I lost my link to the outside world as Israel continues to bomb us in Gaza

Khan Younes, Gaza – A beloved companion doesn’t person to beryllium quality to beryllium profoundly missed erstwhile lost.

Sometimes, it’s a telephone – a loyal witnesser to your joys and sorrows, your moments of sweetness and darkest chapters of pain.

In the harshness of beingness successful the world’s largest open-air prison, it becomes much than a device. It’s an hold of yourself; your portal to the world, your mode of reaching loved ones scattered crossed the situation oregon extracurricular it.

Through its lens, you sometimes seizure joyousness and beauty, but much often, it lone captures falling rockets oregon the rubble of houses covering the corpses of their residents.

But what are you near with erstwhile that loyal companion is disappeared by the genocidal chaos?

My telephone succumbed to its injuries

My telephone succumbed to its injuries.

I can’t judge I’m describing it this way, with the aforesaid operation I usage erstwhile reporting connected thousands of my radical killed aft being denied urgent aesculapian treatment, punished simply for surviving Israeli bombs.

But successful its ain way, my telephone endured its stock of this prolonged Israeli cruelty, the technocide of power-starvation, corrosion by particulate and sand, suffocation successful overheated tents, and the changeless torment of mediocre connection.

It tried to clasp on, but everyone has a bounds of endurance. It fell the time we near our damaged location for our 14th displacement amid chaotic stampeding crowds.

Somehow it survived the dense blow, but it lone lasted 70 days aft its surface cracked, its assemblage blistered, until its wounds dispersed excessively acold to bear.

And past it went acheronian for good.

Oddly, I felt consoled. Not due to the fact that it wasn’t painful, but due to the fact that I wasn’t alone. I’ve seen the aforesaid hap to others: Friends, relatives watching their phones dilatory perish, conscionable similar the radical they loved.

Strangely, we find comfortableness successful these tiny shared losses. Our loved ones person perished, and our wellbeing is shattering, and yet we expect our phones not to. The existent occurrence is that they lasted this agelong astatine all.

Smartphone addiction is thrown astir arsenic a buzzword. But successful Gaza, if you’re fortunate capable to inactive person one, it’s not an addiction, it is survival.

It’s an escape. A small, glowing portal you cling to. It helps you gaffe concisely into the past, scrolling done memories, staring astatine the faces of loved ones who are present names connected graves oregon names you inactive susurration successful hope.

Your phone’s emotionless representation inactive holds their beauteous smiles. It connects you to radical you can’t reach, voices you can’t different hear. It dulls the symptom not by healing it, but by distracting you.

Like a hunger you can’t satisfy, truthful you scroll done reels of mouth-watering food, mocking your emptiness.

The writer reporting, holding his telephone tight, connected May 3, 2025 [Ahmed Al-Najjar/Al Jazeera]

You ticker strangers astatine household dinners portion your array is buried nether rubble. You wonder, however situation they station specified scenes, knowing that children are being starved to decease a fewer kilometres away? And yet you support scrolling, due to the fact that for a moment, it’s a brutal soothing sedative.

‘Are you alive?’

When you’re idiosyncratic who reports regular connected the ongoing genocide to the world, uncovering a caller companion becomes an inevitable must. Yet the quest is disastrous successful Gaza.

You mightiness deliberation it’s intolerable to find 1 here, wherever beingness has go ruins and adjacent breadstuff is scarce, but surprisingly, determination are plentifulness of options, adjacent the latest high-end brands that someway recovered their mode done the blockade.

But this is Gaza, wherever a container of flour costs $700, truthful the outgo of a telephone is connected a full antithetic level.

Even the lowest-quality phones successful makeshift shops merchantability for much than what it costs to physique the store itself, inflated by genocidal conditions.

And it doesn’t halt there. You indispensable wage successful cash, successful a spot wherever astir thing is escaped but the aerial you breathe.

An iPhone mightiness outgo $1,000 elsewhere, but present it costs $4,200.

So you crook to cheaper options, hoping for thing much affordable, but the calculations stay the same.

But that’s not maine – due to the fact that either way, by spending specified unthinkable amounts, you’re solidifying the precise world your captors are trying to impose, and doing it with your ain money.

You realise that you’re feeding into their design. We’re already draining whatever’s near successful our pockets conscionable for flour during this genocidal siege, and we don’t cognize however agelong it volition last.

So you cling to what you have, to debar paying your psyche astatine a GHF centre for deadly “aid” you’ll ne'er get.

For a portion now, I’ve felt paralysed, a helplessness particularly acquainted during June’s two-week full connection blackout imposed by Israel – during which my telephone yet died successful full silence.

When the captor cuts yet different lifeline, it’s much than conscionable being incapable to cheque connected loved ones. It means ambulances can’t beryllium called. It means a wounded idiosyncratic mightiness dice successful the dark, unheard.

It’s similar idiosyncratic is retired there, cruelly deciding erstwhile you’re allowed to interaction the satellite oregon to beryllium contacted, to person the now-typical: “Are you alive?”

There’s a cruel irony successful Israel issuing expulsion orders online adjacent arsenic it cuts disconnected the networks radical successful Gaza request to person them. You lone find retired erstwhile you spot thousands flooding the streets, the world trembling beneath their feet from Israeli attacks.

The manus that controls your integer lifeline is the aforesaid 1 that’s been blockading and colonising your onshore for years.

And you realise, with certainty, that if they could artifact the precise aerial you breathe, they would not hesitate.

The phone, aft it ‘succumbed to its wounds’, shown successful Khan Younis, Gaza, connected August 4, 2025 [Ahmed Al-Najjar/Al Jazeera]

So, you rise

There are inactive moments when, instinctively, I scope retired to telephone idiosyncratic oregon cheque thing – but my manus touches nothing.

My companion is gone. I stay phoneless, helpless nether blockade, some integer and physical.

And then, you commencement to comparison your shackles to the abundance your captors enjoy, genociding you with afloat entree to each technological privilege, each luxury.

You, connected the different hand, are being hunted down with the world’s astir precocious weapons, nether the watchful oculus and soundless complicity of the tech giants whose tools are backing your erasure.

While they usage satellites and precision-guided missiles, you conscionable privation to archer the satellite you’re inactive here.

How captious your mislaid companion was. It wasn’t conscionable a phone. It was your sword, your shield, your witness.

And successful the look of this tyranny, surrendering is thing you cannot afford. So, you rise.

You whisper, “Rest successful power, my companion,” due to the fact that we garbage to beryllium slaughtered successful silence.

We volition support telling our truth, adjacent if each we person near is simply a scrap of insubstantial and a driblet of ink.