'Reminding the world that there was life here': The Eyes of Gaza author Plestia Alaqad opens her diary of survival during Israel's genocide

On 6 October 2023, Plestia Alaqad, a young journalism graduate, was sitting at a cafe with a friend, the two contemplating their futures over pizza and hot chocolate.

Plestia already had some reporting, social media, and human resources experience under her belt – what might come next?

Hours later, her near future had been determined. She would quickly become one of Gaza’s most prominent and recognisable reporters, a channel through which we would see at least some of the realities of Israel’s brutal onslaught on the Palestinian territory. 

With a quick flip of the camera on her phone, the then-21-year-old would switch between the brave relaying of the facts on the ground and the horrors unfolding around her in real time.

While reporting, she continued with her longtime habit of keeping a diary, writing entries while in hospital waiting areas and from the homes that sheltered her as Israel pummelled her home territory. She continued to keep that diary after she left Gaza for Australia in November 2023.

The Eyes of Gaza, published by Pan Macmillan, is based mostly on extracts from the diary she kept, with the book’s title originating from the nickname she was given by her followers on social media.

“Since I was young, I’ve wanted to publish a book, but I never thought that my first book would be about the genocide that would be happening to me and my people,” Plestia tells The New Arab.

"We're seeing how Palestinians are getting killed, but we don’t see how Palestinians lived. That's where the dehumanisation comes in"

Recording the stories of Palestinians in Gaza was an act close to her heart, in actual and figurative terms. To keep hold of the diary notebook – not an easy task when frequently running, sometimes for your life, from place to place – Plestia kept it inside her press vest, she says. Having the notebook close at hand also meant she could write whenever the urge struck.

“I wrote at random times and on random days – I wrote at night, in the morning, during the day. Sometimes I would see something right in that instance and I would want to start writing straight away, so it was always with me,” the 23-year-old journalist and author shares.

The diary entries are replete with stories of individuals on a personal scale but tell of a very Palestinian insistence on not just the preservation but the celebration of life.

A young boy’s insistence on searching through the remains of his destroyed home to find the small plant he had been growing; the rushed purchase of scarce sweet treats to give a child a makeshift fifth birthday party; a woman’s continued care for animals even as she lived in a tent outside a hospital.

These stories challenge not only Israel’s incessant violence but also media and political narratives that dehumanise Palestinians and reduce them to “a suffering that results in death or survival”, as she writes.

“The media in general is only interested in Palestine, or in Gaza specifically, when it's getting bombed. They're not interested in Gaza when there is life to it, so you can't find enough coverage on how our lives in Gaza were like, but you will find a lot of coverage about what's happening during a genocide, or how Palestinians are getting killed. We're seeing how Palestinians are getting killed, but we don’t see how Palestinians lived. That's where the dehumanisation comes in,” she says.

Considering the current climate of suppression when it comes to talking about what is happening in Palestine, it might come as a surprise that a work released by one of the world’s biggest publishing houses would stick to the terminology Palestinians use to talk about the genocide. The Israeli military is the “Israeli Occupation Forces”; the brutality that Palestinians are enduring is a “genocide”, nothing less.

Plestia credits the Irish-Palestinian editor she worked with, Ause Abdelhaq, with keeping the book true to her voice and conviction.

“For me, it was important to work with a publishing house that would keep things as they are. When I call it a genocide, yes, we will call it what it is, we’ll call everything what it is, without removing or beautifying it with certain words just so we don’t hurt people’s feelings. I wanted things to be named as they are,” she explained. 

The book’s diary form allows for unrefined emotion to take centre stage. While social media reporting allows for the facts to be sent out far, wide, and fast, keeping a diary lets a writer like Plestia Alaqad make room for emotional fallout or for a more at-length recording of Palestinians' stories she encountered while reporting.

For Plestia, that emotion took centre stage was imperative.

“In the book, I focused a lot on my emotions because it was my diary, so I was writing about my emotions openly in it. Then in the editing process, I didn’t want to remove my emotions, or edit or delete any parts of that, because you can find facts or news articles online, but you won't find how people actually felt.”

"A lot of posts online are getting censored or deleted. So I'm hoping that with having a book, it’s a form of documentation that will stay for generations"

She hopes this centring of feeling will have an emotional knock-on effect on the reader, one that inspires action: “I'm hoping [the book] will raise a lot of awareness, and it will leave people with a lot of emotions, and they will act on these emotions.”

Palestinian journalists have spoken frequently of how their posts or even entire accounts on social media are being censored or deleted.

Not only does this prevent news from spreading, but in the longer term, it puts the historical archive that preserves the Palestinian voices at a time of genocide at risk.

To compile her writing in a book immortalises some of the stories of Palestinians in Gaza, and the experience of a Palestinian journalist covering and collecting those stories.

