Voices from Gaza

Alert is a biannual magazine published by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF USA) that features ground reporting from our work around the world. Below are excerpts from the Winter 2025 issue (Vol. 26, no. 2), The Year in Photos.

Two years of all-out war on Gaza have left the Strip in ruins. Israeli forces’ attacks on hospitals, homes, and civilian infrastructure have destroyed the conditions necessary for life and decimated the health system.

On October 10, the first phase of a ceasefire agreement went into effect, bringing some welcome relief for Palestinians exhausted by relentless violence. As this issue went to press, however, conditions on the ground remained volatile. Gaza still faces a long road to recovery and reconstruction.

A surge of medical aid is crucial to heal the physical and psychological injuries affecting Palestinians. Of the more than 1,000 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team members in Gaza, the vast majority are locally hired staff—as is common across our international medical projects. Our Palestinian colleagues have been working under extreme pressure while facing the consequences of war on a personal level: hunger, repeated displacement, the destruction of homes, and lives lost or changed forever in an instant.

For more stories, follow @HumansofNY and @doctorswithoutborders on Instagram.

Weam Atallah, MSF pharmaceutical supervisor, August 13, 2025

Peace, love, and harmony

My name is Weam. It's a beautiful name for me, because my mother gave it to me. She died of cancer when I was 8 years old. So I love my name, because my mom loved it. It’s also perfect for me because it means” peace, love, and harmony.” And everyone who meets me says that I’m positive energy shining everywhere. I’m a team leader for 23 pharmacists. “The pharma army,” we call it. Ask anyone: We are the happiest team in the hospital.

After we start our morning meeting, I’ll put on a bit of music for everyone. If they want to dance, they can dance. If they want to sing, they can sing. We are working 24 hours, seven days a week, without stopping. They are under so much stress all the time. There are always mass casualty incidents. And everyone in Gaza is living their own nightmare with the bombings, the displacements, the hunger.

So, I’m just trying to make it easier for them. When I help others, it feels like I’m doing something right, that I’m still useful in this life. But on the inside, no. I am not happy at all. I haven’t slept for more than three hours since the war began.

How can anyone be happy when they are surrounded by so much death? But there is something that my mother said to me, right before she died. It’s the only memory that I have of her.

She told me: “Weam, please keep that smile on your face. Because everyone loves your smile.” So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying. You will find that even when I’m crying, I am smiling.

Dr. Sohaib Safi, MSF deputy medical coordinator, August 28, 2025

How do we resist? By existing.

[My daughter’s] name is Rita. It comes from a poem by a well-known poet of Palestine. It’s a song that I used to sing, and my wife loves it too. So Rita is a product of love between me and my wife.

I haven’t seen either of them in a year and a half. When the border opened last year, I sent them both out of the country. I hold a master’s degree in burns, plastic, and reconstructive surgery—and these skills are deeply needed in Gaza. So I chose to stay behind.

I’ve co-managed a team that built a field hospital with 120 beds and three surgical theaters running 24 hours.

This is something I’ll be proud of for years and years. And I hope one day Rita will understand. I’ll ask her to read books and watch documentaries about the genocide. I’ll ask her to understand that I couldn’t close my eyes to the suffering of our people. We must resist. And how do we resist? By existing. And how do we exist? By having a value. And in our family, our value is to serve others more than we serve ourselves.

Dr. Ahmed Seyam, MSF surgeon, August 25, 2025

We used to be a beautiful family

When I brought [my children] to the hospital, I refused to let my colleagues deal with their injuries. I dealt with them alone. I did the dressing. I removed the sutures. I wanted them to feel: “Our dad is taking care of us, maybe he can still protect us. Maybe he’s still our hero.”

I’m trying to keep myself together, so they can still see me as their hero. But no, I am not strong now. I’m weak.

We had a chance to leave Gaza, one year ago. But I refused. Because I love my people. I love my patients, so I chose to stay. But I regret all of it. My children had the right to live their life. Not this life I chose for them.

I’m not OK. I didn’t do well with my children. I didn’t save them or protect them. We used to be a beautiful family. But now, I don’t know.

Kholoud Al-Sedawi, MSF coordinator, August 15, 2025

Another person lives inside you

My whole life people have said to me: “You are too kind; too sensitive.” When I interviewed for a schoolteacher position, the principal told me: “You will never be able to control the students.” Because of this I built in my mind that I’m not a very strong person.

In December we spent 15 days on the street because there were too many bombs. Nobody could sleep safely inside. I ate nothing during this time, zero. I just drank some water every two days.

We were sheltering in a small corridor inside a school yard. My husband left us to look for food, and that’s when the bomb fell. When it falls close to you, you don’t hear anything. You just see the body parts flying through the air: the hand of someone, the leg of someone, the head of someone.

My son comes to me, and his face is bloody. My daughter comes to me, and she is clutching her chest. My other two children are holding their legs; I can’t tell how they are injured. ... There was no anesthesia, no stitches.

We put something in the children’s mouths, and I held them down while [the doctor] removed the shrapnel with a kitchen knife. You cannot imagine how the children were screaming. But we removed the shrapnel. And when we finished, I took the knife and removed the shrapnel from my own leg.

“Too kind, too sensitive.” I heard this my entire life. But I can tell you: another person lives inside you. And if the world forces you, you will find her.

Ahmed Iqtifan, MSF water and sanitation coordinator, August 18, 2025

Someone to tell me that everything’s going to be OK

Before the war I never thought of getting married—maybe after 30 or something. But when the war started my mind changed.

Every night I am awakened by airstrikes. I live near the sea, and the helicopters are coming from the sea. Whenever I hear them, I am thinking: “What if this one is for me?” For the first time in my life I’ve started to feel like I need someone—someone to tell me that everything’s going to be OK.

Four months ago I became engaged. Her name is Lama. She’s the sister of my best friend Kareem, who was killed in a bombing last year.

I was driving to her house today. I’d put on jeans, and was smelling very good, and I started thinking: “Maybe I shouldn’t be so happy. Because things are so bad for everyone.”

Sometimes when I wake up from the airstrikes, I’ll send her a very sweet message: “I hope you are very good,” and so on. This is something that is nothing during normal times. But it’s a bit different when you are checking if someone is alive.

All these things, which used to seem like nothing, are everything to us now.

Nour Alsaqqa, MSF communications officer, September 2, 2025

Gaza feels like the only real place left on earth

Everyone has disassociated from our reality. We have nothing to eat, but we have these phones. We get to watch our international friends going about their days normally. Who are we even talking to? You cannot rely on the conscience and moral compass of those in power.

We’ve tried for so long. It doesn’t work. You have to put pressure on them. You have to disrupt their systems. You have to move and mobilize and obstruct and protest and cost them things. It’s the only thing they listen to.

Life in Gaza does teach you. For the longest time I wanted to leave, but now I don’t feel like I could bear living anywhere else in this world. Gaza feels like the only real place left on earth.