(Israel has launched a new and intensified phase of its genocidal war on Gaza under the code name "Operation Gideon's Chariots," with the clear objective of annihilating the Palestinian people and erasing their homeland. Amid starvation, siege, and relentless bombardment, the people of Gaza continue to stand—not only for survival, but for justice, memory, and the right of return. In the face of death, they assert life. From the rubble, where the smell of death hangs heavy in the air, Wissam Zoghbar, a Central Committee member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, offers a searing testament to Gaza’s unbreakable will. This letter from ground zero is a declaration of steadfastness from a people who refuse to be erased and who continue to resist the genocidal project. -Ed.)
In Gaza, it is not only buildings that are bombarded, but also memory, and the very right to life. What Gaza is enduring today is a savage war that cannot be reduced to scenes of bombing and destruction. It goes far beyond that—it is a systematic operation to uproot the Palestinian person from their land and strip the place of its meaning and identity. This is a war of displacement par excellence, executed by a brutal military machine and shielded by biased international narratives, as if the eradication of an entire people could somehow be justified under the pretext of “self-defense.”The demolished homes, streets carved out by shellfire, and temporary camps turned into open graves—these are not merely images of destruction, but evidence of a relentless effort to manufacture a new Palestinian reality: one without a people. From the very first moment of this war, it became clear that the aim goes beyond “neutralizing resistance factions” to targeting the very existence of Palestinians by rendering cities uninhabitable and forcing people to flee or be displaced into the unknown.
This form of warfare is a reenactment of the Nakba, only with new, harsher, and more blatant methods. Just as more than 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their cities and villages in 1948, today hundreds of thousands are being driven into internal and external displacement under the pressure of fear, death, and devastation. The message behind this systematic violence is unmistakable: There is no place for Palestinians on their land, and no option left but departure.
Displacement here is not practiced by weapons alone, but by depriving people of electricity, water, food, and medicine—by destroying hospitals, wiping out entire families, and erasing everything that binds a person to their homeland. Palestinians are no longer killed because they resist, but simply because they exist. Survival itself has become an act of resistance, and anyone who refuses to leave is branded a threat.
This displacement is not just a battle over land—it is a battle over narrative and consciousness. The occupation and its backers want the world to believe that Palestinians chose to leave, not that they were forced out under the threat of annihilation. But the world knows, history testifies, and the Palestinian people are writing another story with their blood: Displacement will not prevail, and return is not a dream—it is a right.
In conclusion, this is not merely a war on Gaza, but a war on Palestinian dignity and human existence. The bombing is just a means—the true objective is total erasure. And yet, the Palestinian, from beneath the rubble, resists through life itself, crying out from the depths of agony: “I was born here, and here I shall remain, no matter how fiercely the ground beneath me burns.”
