From Invisibility to Action: The Lived Realities and Evolving Roles of Gazan Women Amidst War

17/01/2025

Written by: Sahar Jeanne Hachemi

Translated by: Caroline Bocquet

The intense Israeli bombing has dominated debate across France and the world, including academic circles, media coverage, humanitarian discussions, and political forums. Many have sought to control the narrative around these violations, sometimes limiting the possibility of hearing directly from those experiencing this violence.^[1]Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI). (2023). Conflit israélo-palestinien : En France, un débat particulièrement piégé. Institut Français des Relations Internationales. … Continue reading

This calls for a deliberate shift in how we study and report on conflict, by centering the experiences of individuals, especially women in Gaza. In this context, it is imperative to deconstruct the binary ‘victim/combatant’ framework that is frequently applied to women’s roles during war.^[2]Voir par exemple: Sciences Po. (2023). Les femmes dans les conflits armés : Patriarcat en temps de guerre. Sciences Po. … Continue reading

To develop a comprehensive analysis that recognises women’s capacity for transformation, we need to explore forms of agency and resilience that have emerged since the Israeli military offensive began in October 2023, yet which remain largely ignored in academic work and Western media. The roles of women as steadfast activists^[3]Leostic, C. (2018). En Palestine, les femmes sont en première ligne, à tous les niveaux. 50/50 Magazine. … Continue reading, as well as pillars holding their society together under deplorable conditions have rarely received attention in recent months^[4]À lire par exemple dans: Abuzerr, S., & Zinser, K. (2024). Amplifying the voices of women in the Gaza Strip. The Lancet. … Continue reading.

Despite the urgency and the violence faced by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, it is analytically and academically vital to understand the roles and positions of women living in these territories in order to capture their realities and experiences as accurately as possible.

The Israeli offensive^[5]Pour plus d’informations, se référer au dernier rapport du Conseil des Droits de l’Homme de l’ONU:  Conseil des Droits de l’Homme de l’ONU. (2024). Rapport du Conseil des Droits de … Continue reading has caused unprecedented destruction in Gaza, with deaths reaching approximately 40,000 according to Palestinian authorities^[6]MSN. (2024). How AP analyzed Gaza health ministry’s death toll data. MSN News. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/us/how-ap-analyzed-gaza-health-ministrys-death-toll-data/ar-BB1nMF7V and recent UN reports^[7]https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf, However, one study suggests the toll could be as high as 186,000^[8]The Lancet. (2024). Women’s voices in Gaza: Health and human rights. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext#seccestitle10. The majority are civilians, many of them children^[9]Reuters. (2024, May 14). Gaza death toll: How many Palestinians has Israel’s campaign killed? Reuters. … Continue reading.

Injuries continue to mount, and material damage is massive, with more than 60% of Gaza’s buildings destroyed^[10]South China Morning Post. (2024, May). Israel-Gaza war: Chinese satellites detail scale of destruction in besieged Palestinian territory. South China Morning Post. … Continue reading. This analysis examines a conflict that many experts, human rights organisations, and the International Criminal Court consider to be potentially genocidal^[11]United Nations. (2024, March). Gaza humanitarian situation: UN news update. UN News. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147976.

To understand the complexities of daily life during war and counter the political exploitation of women’s wartime experiences^[12]Voir sur l’instrumentalisation des femmes afghanes: KHALILI, LALEH. (2011). Gendered Practices of Counterinsurgency. Review of International Studies. 37. 1471 – 1491. … Continue reading, we need a more bottom-up analytical approach. Focusing on the local level captures the plurality of experiences and narratives of those directly affected. This approach requires careful consideration of which academic tools will help us develop realistic analyses of Gazan women’s roles, moving beyond simplistic ‘victim or combatant’ categorisation.

Conflict: a constraint revealing how women’s roles evolve and shift

Reactions to Israel’s months-long campaign of massive, indiscriminate bombing targeting Gaza’s population and essential infrastructure^[13]Haddad M. (2021) Mapping Gaza: Schools, Hospitals, Refugee Camps and More, Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/21/mapping-gaza-hospitals-schools-refugee-camps-palestine) – including … Continue reading and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) facilities (virtually the only international entity still able to ensure much of the population’s survival)^[14]United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). (2024). Situation report 94: Situation in Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem. UNRWA. … Continue reading – sometimes seem to ignore or minimise the gendered dimensions of this offensive^[15]Voir Institut de Géopolitique (IGG). (n.d.). Géopolitique des guerres et conflits modernes. IGG. https://igg-geo.org/?p=18249  ;  Rouach, D. (2020). Mémoire de Master 2: Géopolitique des … Continue reading.

