Escaping Gaza City, while reporting on its destruction

0:00Malak A Tantesh:This is The Guardian.

0:08Malak A Tantesh:Today, a journalist on fleeing Gaza City and reporting as she goes.

0:25We are now in the apartment and my family is gathering our belongings together to move them easily. I feel deeply sad and frustrated. We all say that we don't want to leave, but we deeply know that we have no other choice.

0:46Malak A Tantesh:Malek Tantash is a journalist in Gaza. On the 16th of September, the day that Israel began its full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City, she sent us these voice notes. The sound of Israeli plants fills the air, and from time to time, we hear sounds of explosions. Malak has been writing for The Guardian for 18 months, but now, like thousands of others, she was also being forced to flee under mass evacuation orders. My mind is full of thoughts. This is our last night here. Will they allow us to return to Gaza City again? I remembered enjoying my last moments at the window today, watching the people below and holding on the beautiful scenes because I knew very well they would never be repeated again.

1:48Malak A Tantesh:Malak's parents load their family car with the two youngest children and as many belongings as they can carry. Malak and her sisters try to find another way out. I'm walking now in the street and I'm saying goodbye to every single corner here in Gaza City. I know very well that we will never come back here. We cannot find any transportation as all the cars are full with displaced people who are carrying their belongings and moving to the south. Israel's ground and air attack on Gaza City is ongoing. and for those leaving the city, it felt like a final goodbye. I wish all of this were just a nightmare and that I would walk up from it tomorrow morning.

2:41I feel disappointed right now, imagining how all these beautiful buildings would soon be destroyed and turned into mountains of grey rubble. I felt overwhelmed with sadness, frustration and exhaustion. I felt as if time was moving backwards, taking me back to the south once again. All we can hope for now is that this war will end as soon as possible.

3:19Malak A Tantesh:This is Malak's story A 20-year-old woman caught in Israel's military siege whilst reporting on the destruction of her homeland From The Guardian, I'm Lucy Hoff Today in Focus The human cost of Israel's ground invasion of Gaza

3:41Malak A Tantesh:Malek, thank you so much for finding a way to connect with us. So after your family were forced to flee Gaza City in the north last week, you're now sheltering in a tent in the south of the Strip. This is unbelievably the 11th time that you've been displaced in two years. Before October 7th, 2023, you had a very settled life, And I wonder if you could just start by telling us what your home was like in Gaza before the war. Our house was a three-story building, a living room, two bathrooms and three balconies. Me and my two sisters were living in one room and we were watching movies together inside our room.

4:24We were dancing inside our room. We were studying all inside our room. Yeah. Our room was our small house.

4:33Malak A Tantesh:And did you have a garden? What was it like outside your house? Yeah, it was a heaven. It was a heaven on the ground. It was full of all kinds of flowers. There was birds who built their homes inside our garden. And that's where you and your siblings would play? Yes. Yes, exactly. We were playing football and basketball. Also, we were on bicycles. We were riding bicycles. Yeah, it carries all our memories.

5:12Malak A Tantesh:Since the war began, life has, of course, changed beyond all recognition. You were only 18 and hoping to start university. Instead, you had to flee your home in the city of Beit Lahiyah in the north. Another Israeli attack meant you had to flee again. And by this time, you were living in a tent in Rafa. What were the conditions like in that tent accommodation? The conditions was like the most catastrophic condition that a human can be living in. It was a plastic tent. It was summer then. And during the day, it was very hot. And during the night, it was very cold. We were being sick all the time.

5:58I was inflicted with hepatitis A, and there was no treatment. It took me like two months to recover from this illness. Everything was hard. Getting water, getting food, getting treatment, everything was unavailable.

6:18Malak A Tantesh:Yeah. So, sorry. No worries. There was an ambulance. Yes, I started working with The Guardian when I was in Rafah. The first article was with Jason Burke, and I feel like it was like a gift for me to not become crazy. Yeah, yeah. Sitting in a tent all the time, under the sun, and the heat was making me crazy. Yeah, giving you a clear sense of focus at this time when your life had entirely transformed.

7:00Malak A Tantesh:After five months of living in a tent in Rafa, Malak and her family, along with thousands of Ghazans, were forced to move again. This time they went to Khan Yunis to another tent, and all the while the army was getting nearer and nearer. Relentless bombing and more moves through the winter piled misery upon misery, terror upon terror. Eventually, in January 2025, a much-dreamt-after ceasefire was announced and families like yours from the north of Gaza were allowed to return home. I wonder how you felt when you heard that news. I was flying. Yes. At that moment, I feel like finally we are free.

7:43now we are able to back to our homes to our farms our old life yeah we decided to be the first people of those who are returning to the north so we backed our belongings and head to the north yeah in the first day all the people around me returning they are very happy some of them were distributing sweets and I was looking to these scenes like and I felt like I'm still dreaming.

