Israel Just Bombed the Building Next Door. Will We Be Next?

A truck loaded with belongings heading south, from Huda Skaik’s balcony in Gaza City, on Sept. 14, 2025. Photo: Huda Skaik

Sunday, September 14, 2025

GAZA CITY — I woke up at 7 a.m. to the sound of trucks honking outside our apartment. When I looked out from the window of our balcony, I saw trucks and buses carrying our neighbors and what was left of their belongings, relocating to the south of the Gaza Strip.

Inside the trucks, there were tattered cloth bags, broken solar panels, and furniture. One truck from northern Gaza to the south costs at least $2,000, to carry towers of belongings, the burden of homes, burdened people.

On our street, shop owners emptied out what was left of their goods, afraid of losing them after their stores were destroyed. When I saw this scene, my chest tightened and my heart got heavy.

I stood on the balcony as I had most days for the past seven months, ever since my family moved here after returning from the south, from our first displacement, and found our house all in ashes. I stood staring at the beauty of buildings and rubble, meditating on the sun’s reflection on them. I was trying to breathe as much air as I could from this magical city. 

Many thoughts started to revolve in my head: What if the Israel Occupation Forces decided to bomb a tower or a building in my street? Will they tell us to evacuate before the bombing? Will they bomb the building I live in? Where are we going to go? And what things can we take in only one bag?

After that, my family and I drank tea, and I listened to my lecture for class on the novel “Animal Farm.” Then suddenly, I decided to grab two bags and pack some of my belongings. At this particular moment, my mind reeled while looking at the two bags. I wondered, “How can these two bags carry all my belongings? What clothes shall I take? Winter or summer? Or both? How can I hold my burdened memory in them?” I barely decided to take two winter outfits and two summer outfits. I also put my books, notebooks, an album of photos, some accessories, my favorite perfume, my headphones, and my charger.

My family and my grandmother, who was displaced in our house, also packed their personal documents and some clothes. We haven’t packed them to go to the south — we did not want to leave again — but we did so in case the IOF decided to bomb our building or any other building or tower in our street, or if they decided to invade our neighborhood, Al-Rimal. In this case, we would have at least some of our belongings with us inside the city.

That morning, I had a strange feeling that something was going to happen, but I didn’t give this sense any attention. I continued studying and submitting my assignments.

Al-Jundi Tower from the window of the Skaik family home in Gaza City, in early September. Photo: Huda Skaik

At 6:40 p.m., we heard the screams of women and children in the street and the sound of shop doors closing. We opened the window and looked out. There were women, men, and children running quickly and carrying bags, not knowing to which destination they would head. From the buildings around, I saw people throwing mattresses and bags out the window. At that moment, we understood a building was about to be bombed. My brother, Ali, called out to a man in the street and asked him what was happening. He told him that the IOF had called a man and informed him that they would be bombing the Shurrab building, the building next to the one across from us.

Then we heard people in our building going down the stairs and evacuating. My cousin, Ibrahim, told us we all had to get out of the building because the IOF was going to bomb Al-Jundi Tower, the tower right behind us, only 10 meters away.

Panic and fear spread among my family, especially my mother, father, grandmother, and younger siblings. My mother said, “Where will we go? May Allah curse the occupation!” My grandmother went out, taking her bag of medicines with her because she has a heart condition, and my younger sister went with her. My parents, my brothers, and I left the building together.

I wasn’t terrified by the attack, but I was frightened to lose our own house again.

All the people who are living in our building are my father’s cousins and their family, and we all evacuated together to a nearby street where our relatives hosted us in their small shop so we could wait until the bombing was over. We, the girls and women, went inside the shop, while the men were outside. The girls were terrified and stressed, crying, trembling, and fearing the shrapnel. We all were worried about losing our own homes or even the solar panels.

We waited for an hour for the bombing to happen. While waiting, I talked with the girls around my age, trying to alleviate their fears.

How the air was thick with the gunpowder; how I was unable to inhale a clean breath.

Suddenly, while we were talking, the first stage of the bombing happened. Three missiles. When they hit, I can vividly remember those seconds: how the whole place turned red after being dark with a dim white light; how the dust and ash spread in the air; how the air was thick with the gunpowder; how I was unable to inhale a clean breath. I heard the sound of the small shrapnel spreading in the air and the screams of two of my father’s cousins, Ziad and Yousef, after they were hit by an aluminum sheet that had fallen on them from the sky.

After a little while, two more missiles hit; they were like a huge earthquake. We heard the sound of the tower collapsing into the ground. Men in the street went to check if the tower was still standing or was flattened. They found it had completely been leveled to the ground. They shouted, “The tower has fallen! You can return to your homes.”

Al-Jundi Tower on Sept. 15, 2025, the day after Israel bombed it.  Photo: Huda Skaik

We went back to our building. The entrance was full of rubble. Men lifted the stones, and we went inside. The building’s front door was gone. Then we went up to our home on the first floor. We were shocked by how severely it was affected by the bombing. Broken simple furniture. An upside-down table, chairs, and couches. Scattered glass covering the floor and mattresses. This was the scene that we saw in the aftermath of the bombing of Al-Jundi Tower. 