Recent developments in urban warfare^[16]Fregonese, S. (2012). Urban Geopolitics 8 Years on. Hybrid Sovereignties, the Everyday, and Geographies of Peace. Geography Compass, 6(5). Israel’s tactics in the West Bank over recent decades^[17]Weizman, E. (2008). À travers les murs. La Fabrique. https://lafabrique.fr/a-travers-les-murs/)) but also, at least since 2007 in Gaza, have heightened the devastating impact of the war on the daily … Continue reading, and daily violence against women and girls, particularly in prisons^[18]Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2024, February). Israel/OPT: UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against women. United Nations Human Rights Office. … Continue reading, all warrant attention. The numerous blockades of humanitarian aid at border crossings by Israeli civilians and officers, combined with the direct impacts of massive bombardments, have intensified the crisis in reproductive^[19]United Nations. 2023, novembre. Des césariennes pratiquées sans anesthésie à Gaza, dénonce l’ONU. UN News. https://news.un.org/fr/story/2023/11/1140902, maternal, and child health^[20]UN Women. (2024, April). Six months into the war on Gaza, over 10,000 women have been killed. UN Women. … Continue reading, while hundreds of thousands of families now depend primarily on this aid for survival^[21]ReliefWeb. (2024). Silent struggles: The unseen impact of UNRWA defunding on Gaza’s older generation. ReliefWeb. … Continue reading.

Given the scale of devastation, discourse analysis highlighting the gender dimensions of this conflict appears essential^[22]Voir UN Women. (2024, January). Gender alert: The gendered impact of the crisis in Gaza. UN Women. … Continue reading.

When media outlets and international organisations refer to victims killed or injured by the Israeli army, they often group women and children together in a single category.

Cynthia Enloe, a leading figure in intersectional feminism, coined a term for this categorisation during the Gulf War: ‘womenandchildren'^[23]Enloe, C. (1990, September 25). Womenandchildren: Making feminist sense of the Persian Gulf crisis. Village Voice, 29–32.. According to Enloe, this rhetoric creates an indirect link between women and children, erasing women’s agency by placing them on the same level as children while neglecting the particular situation of young girls, especially regarding sexual and gender-based violence^[24]Voir par exemple: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2024, May). Onslaught of violence against women and children in Gaza unacceptable: UN experts. *United Nations Human … Continue reading. This generalising approach also ignores the specific material and health needs of Gazan women, which have been further exacerbated since the latest escalation. Furthermore, media and international organisations have tended to emphasise the number of children and female victims^[25]United Nations. (2023, December 7). Amid unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, Israel-Hamas war threatens to engulf entire region, warns senior United Nations officials. *United Nations Press*. … Continue reading, thereby neglecting the distress of men, who themselves are sometimes victims of gender-based violence^[26]CNN. (2023, December 7). Gaza: Israeli soldiers detain men amid war. *CNN*. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/07/middleeast/gaza-israeli-soldiers-detained-men-intl/index.html.

This suggests that their experiences can only be understood if reduced to those of male combatants. It perpetuates a dichotomy between men as perpetrators and women as victims/innocents, when in fact the majority of victims are civilians whose experiences are intertwined with the conflict and region in multiple ways. This dichotomy fails to reflect the complex nature of civilian actions and roles during war.

Although considering the impact of gender and social status is important, we must not ignore women’s actions and their diversity. Arletta Brenner^[27]Brenner, A. Resisting Simple Dichotomies: Critiquing Narratives of Victims, Perpetrators, and Harm in Feminist Theories of Rape, Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, 36, 503-568., in research conducted at Harvard Law School, explains that the ‘victim or combatant’ dichotomy simplifies the dynamics of sexual violence. It erases the performativity of gender and assigned sex at birth, excluding the possibility of varied experiences and perspectives on gender-based violence and its psychological, traumatic, and social impacts.

This dichotomy reproduces a simplified view of conflicts by failing to account for gendered and contextual dimensions, as well as political, social, and economic dynamics. In Gaza’s case, this rhetoric prevents a more complex and specific understanding of the systemic violence the population encounters and the actions they undertake to survive. Analysing the specificities of each conflict is essential to avoid overlooking the overall context in which violence occurs. Here, Gaza’s blockade and Israel’s near-total control of the Strip’s borders contribute to maintaining certain patterns of violence, including gender-based violence.