8:15Malak A Tantesh:Could you find your family home? No no when I was walking in the street like I couldn't recognize anything like it became dark when we arrived to our hometown so I couldn't see the destruction. We stayed in my grandparents' home, still good. But the army was using it as a gathering point. So there was writings on the wall and the house was dirty. So we stayed there and we started cleaning it. The second day, we went out to see our home. So you arrived back at night. What were the sights that you saw as you walked around the next day? I arrived to our street. Me and my sister Ines start fighting that this is the street, no that one.

9:16Malak A Tantesh:Because it was so unrecognisable, the destruction. Until one of our neighbours came and tell us that no, that is your street. Right. I mean, this is the home that you had grown up with, with your siblings and your father, isn't it? When I saw it in my own eyes, I felt like my heart was breaking into small pieces, like a glass. Yeah. I started remembering our garden, and I start looking around under the rubble, and so maybe I can find anything from my old life, But everything, our memories, our life, our clothes, everything was buried with our home. Did you and your family believe at that time that the ceasefire would hold and that life would go back to normal?

10:11Actually, we were building a new house and another farm. Our new house was still standing. Like it was under reconstruction. Yeah, it was just the walls. But we lived inside it. We start building and fixing so we can feel that everything is still fine. We start looking after our farms. So we start taking care of the trees, the dried trees there. And we start building a new life. But around this time, it was in March of this year, wasn't it, when Israel dramatically and unilaterally dropped the terms of the ceasefire and an entire aid blockade was imposed on the Gaza Strip,

11:05Malak A Tantesh:which dramatically reduced the amount of aid supplies that were able to cross the border. How did that impact you and how difficult did it become to access food and water? Actually, when the water broke out again, I feel like, oh my God, that we have to live through everything again. Yeah. Yes. It was like the worst time. It was Ramadan then. We woke up on the sounds of explosions and I started screaming on my mom and on my father. Can you hear what I am hearing? Like there is pumping. Can you hear it? What is happening? They said yes there is pumping and we didn't know what is happening. When I opened the internet there was more than 200 people were killed during just two hours.

12:05And we have to evacuate our house. Then in the morning, an Israeli quadcopter came and dropped leaflets in our area. The panic spread among the people and all of them started packing their belongings quickly and left the area that we are in. We moved to my grandparents' house And in the second two days My father and my uncle decided to take the risk And go back to our shelter to get the water tank Also my uncle went there to get a tent But unfortunately the Israeli tanks were very closed And two Israeli tanks had hit them My uncle was killed immediately. My father luckily survived it. Yeah.

13:03Malak A Tantesh:Oh, Malak, I'm so sorry.

13:15Malak A Tantesh:All this time, you are remarkably working as a journalist, you know, then at 19 years old. what was it like continuing that work as a journalist it made me a new person now my mind like it's it not belong to a 19 year old student yeah i feel like my mind now is belonged to maybe a 40, 50-year-old woman, not a 19-year-old girl. No foreign journalists are allowed into Gaza by Israel, and we know that around 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza in the last two years during this war, making reporting from there incredibly hard, to say the least. Malak, how difficult is it for you to carry out that work given that, as you say, you've been constantly moving around, that there's been so much destruction and chaos around you.

14:19Malak A Tantesh:How do you find stories? I go out the street and start looking for the people, arriving to the most affected families. Sometimes people are very tired, so sometimes they refuse to talk to me. People are very affected. And I know that you've been working with your guardian colleague, like Emma Graham Harrison, in covering the widespread famine in Gaza and the hunger crisis. I wonder how it's been covering that for you. Yeah, actually, during that time, it was like, I think it was the most hard time I ever going through. I was covering people's stories about hunger and famine, and I was myself hungry.

15:07I was hungry. I was feeling very tired. I was walking in the street and I was feeling that I am about to collapse. We were eating one meal a day.

15:23Malak A Tantesh:When did you start picking up on the rumours that Israel were planning to launch another ground offensive in Gaza City? And what did that mean for you and your family? Actually, during that time, we were living in an apartment in Gaza City. We moved from a tent there in Bethlehia, and we moved to live in an apartment in Gaza City. It was amazing because there was water and electricity. Internet was available. Yeah, so it was a luxury life for us. Like it was better than hundreds of thousands of other people who live in the tents. We were sitting in the balcony and drinking coffee with my family and telling some jokes.

16:14Also, we were celebrating my sister Inas's birthday. We were saying that, Inas, you are so lucky that we were going to celebrate your birthday this year. and we were planning to make some cookies and some cakes as the sugar was available in the market until we saw leaflets dropping in Gaza City. I felt my mother became very scared. I opened the internet and they checked the leaflets and it was evacuation orders. like at that moment i cannot describe what we felt i start uh remembering our journey to the south how we how we live in the south and the catastrophic conditions i start saying i don't want i don't want to leave yeah i am i am saying here i don't want to leave gaza city i I don't want to back to the miserable life in the tents.

17:21Yes, but unfortunately we have no choice.

