Years before October 7, I sat on a sweltering Gaza beach beside my late friend Ali, gazing at a horizon we could never access
A bullet struck the sand between us. Fired from an Israeli gunboat enforcing the siege.
An Israeli soldier almost murdered us out of boredom! Had he fired a few millimetres differently, I would've long been among the faceless nameless dead & that soldier would've moved on with his life, unbothered, untouched.
In Gaza, that’s always been the math of life & death — entirely random, entirely human, & entirely unjust.
Today, this line Israel blurred between murder & survival is more visible than ever. Murder has lost its logic, it's purely arbitrary. Survival feels less like a right and more like a coin toss. There's nothing a Gazan can do to stay alive.
There are no split seconds to make the right decision.
Minor random choices hold your fate like lottery. Do I sit inside the tent or step outside for air? Do I take a donkey cart into town or walk? Search for food or water first? Visit my parents or stay where I am? Shelter in a hospital or a UN school?
Each of these choices holds no guarantee. Each one has the same odds of ending in silence, rubble, and grief.
Some of my loved ones are alive today because they walked a little faster, turned down a street, or hesitated for a moment before leaving home.
Others are gone — murdered in seconds — their fate sealed by a moment’s delay, a different route, a random choice.
This is what it means to live — & die — under Israel's siege & genocide. Not in a war zone, but in a system designed to make death arbitrary. A system where choosing when to breathe, where to step, or how long to linger can determine whether you live another day.
There are no safe choices — only lucky ones.
And the line between luck & loss is as thin as a breath, a pause, a glance in the wrong direction.
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