Rema Hammami^[28]Hammami, R. (2019). Destabilizing Mastery and the Machine. Current Anthropology, 60, S87 – S97. discusses Israeli army checkpoints in the West Bank and the exaggeration of notions of corporeality and gender attributed to them. The physical checkpoint becomes a site of passage for certain bodies and a means of sorting them. The gendered aspect modifies and shapes the daily experiences of these passages through militarised barriers. We can conceive of these bodily experiences as integral to the experience of war itself.

Adopting a more nuanced analysis, such as the one proposed here, also allows us to assess how women’s roles evolve in response to the constraints they face in Gaza. Recent months’ bombings constitute a new escalation of unprecedented magnitude, while still acknowledging the daily violence Gazan civilians have suffered for decades, violence that has intensified since the 2007 blockade^[29]UNICEF. (2022, June). Gaza Strip: The humanitarian impact of 15 years of blockade. *UNICEF*. https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022.

Consider, for example, the numerous NGO reports highlighting the conflict’s impact on Gaza’s population, which almost never theorise about how the population adapts, the new ways families are finding to earn money, or the activities communities have organised to entertain children in refugee camps (such as sports activities^[30]Free Gaza Circus. (2024). Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/free.gaza.circus?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==, or alternative school education^[31]Reuters. (2024, May 13). Gazans strive to study as war shatters education system. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-strive-study-war-shatters-education-system-2024-05-13/). Social media has increasingly enabled the world to witness the population’s capacity for adaptation, particularly in Gaza, through Palestinian ‘citizen journalism’^[32]“ As Mainstream Media Fails Gaza, Social Media Fights to Tell the Real Story” Middle East Council on Global Affairs, 2024 … Continue reading.

In recent months, many Gazan women have taken initiatives within their communities, sometimes prioritising collective needs over their own. Some medical students have volunteered in hospitals^[33]Reuters. (2024, May 13). Gazans strive to study as war shatters education system. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-strive-study-war-shatters-education-system-2024-05-13/, while others, despite being displaced from their own homes, have continued to engage within women’s organisations, adapting their actions to meet the population’s urgent needs^[34]ActionAid Palestine. (2024). Gaza women inspire the world with their unparalleled strength in responding to the humanitarian crisis. ActionAid Palestine. … Continue reading.

An intersectional approach^[35]Association for Women’s Rights in Development, (awid.ord) (2004) Intersectionality: A Tool for Gender and Economic Justice. helps us understand the diversity of women’s roles during war. It also reveals a fluid spectrum that shows how civilians adapt their actions and roles in response to environmental constraints.

An analysis focused on identities and experiences, understood through the lens of ‘identity politics’ in political theory, would further refine our understanding. This approach also helps avoid the pitfalls of modern Orientalist reductionism^[36]Sayegh, G. (2015) Rethinking Intersections, Rethinking Contexts: Writing in Times of Dissent, Rethinking Intersections, 1, 1. / voir aussi: Said, E. (1978) Orientalism, Pantheon Books / Abu-Lughod, … Continue reading, in which narratives of Middle Eastern women have often been instrumentalised for political purposes without considering their interests or providing objective information about their lived experiences^[37]Sayegh, G. (2015) Rethinking Intersections, Rethinking Contexts: Writing in Times of Dissent, Rethinking Intersections, 1, 1..

In short, while recognising the violence women suffer in these conflicts, we must also recognise that they identify and create opportunities for action during war. These vary according to their identities and experiences, both despite and alongside the constraints their environment imposes^[38]Voir Keen, D. (2011) The Political Economy of War, War and Underdevelopment: Volume 1: The Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict (Oxford Academic), … Continue reading.

Multiple identities and cultural resistance: the fluidity of roles and Gazan women’s appropriation of Sumud

As this article suggests, analysing discourse and understanding Gazan women’s daily experiences enables us to identify mechanisms and grasp the complexity of civilian actions during war. This section examines the specific dynamics of everyday resistance through concrete examples from Gazan women’s daily lives and their appropriation of cultural tools. Their daily experiences provide insight into their capacity for action and their specific roles in the social and collective processes of survival.

