“Nothing Left in Jabaliya”: Endless Catastrophes in a Besieged Refugee Camp After already destroying everything, the Israeli army has returned to invade Jabaliya for the fourth time since the war began. Hamza M.Salha May 20 ∙ Guest post Israel’s war of extermination in Gaza is approaching its apex. Over the past several days, the Israeli military has launched a massive offensive with near-continuous airstrikes across the enclave, a ground invasion, and a full-spectrum blockade on food, fuel, and medicine that has brought hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the brink of starvation. This is “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” which Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as the “concluding moves” in Gaza. The final solution. The scale of the assault is nearly impossible to track. Just overnight and into today, strikes in the north on the Musa Bin Nusair School in Gaza City, killed at least 13 people, including children who burned to death. In Beit Lahia, Israeli troops are besieging the Indonesian hospital, opening fire on doctors and patients inside with tanks and snipers. A strike on a home in the central city of Deir al-Balah killed at least 12. At least 15 were killed in the bombing of a gas station in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. More strikes in Khan Younis in the south killed at least 10. This is an incomplete account of barely half a day of horror. The killing is so relentless that the health ministry, in its afternoon bulletin publishing the number of confirmed dead and wounded for the previous 24 hours, has also begun including the number killed since dawn that same day as it tries to keep up with the body count. By mid-afternoon today, already 53 Palestinians have been killed. More than 100 have been killed every day for the past several days—with the official figures acknowledged as an undercount. The military continues to issue sweeping displacement orders, including one covering much of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second largest city. Nearly 100,000 Palestinians have been displaced in just the last four days. The genocidal assault has ramped up to such a degree that it even prompted the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, and Canada to issue a joint statement calling “the level of human suffering in Gaza…intolerable” and threatening to take “concrete actions” if Israel does not curtail its attack and lift aid restrictions. Meanwhile, Adam Boehler, Trump’s special envoy for hostage affairs, reiterated support for Israel’s renewed military offensive. Hamza Salha is a journalist based in the Jabaliya refugee camp, which has already been decimated in the war and is under new military displacement orders. He filed this heart-wrenching personal account for Drop Site News as Israeli ground troops are fast advancing on the camp. —Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Middle East Bureau Chief The view of Jabaliya refugee camp from journalist Hamza Salha’s room. May 2025. (Photo by Hamza Salha) Story by Hamza Salha JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP—For the fourth time, the Israeli war machine is returning to destroy what has already been destroyed in Jabaliya refugee camp. There have been three Israeli ground offensives since 2023: from December 2023 to late January 2024; then a month’s long campaign starting on May 11; and another that started on October 6, 2024 and ended with the temporary “ceasefire” in January 2025. In each, the Israeli army systematically worked to flatten Jabaliya and turn it into a barren desert. I was a witness to all these operations. I see the bombs falling again on Jabaliya from my window, and I have survived so far. I have starved, trembled with fear, and been displaced countless times. I have become an expert in navigating crises: how to escape drones, what to pack in an evacuation bag, which roads to take, how to follow the army’s advances, and how to extract survivors and pull myself out from under the rubble. I have carried the bones and remains of martyrs in my hands. I am no longer living a normal life, filled with peace and comfort. I now have simple dreams of sleeping through the night and waking up to take a shower under hot water. Hamza Salha holding human remains in Jabaliya refugee camp. May 2025. (Photo by Hamza Salha) This happens during every ground invasion. Yet it isn’t enough. Now the army renews its aggression on Jabaliya, waging war on the flesh of children. They chose May 15—the Nakba anniversary—not just to remind us of the catastrophe, but to make us relive it. The nightmare of everything I endured during the previous invasions replays in my mind like a looping radio tape, paralyzing my ability to think. One question haunts me: “What is it between them and Jabaliya? What has Jabaliya done to them?” There is nothing left in Jabaliya, nothing but rubble and tents. They are coming back again. The soldiers are almost in the camp. It’s as if even the idea of recovery or a gasp of breath is forbidden to us. Ever since the war resumed in March and all the aid was halted, I’ve been in a state of deep depression and severe stress. I was wounded in my knee a while ago and the pain is eating away at me. My head and teeth ache from malnutrition. I have an infection in my eyes and they feel like they are bursting. Drop Site News is reader-supported. