In late January 2026, Palestinian author and academic Abdalhadi Alijla sent me a copy of his new book, Fearful in Gaza. I was expecting an experiential account of the Gaza dilemma, one among many — but it was not.
I began reading it on a flight from Manchester to Cairo, a familiar route I had previously taken to reach Gaza, setting off from Cairo into the Sinai Desert on an arduous, uncertain journey. Although I was not going to Gaza this time — how could I? — the anxieties typically associated with that trip were present nonetheless. Through sheer relatability, the book’s details made the anxiety vivid and disturbingly real.
It is perhaps no surprise that this sense of unease runs throughout the book. Abdalhadi started working on Fearful in Gaza in 2019, after the passing of his father in Gaza, and it was mostly written against the backdrop of the recurrent destruction of Gaza.
When we spoke, he told me he had always wanted to write an oral history of Gaza — not as a historian, but “through the eyes of a child and teenager in Gaza, through family history.” That intention was reflected at the book’s launch. Helena Lindholm, professor at the University of Gothenburg, described it in her opening speech in mid-January 2026, saying: “This book is a history of Gaza… it will come with a lot of tears.”
Yet Fearful in Gaza moves in the direction of oral history without fully fitting into that genre. The auto-ethnographic tone dominates, and that is history intimately personified. Instead of declarative arguments or political sloganism about the occupation and colonial violence, these realities seep spontaneously and effortlessly through what would otherwise be mundane daily activities and conversations.
Beyond chronology
In terms of historical scope, the book concentrates on the period between the First Intifada, which erupted in 1987, through the 1990s at the height of the Oslo Agreement, to the 2000 Second Intifada. It then ventures a few years beyond, into the Intifada aftermath, focusing on the writer’s attempts to leave Gaza.
Structurally, Abdalhadi resists linear chronology. He moves back and forth between historical eras, connecting childhood memories and their more recent reverberations for contextual necessity.
It is in that structure that Fearful in Gaza stands out most clearly. The author employs a dual narrative voice. The first is “the Son,” which represents the author and is delivered in a traditional first-person account. The second is “the Mother,” the author’s mother. Both function as literary devices and epistemological inventions, but the maternal voice is particularly striking.
He conveys his mother to the reader through his conversations with her and by relaying, or perhaps vocalising, her inner thoughts. In both forms, she anchors him in place and time. Within Palestinian literary tradition, this feminine energy represents the land, rootedness, and continuity. The effect is not declared in the book, but it is felt.
At the same time, the emphasis on the mother challenges nationalist historiography that privileges male heroism in the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. Abdalhadi instead foregrounds endurance, care, and domestic labour as politically consequential acts. He told me his mother in the book represents the collective Palestinian mother — “all of our mothers.” Not only because they are, naturally, the bearers of children, but also because they are the carriers of epigenetic, transgenerational traumas.
Engulfed in trauma, the mother must balance her love for her children with their happiness. Abdalhadi’s mother wants him to have a less dim future outside Gaza, following his wishes. But that also means the possibility of never seeing him again, showing a sign of guilty relief every time he tried to cross the Rafah border into Egypt and failed.
In this way, the book shows how the oppressively abnormal situation alters even parental dynamics. It is a familiar scene for most Gazans, and we like to think of it as “resilience,” perhaps to assume a semblance of control over our uncertain existence.
Tender gestures of love
While the mother forms one central anchor, the structural duality leaves room for others: the father, the brother, and the community.
In contrast to the warm, anchoring voice of the mother, the author’s father is characterised by authoritative stoicism and blunt pragmatism, cutting through convoluted political situations without sugar-coating expectations. He would, for instance, say — referring to the Camp David negotiations between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 — “If this fails, we will go to war.” He would also tell off Abdalhadi for getting involved in political activities, emphasising education instead.
Even so, most Palestinians would see the stoic father figure as a 'masculine mask' fashioned for survival. The clue lies in upbringing, as many boys in Palestine are conditioned to be protectors, and their masculine merit is assessed accordingly.
Behind that mask, there are quieter gestures. His father would toil and say nothing. He would save much of his earnings — a few hundred dollars — and slip them into his son’s bag after he was finally allowed to leave Gaza to study in Europe. It is a tender gesture of love, but with a façade of pragmatism.
Alongside the parents stands another anchor: the author’s eldest brother, described as his “educational inspiration” and “intellectual compass.” He is painted as a helper, reflecting a traditional family dynamic.
Trauma of displacement
Beyond the immediate family, the social community forms a fifth, though least emphasised, anchor. It is located in the author’s neighbourhood of al-Shuja’iya in eastern Gaza City. Abdalhadi speaks fondly of his female neighbour, Um Nafez, during the First Intifada, who routinely confronted Israeli soldiers with the very few Hebrew words she commanded.
Reading this, I could not help but think of our own parallels. Abdalhadi’s Um Nafez is perhaps our Um Wael in Al-Shati refugee camp. Um Wael would gather the camp’s women and try to free youngsters from the IDF soldiers’ hands to save them.
Placed within a wider context, the book stands in conversation with a broader Palestinian intellectual tradition. While Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish elevates history and memory into lyrical abstractions, Abdalhadi anchors them in domestic details and familial mediocrity.
That mediocrity also crosses paths with the characters in Ghassan Kanafani’s works. But while Kanafani emphasises revolutionary urgency, Abdalhadi foregrounds ordinary Palestinians as political actors merely for existing under a colonial role.
The book also resonates with Edward Said’s notion of exile. Said saw exile as a permanent condition, but Abdalhadi moves beyond the physical aspect to emphasise familial and emotional dislocation.
What might be seen as a weakness is possibly its strength: the author’s refusal to explain the socio-political context. For readers accustomed to didactic framing, this may be unsettling. Yet it is precisely this dynamic that provides an inside-out perspective, starting at the level of human experience and allowing the external circumstances to speak for themselves.
In doing so, the writer rejects portrayals of Palestinians as either passive victims or romanticised martyrs. He insists on full humanity, on the notion that “we are just like you”: loving, resilient, contradictory, flawed, and, of course, fearful.
That said, the personal stakes in the book became tragically real before it was even finished. On 14 May 2025, shortly before finalising the manuscript, Abdalhadi’s mother was killed in an Israeli drone strike on a flat near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, one of more than 50 of his family members killed over the course of the two-year genocide.
As a result, there is no longer a family home left standing to return to. Nor is there the 'hakoura' (garden) with the olive tree that he spent his childhood climbing and studying under. Much of his anchor has been dislodged, like most of us, inside the Strip and abroad.
Dr Emad Moussa is a Palestinian-British researcher and writer specialising in the political psychology of intergroup and conflict dynamics, focusing on MENA with a special interest in Israel/Palestine. He has a background in human rights and journalism, and is currently a frequent contributor to multiple academic and media outlets, in addition to being a consultant for a US-based think tank
Follow him on X: @emadmoussa