Recognising this plurality of actions also makes it possible to question the mechanisms of violence^[39]Cockburn, C. (2012) The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace, Wenona Giles (ed.), Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, … Continue reading, revealing a continuum of violence in Gaza over decades, in which structural violence^[40]Parashar, S. (2013) ‘What wars and “war bodies” know about international relations’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26(4), pp. 615–630. Available at: … Continue reading, as specified in the previous section, is amplified during intensifications of violence. Identifying this continuum helps highlight how women’s roles and actions evolve, constantly adapting to the realities their environment imposes^[41]Narozhna, T. (2022). The lived body, everyday and generative powers of war: toward an embodied ontology of war as experience. International Theory, 14(2), 210–232. doi:10.1017/S1752971921000129. Since October, Gazan women have had to find new forms of resistance, illustrating the concept of ‘everyday war’^[42]Chandler, D. (2015). Resilience and the ‘everyday’: beyond the paradox of ‘liberal peace.’ Review of International Studies, 41(1), 27–48. doi:10.1017/S0260210513000533.

Historically, during periods of conflict, insecurity, or heightened violence, women have occupied domestic (nuclear-family), familial, community and public spaces and have found alternatives to change their social and economic status^[43]Dirik D. (2015) “The Women’s Revolution in Rojava: Defeating Fascism by Constructing an Alternative Society”, in A Small Key Can Open a Large Door: The Rojava Revolution, eds. Strangers in a … Continue reading).

These adjustments respond to both the general constraints of their situation and specific cultural and community norms^[44]Veronese, G., Sousa, C., & Cavazzoni, F. (2021). Survival and Resilience Among Palestinian Women: A Qualitative Analysis Using Individual and Collective Life Events Calendars. Violence Against … Continue reading. For example, maintaining family and social balance in Gaza illustrates these adaptations, as does the evolution of women’s organisations that broaden their scope to meet the urgent needs of the entire population. The aim here is to explore a possible avenue for identifying the role of cultural tools that Gazan women use to fight, in their own way, for their community^[45]Par example, UN Women. (2024, January). Scared, exhausted and expecting the worst: Women in Gaza describe humanitarian crisis. … Continue reading.

In a UN Women report collecting testimonies from displaced women in camps where the organisation works, one woman shares her fear of returning to the refugee camp where she was relocated with her newborn baby after a difficult delivery, due to precarious living conditions.

Hala, whose testimony also appears in the report, exemplifies another experience. Although excluded from the UNRWA shelter, she supported women and children by providing psychological assistance, resolving conflicts, and maintaining hygiene standards. Through these actions, she exemplifies active resilience, which is central to daily Palestinian resistance^[46]UN Women. (2023, November). *Voices from Gaza: Hala’s journey of resilience*. UN Women Palestine. … Continue reading.

In the context of occupation and the violence of Gaza’s military campaign, which has directly and indirectly deprived the population of the means to meet some of its most basic needs, it is important to consider the power of action taken by women in Gaza as daily agents in settings and environments that are considered less conventional. These new adaptive approaches therefore become forms of resistance.

The concept of ‘everyday resistance’^[47]Johansson, A., & Vinthagen, S. (2016). Dimensions of Everyday Resistance: An Analytical Framework. Critical Sociology, 42(3), 417-435. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920514524604, allows us to identify everyday practices of protest or non-acceptance of the oppressive environment that can be considered forms of resistance. These actions can thus be analysed as forms of agency in their own right.

In her article on forms of passive resistance in the West Bank, Liyana Kayali defines specific areas in which Palestinian women have been able to develop tactics for resistance: education, social reform, social enterprise, and collective awareness^[48]Kayali, L. (2024). Transformative incrementalism: Palestinian women’s strategies of resistance and resilience amid gendered insecurity and neoliberal co-optation. Security Dialogue, 0(0). … Continue reading. In situations of extreme constraints, Palestinian women have been able to engage in peaceful forms of resistance through various Intifada movements by creating unions and feminist movements^[49]Kuttab E. (2018) The Palestinian Women’s Movement: From Resistance and Liberation to Accommodation and Globalization or through Peace Forums to protest against the blockade of Gaza or the violence they have suffered^[50]Este J. (2018) Palestinian women: a history of female resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, The Conversation, … Continue reading. Some have also been forced to confront settlers directly to protect their loved ones^[51]Freedom Flotilla Coalition. (n.d.). The role of women in the Palestinian popular resistance. Freedom Flotilla. … Continue reading.  Others have sometimes participated in armed resistance movements^[52]Este J. (2018) Palestinian women: a history of female resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, The Conversation, … Continue reading.

Here, the cultural concept of sumud, which has been extensively documented in academic circles for its cultural, political, and social implications^[53]Voir par example: Kayali, L. (2024). Transformative incrementalism: Palestinian women’s strategies of resistance and resilience amid gendered insecurity and neoliberal co-optation. Security … Continue readingrepresents resistance and resilience in the attempt to live and survive.

