Youmna El Sayed: "Gaza cannot tolerate any more war: if that means Hamas leaving power, we will accept it."

BarcelonaYoumna El Sayed is a Palestinian journalist and Al Jazeera's correspondent in the Gaza Strip. For over a year and a half, she reported from the heart of the conflict, traveling six times between hospitals and bombed areas. The images from the live connection The actions she took in the midst of a bombing went viral. In May 2024, she managed to leave Gaza with her four daughters through the Rafah crossing, after receiving direct threats and seeing her home destroyed. She now lives between Egypt and Qatar, from where she continues to report on the situation in her country. She visited Barcelona to participate in the second edition of the International Congress on Health Communication organized by Vall d'Hebron Hospital.

How do you see the current situation, with a very fragile ceasefire?

— We are very afraid because Israel has broken all previous truces. In these two weeks, it has violated the ceasefire more than fifty times, and has killed more than a hundred peopleThis is very serious and isn't being covered enough. It shows how little the world cares about Palestinian lives. It's very sad because when Hamas delayed the release of the bodies of the deceased Israelis, everyone talked. But no one says anything when Israel continues to kill innocent Palestinians. We can't know what will happen once Israel has recovered the bodies of all the hostages.

Israel continues to prevent humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

— Netanyahu has closed and prohibited the entry of aid not only through the Rafah crossing, but also Kerem Shalom. We're talking about two million people subjected to genocide. Before that, Gaza had already been under blockade for eighteen years. The healthcare system, even before that, was already on the verge of collapse: there are only 2,000 hospital beds available in the entire Strip. For eighteen years, no X-ray machines or medical equipment were allowed in. They have to repair the same old machines over and over again.

How do people live in Gaza?

— Seventy percent of the population depended on UN aid, even in "normal" times. Now nothing comes in. It's apocalyptic. People literally can't find anything to eat. Israel has turned food and water into weapons of war. If you don't die from bombs, you die of hunger, thirst, infectious diseases, or lack of medicine. There are many ways to die. And the fact that the international community isn't pressuring Netanyahu to open the borders represents total complicity. The aid is there, but it's not coming in. They say people are "coming home," but there are no houses: only rubble. The neighborhoods have been completely razed to the ground. When I look at the areas where I lived or worked, I don't recognize them. There's only rubble and dust.

Talk of reconstruction has begun, but the entry of materials and machinery will remain in Israel's hands.

— Israel controls everything that enters Gaza, and before that war, it was already very difficult to build anything. There's a special law on what they call dual-use products, that is, for civilian use, but which could have a military use. This label has been used to ban the entry of food, such as pasta or chocolate. It's a way to dehumanize Palestinians. And as long as the international community continues to fund and arm Israel without holding it accountable, nothing will change. Israel destroys, other countries rebuild, and then Israel destroys again: it did this in 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, and now since October 2023. As long as it has a clear path, it will continue.

Now, with the ceasefire in place, we have seen Hamas resurface and regain control, now executing members of rival militias.

— After two years of genocide, which has left 11% of Gaza's population dead, wounded, or under the rubble, and 93% of buildings destroyed, Hamas is back on the streets. And they are executing rival militias that had been armed and funded by Israel as a fifth column inside Gaza. Ultimately, this demonstrates Israel's military failure: Netanyahu said he wanted to eliminate Hamas, and he hasn't succeeded, and he said he wanted to free the hostages, but he had to do it through negotiation and agreement. As a citizen of Gaza, I will tell you that the people are exhausted. They can't stand any more wars. If this means Hamas leaving power, we will accept it. We just want peace and stability. Our children deserve to live like other children in the world. My oldest daughter is fourteen and has already lived through five wars. It's unfair. We need elections, peace, and prosperity. We are human like everyone else.

How do you assess Trump's plan, led by Tony Blair?

— Trump is merely carrying out Israel's plan for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza. This didn't begin as a war, but as a genocide, with the goal of eliminating the population, destroying its infrastructure, and erasing its history. They've razed mosques, churches, and ancient sites. It's ethnic cleansing. But Israel didn't expect the people to resist. Doctors, rescuers, journalists... we've all continued working under the bombs. We've lost colleagues and families, but we haven't given up. Resisting Gaza is not an option: it's a way of life.

More than 270 journalists, cameramen, producers, and technicians from Gaza have been killed by Israel in the past two years.

— It's devastating. Every day I felt like I was working over a grave with living people inside. Every child under the rubble breaks your soul. I had two choices: collapse under the suffering or let it give me strength. I decided to continue. If I remained silent, who would speak for all those people?

She had to leave her three daughters and her son to go cover the news.

— We moved six times. One day we received a call from an Israeli official warning us that they would bomb our building if we didn't leave. I saw the panic in my children's eyes. The eldest told me, "Stop working: they'll kill us because of you." That day I understood that I could lose the most important people in my life just for denouncing injustice. We moved south, and it happened again: we received another call from the army threatening to bomb us. That's when my mother told me, "You have to choose between being a journalist or being a mother: now you can't do both anymore." And I decided to leave. It was the hardest decision of my life, because I felt like I was abandoning my people. But I had to save my daughters. Every night, my youngest daughter, who was 8, told me that we should all sleep together, hooked up to each other, so that if a missile fell on us, she wouldn't survive alone.