life than the one that we have in Gaza.

“We are just asking, stop this madness, stop the killing, stop every kind of human loss that we are going through right now. Open the borders. Let those who are injured be treated. Let there be food for all of those who have been starving for months now. Just give us basic stuff and we will rebuild everything from scratch.”

How are you doing with all of this?

“When you ask a Gazan how he is doing and he says, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm good, I'm fine,’ ... you got to keep in mind that he is coping with so much, but he is looking around him and he's seeing the people around him, and he is saying that he is good compared to everyone and all the things that they lost. Now you've seen all over the news, people are now evacuating their areas leaving everything that they've built behind. They are losing a lot of their loved ones, a lot of their friends, almost on a daily basis with all of these evacuation orders and all of these airstrikes. So, to ask me through this situation how I am doing … alhamdulillah [praise be to Allah], I have no reason to complain whatsoever.”

Click here for more coverage and different points of view.

Hafsa Quraishi produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Michael Scotto. Quraishi also adapted it for the web.