Sumud is a central concept in Palestinian culture, symbolising resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, occupation, and adversity. This term embodies the Palestinian people’s attachment to their land, ‘the Palestinian people’s rootedness in and deep connection to their land, history and community'^[54]Ryan, C. (2015) Everyday Resilience as Resistance: Palestinian Women Practicing Sumud International Political Sociology, 9, 299–315., their history, and their community while adapting to changes imposed by the political and social context^[55]ISM France. (2022, May 1). Sumud: Paroles de résistance des prisonnières palestiniennes. ISM France. … Continue reading.

During previous episodes of violence, some Gazan artists, for example, used images of violence committed against the population to create works of art, in order to reclaim those images and acts of violence and to take ownership of their meaning^[56]El-Haddad, L. (2014). After the Smoke Clears: Gaza’s Everyday Resistance. Journal of Palestine Studies, 44(1), 120–125. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2014.44.1.120. Through various actions, Palestinian women have appropriated intangible cultural resources, notably through their discourse and in the way they shape their actions, bringing their own careful interpretation to them and giving them new meaning, adapted to their needs. These forms of action were often narrated and depicted for the good of the community and inscribed in the history of Palestine. The language of resistance took concrete shape around Palestinian symbols such as the keffiyeh^[57]Par example, Leila Khalid. ou la branche d’olivier^[58]Al Jazeera. (2023, November 20). *Palestine symbols: Keffiyeh, olive branch, watermelon*. Al Jazeera. … Continue reading.

Testimonies from the UN report also highlight the symbolic power of the first woman’s child, seen as an example of Palestinian resilience. This story perfectly illustrates the concept of sumud: perseverance rooted in the will to maintain one’s existence and identity in the face of the challenges of oppression and displacement^[59]UN Women. (2023, November). *Voices from Gaza: Hala’s journey of resilience*. UN Women Palestine. … Continue reading. Hala, in another way, also embodies sumud by transforming adversity into action to support her community and maintain ties for the survival of Gaza’s population.

It is worth examining how women appropriate the resilient rhetoric of sumud in a gendered way^[60]Institute for Palestine Studies. (n.d.). *Voices from the camp : The ongoing Nakba*. Institute for Palestine Studies. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/165375. Through the testimonies mentioned above, which are part of a Palestinian women’s resistance spanning several decades, it appears that women adapt this concept to their own experiences, thus revealing a gendered specificity in the development of cultural influences. Their conception of sustaining life, whether to make their daily lives and those of their households liveable or to perpetuate their identity, bears witness to this^[61]Ryan, C. (2015) Everyday Resilience as Resistance: Palestinian Women Practicing Sumud International Political Sociology, 9, 299–315.. This cultural and gendered dynamic could therefore constitute a protective factor and a resource for the empowerment of Gazan women, particularly in the face of reproductive violence resulting from Israel’s military campaign.

Conclusion

A comprehensive cultural understanding helps, in part, to explain and contextualise the forms of resilience and daily adaptation of Gazan women. Despite being the primary targets of this bombing campaign, they also undertake actions that help and support their community in their own way, thereby enabling collective survival. Their daily resistance thus takes diverse forms.

Taking these cultural developments during conflict into account in a holistic manner also leads us to envision a post-war period in which daily resilience will have served to maintain adaptive forms of survival in the face of a massive bombing campaign that will have caused damage of an as yet unquantified magnitude.

This also allows us to envision the possibility of reconstruction, by recognising that despite massive destruction, the resilience of Gaza’s population will allow certain social mechanisms to persist, enabling them to envision their future while taking into account the needs and specificities of this population.

Bibliography:

Abuzerr, S., & Zinser, K. (2024). Amplifying the voices of women in the Gaza Strip. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00680-9/fulltext#seccestitle10

ActionAid Palestine. (2024). Gaza women inspire the world with their unparalleled strength in responding to the humanitarian crisis. ActionAid Palestine. https://palestine.actionaid.org/stories/2024/gaza-women-inspire-world-their-unparalleled-strength-responding-humanitarian

Al Jazeera. (2023, November 20). Palestine symbols: Keffiyeh, olive branch, watermelon. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/11/20/palestine-symbols-keffiyeh-olive-branch-watermelon

CNN. (2023, December 7). Gaza: Israeli soldiers detain men amid war. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/07/middleeast/gaza-israeli-soldiers-detained-men-intl/index.html

