Beyond the Bombings: Five Palestinians' Daily Struggle for Survival in Gaza

Making tea in Gaza requires a calculation that most of us never have to make. Alaa Hessi, eight months pregnant, begins her morning by accounting for her family's gas ration: six kilograms every three months, enough to heat a pot for eighteen minutes a day. That time is reserved for cooking. For tea, she builds a fire instead.

Twelve-year-old Ramadan is the one who finds the fuel. He walks through sand dunes searching for anything that will burn—twigs snapped from thorn bushes, pieces of plastic washed up on the beach. Before the water can boil, there is the question of whether a water truck will come to his area that day. If it doesn't, he walks to find it. His family's large water containers have been chewed through by rats, so he must carry what he collects in his hands or whatever vessel he can fashion. On a day when temperatures reach thirty degrees Celsius, that water must sustain his family for washing, brushing teeth, cooking, and drinking. Then comes the question of whether there is tea or sugar or coffee to brew at all. When Ramadan holds the paper bag of rationed sugar, he remembers last year's famine, when aid distribution points became places where people were shot. He remembers boys beside him who moved at the wrong moment, who didn't make it.

These are the stories that don't appear in headlines about Gaza. The bombings and mass deaths demand attention and receive it. But there is a quieter, grinding tragedy that emerges only when you examine the texture of a single day—the small, ordinary moments that define what it means to survive under siege. The Guardian followed five Palestinians through a week: a child, a pregnant woman, a teacher, a skateboarder, and a grandmother. From sunrise to dusk, their routines revealed something the news cycle rarely captures: the systematic removal of everything that makes life more than mere survival.

Israel controls what enters Gaza, deciding calorie allocations and gas rations. Beyond the essentials, the blockade maintains a blacklist of items classified as "dual use"—goods that could theoretically be used by Hamas. The criteria are opaque and constantly shifting. At various points, the list has included ventilator machines, cancer medications, wedding dresses, sewing machines, toys, musical instruments, spices, dates, and crutches. Rajab al-Reefi, a thirty-year-old who runs Gaza Skate Team, has watched this policy hollow out his work. For five years, he taught children to skateboard. During the war, the weekly gatherings became a refuge for displaced children. Even after their skatepark was demolished, the team continued, posting videos of tricks performed on rubble and collapsed concrete. But skateboards have a lifespan of two years. One by one, layers snapped, wheel bearings wore out, parts salvaged from broken boards no longer fit others. With none left, the team dug equipment from the rubble of a bombed building. They have a handful of working boards again, and the girls are back to skating. But these boards are on their last legs. When they wear out, nothing will replace them.

A skateboard is not essential to live. Its absence will not appear in reports about food deprivation. But its absence illuminates the blockade's full nature: the random cruelties, the systematic curtailing of lightness, fun, self-expression. Professor Mahmoud Seydam wires a solar panel to power a laptop, uploading lectures over WhatsApp and conducting oral presentations instead of written exams—teaching without paper, notebooks, or a university campus. Alaa Hessi prepares a safe crib for her baby in a tent pitched above the rubble where three of her children were killed in a strike. Mansoura Ibrahim Mohammed Abdel Dayem, living in the back of a truck, tells her grandchildren stories of their history. Ramadan watches the ocean and dreams of becoming a lifeguard. Against the odds, each finds ways to hold onto what makes them human. That resistance, quiet and daily, is what the headlines don't tell us.