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This all pales in comparison to the sight of my father’s hunched back and fragile body. My father, at one point in his life, could beat all his coworkers at arm wrestling. I challenged him this week and won. It was the first time in my life that my heart broke from winning. I couldn’t believe it at first, so I asked him: “You’re not using your full strength and just trying to make me happy by letting me win, right?” He didn’t respond. When a temporary ceasefire was announced on January 19, marking the end of the third ground incursion that lasted nearly four months, people returned from their displacement in western Gaza City and from the south back to Jabaliya to live in half-destroyed homes, under tilted roofs, and in tents that do not shield them from either the winter cold or the summer heat. They struggled to find enough food to eat, get a single gallon of water, or locate a working light to brighten their nights. When I returned with my family to our house in the western Jabaliya camp in January, we found it on the verge of collapse. Six out of fourteen support columns were destroyed, and the staircase had been bombed. We couldn’t reach the upper floors until we replaced the concrete staircase with a wooden one. Since the escalation of the assault on May 15, my greatest fear has been that the house will collapse on us from the power of a nearby strike. I look at the corners and pillars and say, “God strengthen you—don’t betray us and kill us.” A wooden staircase built by Hamza Salha and his family in order to access the upper floors of their damaged home in Jabaliya refugee camp. May 2025. (Photo by Hamza Salha) My survival in this war until now has been nothing but a false escape; or maybe a slow death. This endless war is chipping away at my body, my soul, and my mental health day by day. With every airstrike Israel launches on Gaza, my heart trembles and almost rips from my chest. With each missile, tissues and cells in my body die, shortening my life. My mind is consumed with the search for a safe haven—one that doesn’t exist in Gaza. It’s as if a fog has surrounded my brain, preventing me from functioning normally, from speaking with people, from performing simple tasks. On Nakba night, a night without sleep, the air force bombed the area every four minutes. I’ve lived through airstrikes throughout the war, but the bombs are now burying so many homes and residents in deep, wide craters. The sky rains down missiles and flashes with explosions. I’ve become hypersensitive to the smell of gunpowder and bombs, a scent that has stuck in my mind since the day I survived death when I was wounded. The night was a descent into the pit of hell. I grabbed my phone and started browsing the internet. The U.S. president was in Qatar, and I was terrified, searching for any news of a ceasefire, a deal, or of aid entering Gaza. I scrolled through Instagram and saw people laughing on their vacations somewhere. It angered me—even though I knew it wasn’t their fault—because joy and laughter have become luxuries to me, especially when a post of people laughing is followed by news of an entire family’s extermination. I can’t even remember the last time I laughed with all my heart. One way or another, and with many prayers, my family and I survived that night. But the next morning, I was devastated by the news of my cousin Huda’s martyrdom. She was only in her 30s. Grief filled the house, and sorrow was etched into my father’s face. His familiar cheeks sagged. Huda had been displaced to her husband’s brother’s house in Beit Lahia after her apartment in Al-Razan Tower in Jabaliya camp was destroyed. According to eyewitnesses, when the bombing intensified, Huda, her husband, and their three children rushed to evacuate the house. Her husband and children went ahead, and just as she followed, an artillery shell struck and killed her instantly. Huda’s body was buried above the remains of her aunt Zainab, who died years ago. There was no space left in the cemetery to dig a new grave. Even burying the dead has become difficult. Huda was not just a number. My aunt worked hard to raise, honor, and educate herself until she excelled in everything. She was kind, intelligent, and eventually became an elementary school teacher at UNRWA schools. Huda was like an older sister to me. I still remember how, when I was a child, she used to play volleyball with me, make me sweets, and ask me clever questions in Arabic. Mercy be upon you, my cousin. I swear your fingernail is worth more than this filthy world a thousand times over. I bear witness that you are now in a better place—far from this cruel world, where there is no war, no killing, and no injustice. A guest post by Hamza M.Salha Writer Fan of pigeons Struggling to smile Alive by mistake and miracle