“As everyone is seeing, a lot of posts online are getting censored or are getting deleted. So I'm hoping that with having a book, it’s a form of documentation that will stay for generations, and people will be able to read and learn about what happened,” she says.

“I don't want what happened to us to be written in one line in a history book, where for example, 30 years from now, people will be studying a history class: ‘From 2023 until 2025, or until I don't know when, x amount of journalists were killed,’ and people will memorise this sentence and have an exam about it. No. I want them to read about us, to know about us, to know about our emotions, what we felt and what actually happened.”

What is striking in her diary entries is that although Plestia grapples with worry, sadness, and anxiety about the violence she is experiencing and witnessing, she does not doubt her capabilities and is assured of the need to keep going and keep reporting, even when mentally and physically exhausted.

“The thing is, you don’t even have time to doubt yourself,” she says. “You don’t have time to pause and think – you just act.”

Though generally very supportive, the male colleagues she would move around Gaza with were at first hesitant for her to accompany them, worried it might be too much for her to handle.

For Plestia, the unprecedented horror of what was happening meant it would be hard for journalists of any age, gender, or level of experience to feel ready to conduct reporting amid a genocide of their own people.

“To them, I was still young, I’m a female journalist, like ‘are you sure, like it's okay to see these scenes, to see amputations, to see hands basically on the floor, to see all of that, the blood’ – it's a lot. It's a lot as a human, whether you’re a female or a male, to process or to handle.

“Some of the journalists reported on previous aggressions on Gaza, so they thought that they were familiar with that and that it would be tougher for me. But actually, what we saw on the ground was new for everyone," she continues.

"It's been more than a year that we’ve been counting days, counting months, and now we’re counting years. We think we’ve seen it all, but Israel keeps outdoing itself. We're seeing journalists getting burned alive, we're seeing people literally flying in Gaza because of bombs… Everything that is happening is new to everyone.”

A two-month ceasefire in Gaza earlier this year offered only brief respite, and since then, Israel has killed Palestinians in Gaza with brazenness and fervour. Palestinian journalists, historically a prime target for Israel, continue to be no exception.

"It's these details that remind the world that there was life here, there were people. They are humans, they have stories, it’s not just bombed places"

Last week, Palestine Today reporter Hilmi al-Faqaawi was burned alive in a targeted strike on a tent housing journalists outside Nasser Hospital, succumbing to his injuries a few days later. His Palestine Today colleague Mohammed Mansour had been killed a few weeks earlier, as had freelance journalist Hossam Shabat.

More journalists have been killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023 than in any other “conflict” in history, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.

Close to 51,000 people in Gaza have been killed since 7 October, although the death toll likely far exceeds this, and about 70 percent of all structures in the territory have been destroyed or damaged.

Such huge loss and destruction is difficult to comprehend, and we are now so used to seeing Gaza mapped through the widest possible shots by drones or before and after images showing the extent of destruction with an endless sea of rubble to make sense of it.

Through The Eyes of Gaza, however, Plestia resolutely zooms in, all the way in, to map life. She does this not just with Gaza before 7 October – the cafes and restaurants she hung out in with friends, the homes of friends she would visit – but the signs and sites of life that persisted even as bombs rained down on Gaza; the falafel stand that kept operating in seemingly impossible conditions; the hospitals that managed to keep treating people with almost no power and no medicine.

Rubble is not rubble, but a former home, or a once bustling cafe, or a church for congregation and solitary worship. A look through that destroyed site of life might reveal a once-bitten sandwich, or a baby’s bottle – more clues of life persisting.

“When I look at these places, I don't look at them as a place that got bombarded, or as rocks or rubble. I look at them and I try to search for signs of life; here’s a kid’s notebook, or here’s a plate from this restaurant on the floor, because I remember the ‘before’ of this place,” Plestia says.

“It's these details that remind the world that there was life here, there were people. They are humans, they have stories, it’s not just bombed places. Right now, when you Google Gaza in Arabic or English, you only see destruction and bombed places. But this isn’t the Gaza I know, this isn’t the version of Gaza that I know, so I don’t see it the same way," she explains. 

“That's why I always search for signs of life because I remember a Gaza that was alive.”

Though she physically left Gaza more than a year ago, Plestia says she is still there in mind and spirit. To tell Gaza’s stories is her driving force, and The Eyes of Gaza is but one vehicle for that.

“I am who I am because of Gaza. This is for Gaza, this book is for Gaza. Everything I do is for Gaza. In a way, it is giving back to the city that raised me.”

The Eyes of Gaza is out on 17 April in the UK, and Little, Brown and Company will publish the US edition on September 30. 

Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab

Follow her on X: @shahlasomar