17:24Malak A Tantesh:What did you and your family decide to do once you'd received those evacuation orders? What happened next? We waited two days, hoping that this will be denied in some way. But unfortunately nothing happened. and we decided when the bombardment became more and more closer to us and we felt that now it's very dangerous, so we decided to leave. And how was your last evening in Gaza City? My last evening, I stand in the window and I start looking. I was saying goodbye to everything. just standing in the window and looking for the people and looking for the Gaza Sea and for the buildings. I was saving the mummeres, a group of friends who were hugging each other and two parents holding their maybe two-year-old daughter and walking together.

18:32and a lot of other things I saved in my memory because I know that we will not gonna see that again. I was looking to the mosque, the destroyed mosque in front of our building. I was saying goodbye to everything because I know deep in my heart that we will not gonna return to this again. Even if we return to Gaza City, it will be destroyed. Like if you look to my hometown, Bethlehia, now there is nothing. There is nothing but gray rubble and just destruction. And Gaza City will be the same. That is why I was saying goodbye. I was saving everything, everything I can could because yes, it will be the end

19:27Malak A Tantesh:Oh Malak, I'm so sorry

19:37Malak A Tantesh:And you said in your voice notes that you couldn't fit in the car so you and your two sisters had to start walking What was that like? What did you see? We started taking some photos Because people start joking on us, saying that, take more photos, take more photos. This will be the last photos you will take in Gaza City. And we were saying, yes, that is why we are taking photos. Tell me more about the conditions you found people in, you know, who've suffered months of extreme hunger, of famine, of this onslaught. All of them were... Like, if you look to their faces, you will be so panicked, sad and exhausted.

20:25They were broken. Some people were talking in the street that they didn't want to leave Gaza City, they want to stay there. When I asked some people why they wanted to stay in Gaza City, they said that they don't have money, they don't have cars, they don't have a place to go in the South. We were like the few lucky people, like my family from the few lucky people that had cars. I met some people who were staying in the street, holding their belongings. And when I asked them what they are doing they said that they don't know where to go they were answering me with broken tone i had to ask them what they have lost during the war it is the hardest the hardest questions that I ask.

21:27When I hear their answers, I keep saying like, thank God that even though that I lost a lot during the war, but it is nothing compared to other people. At least that we still can afford food, afford shelter, but they cannot. When I came back to the tent, I feel that my heart is very heavy. It is heavy from what I heard and what I saw. And I start working on the translations of their interviews and sometimes I start crying because I feel when I am writing their stories, I live inside it. So I can deliver their feelings to the outside world.

22:29Malak A Tantesh:Coming up, how it feels to be a reporter in Gaza right now.

22:46Malak A Tantesh:Malek, we have been so grateful for all of the work that you have been doing covering the situation on the ground. We know how dangerous in particular things are for journalists working in Gaza and how journalists have not been spared. In fact, there is evidence that they may have been targeted deliberately by the IDF. I wonder how you yourself have coped with the dangers of the work that you do and how that has impacted you. Yeah. Every time we hear that a journalist was target, nightmares visited me. I keep dreaming that the same thing happened to me. I'm always, all the time, I'm afraid to be targeted.

23:32I feel like it's not fair. I feel like I am in danger all the time. Yeah, so when I am doing the interviews, when I am staying in home among my family, I am scared all the time that something bad will happen to me or to them. I'm afraid of losing someone close to me.

24:03Malak A Tantesh:And how do your family feel about you doing this job? Does your mother or your father ever say, we would just rather that you be safe? Yes, my mother, as all the mothers all around the world, she's benefit. Sometimes she asks me not to do anything, to stop work, because she's afraid. She's afraid that she would lose me. but I insist on doing this work. My father was my first supporter. Actually he was working as a fixer for foreign journalists and he's the first one who teach me the language and he started teaching me how to conduct interviews. So how do you keep yourself safe? Because I mean you are working as a journalist.

24:54Malak A Tantesh:But also you are a very young woman working in a war zone. I mean, it's a double risk, isn't it? I avoid going into the side streets because now there is no security and the crimes is very spread nowadays. Yeah. And what is your situation for your family now? How are you all doing and do you feel that you're in relative safety? Actually, not that much. Like, we are living in a tent. We start suffering again with the heat and with the insects. There is still no safety. I still can hear the explosions and I still can hear helicopters start shooting. Yes, we're in danger. There is no safety in Gaza Strip.

25:55There is no safety at all.

25:59Malak A Tantesh:Regardless of what happens, do you and your family want to stay in Gaza? Yes, actually, yes. All the people in Gaza, you feel like they are in all the trees. If you take it out from their own land, they will die. we are the same we feel like we are we are rooted in this land we ate from its lands and its fruits without this land we are nothing because like i feel like we are connected with this land my grandparents, all of them they taught us how to love this land and how to take care of it no matter what had happened to us, we and the land are one, we cannot be divided from each other Well Malik thank you for this interview and for all of the work that you have been so bravely doing in the last 18 months, please be safe and thank you again Thank you so much.