We cleaned our house of the glass and dust, and we tidied it up. It took us three days to finish repairing broken things. My dad and my grandfather fixed the windows by adding nylon fabric instead of glass because the mosquitoes kept stinging us, and he fixed the doors.

Over the past month, Israel has been warning the 1 million residents of Gaza City to leave and head south to the so-called “safe zone,” and launched a ground invasion to seize the city.

We have to choose between leaving and staying. Both mean death.

This time we are bracing for the worst. We have to choose between leaving and staying. Both mean death. Being displaced kills you slowly and uproots you forever, and staying in your home until your last breath means you could be killed at any time, as the Israeli occupation advances. Israel has killed at least 65,141 people in Gaza, and wounded 165,925, since October 2023. 

Around 400,000 people from Gaza City have relocated to the south already. What is happening now feels like the very first days of the genocide, but only worse.

On September 15 I woke up, and I had my sandwich with tea. Hours later, I went to a café to access the internet — the bombing had cut the cables connecting our house. I had a cup of coffee, and I sat there for six hours, listening to my lectures and doing my assignments. 

On that day, another tower, Al-Ghofari, was leveled. The sound of the bombing was terrifying.

On September 16 my grandmother returned to her home in the east of Gaza City because the western area, where I live, is too dangerous.

At that day, Israel cut all internet connections, severing communication for the residents of Gaza City, as a tool to force residents from the city under relentless bombardment and continue their genocide. On that day, the occupation intensified its attack more and more, and Israeli tanks advanced to Al-Jalaa Street in the north of Gaza City.

During the two-day internet blackout, I received a phone call from my friend Sara, who had recently been displaced from Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza. The moment she heard my voice, she broke down in tears. She told me how much she missed me — this was the first time during the genocide she had been forced to leave from the north to the south.

Another friend, Genista, reached me via phone as well. She had fled from the Al-Nasr neighborhood, also in the north, to the south. Her voice was heavy with exhaustion. She admitted she was not well — that she felt confused, disoriented, and adrift.

During those days without the internet, I walked through Gaza City with my brother Ali. We wandered through our neighborhood of Al-Rimal. I spent hours breathing the air, meditating on the buildings, as though it might be the last time I would see them. 

Every time I walk in Gaza’s streets, I feel pieces of me tied to everything in this city.

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On September 18 my younger brother turned 10. I gave him a small gift: a chocolate, biscuits, and a packet of Nescafé. These are luxuries in these times. That afternoon, my eldest uncle came to bid us farewell before heading south.

Later, when the internet was finally restored, messages began pouring in. Friends wanted only one thing: to know that we were still alive. Then, I tried to study the lectures I missed during the days with no internet, since my final exams are in October, but I was completely disoriented and couldn’t focus. All my concentration now is on survival.

On September 19 the occupation forces called residents and ordered them to leave. They dropped leaflets ordering residents in Tal al-Hawa, on the southern edge of Gaza City, to evacuate immediately to the south.

On September 20 at sunset, I went out to walk in the neighborhood. I slowed my steps as I walked. I inhaled the air with intention, letting its weight settle inside me, and let my eyes linger on every tree, every building, every street, and every shop I passed. At night, the Israeli occupation fired dozens of flares into the sky over Gaza City.

A flare lights the sky in Gaza City on Sept. 20, 2025. Photo: Huda Skaik

Since last month, the Israeli occupation has intensified strikes at night to scare people and clear the way for their troops. They strike to protect their soldiers, and they commit massacres. Each night, there is a relentless bombardment and nonstop attacks, including strikes by drones, fighter jets, airstrikes, artillery fire, helicopters, and blasts from remote-controlled robots, with the Israeli military blowing up entire neighborhoods as it advances. I cannot sleep regularly, as I expect death could come at any moment and any minute could be my last.

These days, Gaza City can only be described as a haunted ghost town. Darkness, smoke, and shadows hang over it, illuminated only by the red glow of explosions. The city resembles the scenes of apocalyptic films: stories of the end of the world, of human catastrophe, of global wars.

Its homes stand deserted, its streets emptied, resembling a desert wasteland. Death encircles it from every direction. The city drowns in chaos, just like my heart. The city is collapsing gradually, and my soul is crumbling with it.

My roots are in Gaza City. I grew up and spent my childhood and youth in this neighborhood in the heart of Gaza City, where the vibrancy and beauty of life enveloped me. This is the city where I took my first breath and my first step. Here is where my dreams bloomed and my memories are rooted. Here is where I lived and want to die. This city has a unique scent that has never left me, whenever I go.

I am not sure if I will survive this time or not, but what I am sure of is that I will stay in Gaza City till the very end. Displacement here is not a personal choice; it is a desperate collective attempt to survive. But for me, staying in the city is survival. Even if I die, it’s still a form of survival, simply because I stayed.

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