Voices from Gaza

We are seeking first-person accounts, field notes, and reflections from individuals currently in Gaza or recently displaced, as well as from those directly connected to people living through the crisis. As of late 2025, more than 1.9 million Palestinians—over 85 percent of the population—have been displaced, many of them multiple times as bombardment intensifies and front lines shift with no warning.

The civilian death toll has reached levels without precedent in the region. A joint report by 12 Israeli human rights organizations documented 67,173 deaths by October 2025, with an estimated 10,000 additional bodies still beneath collapsed buildings. By November 2025, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported more than 70,000 Palestinians killed and more than 170,000 wounded, numbers that continue to rise as medical care collapses and indirect deaths—those caused by hunger, infection, untreated injuries, and unsafe water—remain uncounted.

The physical destruction is equally staggering. Satellite assessments indicate that between 80 and 92 percent of all buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including residential housing, schools, hospitals, and commercial structures. Entire districts have been reduced to rubble. The health-care system has functionally collapsed: more than 125 hospitals and clinics have been damaged or destroyed, leaving trauma care, neonatal care, and emergency medicine almost entirely inaccessible. Water, sanitation, and electrical systems have been decimated. Millions face daily shortages of clean water, food, shelter, and basic medical supplies. These conditions shape daily life in ways no headline, briefing, or political narrative can adequately capture.

We invite writers, poets, journalists, photographers, medics, teachers, parents, students, aid workers, and others with firsthand knowledge to document what they are experiencing or witnessing. Submissions may take the form of essays, testimonies, journal entries, poetry, reportage, or visual documentation, when safe to share. We are seeking work rooted in specific lived detail: the decisions made in moments of danger, the patterns of displacement, the ruptures caused by the destruction of homes and neighborhoods, and the ways individuals care for one another inside a system that has been dismantled.

We welcome accounts from civilians navigating bombardment and evacuation; medics operating inside hospitals that have been damaged, besieged, or forced to function without anesthesia, power, or sterile equipment; educators attempting to create stability for children despite repeated displacement; and journalists or aid workers documenting events as they unfold. We also invite observations from those with civil defense or military experience who can attest to the structural collapse of Gaza’s public systems and the realities on the ground. Submissions may be published under a name, pseudonym, or anonymously, depending on what best protects the writer and their community.

Given the scale of destruction, the extremity of the risk, and the ongoing nature of the crisis, this call exists to record lived reality as it unfolds. Our role is to preserve these accounts rather than to shape a narrative, and ensure that the truth of this moment is not erased, distorted, or forgotten.

Looking for inspiration? Continue reading: A Haunting Portrait of War through the Eyes of Palestinian Poets in "Forest of Noise."