El-Haddad, L. (2014). After the smoke clears: Gaza’s everyday resistance. Journal of Palestine Studies, 44(1), 120–125. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2014.44.1.120

Este, J. (2018). Palestinian women: A history of female resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/palestinian-women-a-history-of-female-resistance-in-gaza-and-the-west-bank-96864

Freedom Flotilla Coalition. (n.d.). The role of women in the Palestinian popular resistance. Freedom Flotilla. https://wbg.freedomflotilla.org/news/the-role-of-women-in-the-palestinian-popular-resistance

Fregonese, S. (2012). Urban Geopolitics 8 years on: Hybrid sovereignties, the everyday, and geographies of peace. Geography Compass, 6(5), 301–311. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2012.00485.x

Hammami, R. (2019). Destabilizing mastery and the machine. Current Anthropology, 60(S87–S97). https://doi.org/10.1086/701033

Institute for Palestine Studies. (n.d.). Voices from the camp: The ongoing Nakba. Institute for Palestine Studies. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/165375

Kayali, L. (2024). Transformative incrementalism: Palestinian women’s strategies of resistance and resilience amid gendered insecurity and neoliberal co-optation. Security Dialogue, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/09670106241226653

Kuttab, E. (2018). The Palestinian Women’s Movement: From resistance and liberation to accommodation and globalization. Unpublished manuscript.

Middle East Council on Global Affairs (2024) “As Mainstream Media Fails Gaza, Social Media Fights to Tell the Real Story” https://mecouncil.org/blog_posts/as-mainstream-media-fails-gaza-social-media-fights-to-tell-the-real-story/

Narozhna, T. (2022). The lived body, everyday, and generative powers of war: Toward an embodied ontology of war as experience. International Theory, 14(2), 210–232. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971921000129

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2024, February). Israel/OPT: UN experts appalled by reported human rights violations against women. United Nations Human Rights Office. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2024, May). Onslaught of violence against women and children in Gaza unacceptable: UN experts. United Nations Human Rights Office. https://www.ohchr.org/fr/press-releases/2024/05/onslaught-violence-against-women-and-children-gaza-unacceptable-un-experts

Rijke, A., & van Teeffelen, T. (2014). To exist is to resist: Sumud, heroism and the everyday. Institute for Palestine Studies. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/165375

Reuters. (2024, May 13). Gazans strive to study as war shatters education system. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-strive-study-war-shatters-education-system-2024-05-13/

Reuters. (2024, May 14). Gaza death toll: How many Palestinians has Israel’s campaign killed? Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-death-toll-how-many-palestinians-has-israels-campaign-killed-2024-05-14/

Ryan, C. (2015). Everyday resilience as resistance: Palestinian women practicing Sumud. International Political Sociology, 9, 299–315. https://doi.org/10.1111/ips.12106

South China Morning Post. (2024, May). Israel-Gaza war: Chinese satellites detail scale of destruction in besieged Palestinian territory. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3260476/how-much-gaza-has-been-destroyed-war-chinese-satellites-detail-damage

UNICEF. (2022, June). Gaza Strip: The humanitarian impact of 15 years of blockade. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022

UNICEF France. (2024). Gaza: Les femmes et les nouveau-nés subissent le poids du conflit. UNICEF France. https://www.unicef.fr/article/gaza-les-femmes-et-les-nouveau-nes-subissent-le-poids-du-conflit

United Nations. (2023, December 7). Amid unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, Israel-Hamas war threatens to engulf entire region, warns senior United Nations officials. United Nations Press. https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15503.doc.htm

UN Women. (2023, November). Voices from Gaza: Hala’s journey of resilience. UN Women Palestine. https://palestine.unwomen.org/en/stories/feature-story/2023/11/voices-from-gaza-halas-journey-of-resilience

UN Women. (2024, January). Scared, exhausted and expecting the worst: Women in Gaza describe humanitarian crisis. UN Women. https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/feature-story/2024/01/scared-exhausted-and-expecting-the-worst-women-in-gaza-describe-humanitarian-crisis

UN Women. (2024, April). Voices from Gaza: Safa’s perseverance through pregnancy and displacement.

UN Women Palestine. https://palestine.unwomen.org/en/stories/feature-story/2024/04/voices-from-gaza-safas-perseverance-through-pregnancy-and-displacement

Workers Advice Center (WAC-MAAN). (n.d.). WAC-MAAN: Workers Advice Center. https://new.wac.ps/details/