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IN GAZA, WE LIVE IN A STATE THAT FEELS LIKE waking up after a long night of fragmented, restless sleep. It's as if you've spent the night on the edge of fear—between the hum of drones, the echo of explosions, and the relentless pounding of your own heart. You wake up with a head that feels as heavy as the earth itself, your eyes swollen and tired, your body limp and worn. Conversations are dull, voices are low, emotions seem colorless … not because of sleep deprivation, but because of hunger, despair, and a prolonged absence of safety.
Hunger is not only in our stomachs—it's in our souls, in our sense of meaning, in our hope. Despair cloaks everything, heavy as concrete dust in the lungs. Anger bursts forth over the smallest things, and you realize it's not really anger—it's the overflow of what can no longer be contained.
We live in what can only be described in Arabic as MOUSSIBA (Chronic Complex Trauma)—where the lines between safety and threat have completely eroded. There is no relief, no moment to exhale. Even in the silence of the night, the air is saturated with fear. Children are born with the gaze of survivors. Adults move like weary soldiers who no longer know whether to run, to hide, to bury, or to heal.
Schools are no longer schools—they are shelters. Homes are no longer homes—they are fragments of suspended lives. Relationships are unstable—not because of emotional issues, but because at any moment, anyone might vanish. No goodbye. No time for forgiveness.
In Gaza, trauma no longer resembles the definitions we studied in psychology textbooks or heard about in lectures. Conventional diagnostic tools fall short. Trauma doesn't begin with a “critical incident,” and there's little use in assessing symptoms “a certain number of weeks after the event,” because the incident never ends. It no longer makes sense to talk about post-traumatic stress disorder, because the trauma is not post—it's ongoing. The danger is never past.
What we need is a new model of unde