Two years after October 7, 2023, Gaza's 2.3 million residents mark a grim anniversary defined by relentless loss. Israel's genocide has transformed every facet of civilian life — healthcare facilities operate at breaking point, entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins, 1.7 million people remain displaced, and death tolls continue rising.
Shereen Abu Mustafa, 25, has been sleeping on a hospital corridor floor for five days, unable to find a bed for her two-and-a-half-year-old son Yahya. She sits on a tattered black mattress in a narrow passageway at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, positioning the child's head near a small window as he struggles with severe respiratory problems.
"The patient rooms are extremely overcrowded, and we can't find space for my son," Shereen tells The New Arab.
"He suffers from shortness of breath and can barely breathe. I preferred the corridor with a small window beside it where I can place my son's head next to it, hoping he can breathe better."
The mother of three is aware of the risks associated with the infection. "I realise the dangers of infection being in a corridor crossed by hundreds daily," she said. "But the alternatives aren't available — either return to the tent and risk my son's life, or stay in the corridor."
Over five days, she has witnessed what she calls a "terrifying catastrophe": overwhelming pressure on medical staff, children sleeping on floors, medication shortages, and an inability to handle patient volumes. In rooms beyond, children sleep three to a bed. In hospital courtyards, families have erected tents.
Zaher al-Wahidi, the director of information at Gaza's Ministry of Health, describes the healthcare system as "gasping its last breaths, having reached a stage beyond catastrophe and collapse."
Only 14 of Gaza's 36 pre-war hospitals remain partially functional, operating at 233 percent capacity. The number of available beds has dropped from 3,560 to just 970.
"All hospitals went out of service at some point during the war," Zaher said, noting 793 direct military attacks on healthcare facilities over two years.
Medical equipment has been systematically disabled — out of the 17 CT scanners, only six remain functional. All seven MRI machines are broken, and of the 39 oxygen stations, only six are operational.
The medication crisis affects every category of care. According to Zaher, 54 percent of essential drugs have zero stock, with chronic disease treatments at 55 percent deficit. Medical consumables show 66 percent have zero stock, including 87 per cent of orthopaedic surgery supplies.
"Since the beginning of the war, Israel has not allowed any medical equipment to enter, and since last March, medicines have entered only three times in limited quantities — like a drop in the ocean," Zaher said. "All of this causes daily deaths."
Two years of death and disappearance
The death toll has surpassed 66,000, including 453 deaths from starvation and malnutrition, according to Zaher.
An additional 168,000 have been wounded, with 15 percent requiring long-term surgical interventions. The ministry reports 3,400 missing persons, with similar numbers still buried under rubble.
Maqboula Ahmed lost both her sons in a single December 2023 strike. Mohamed, 45, and Medhat, 40, died alongside their wives and seven of their children when Israeli forces bombed the building where they sheltered in central Khan Younis.
Now displaced in al-Mawasi, Maqboula scrolls through photos of her sons and grandchildren. Her pain deepens knowing she never recovered the bodies of three grandchildren, whose remains stayed under rubble for over four months.
"I lost the apples of my eyes, who were my entire life," Maqboula tells The New Arab. "Bombing, death, and loss were and remain the most prominent features of this war."
After two years, her wish is simple. "I only hope for the war to stop and that no mother or father has to taste the bitterness of loss that I feel. You lose part of your soul and are forced to hold yourself together and continue living."
Three married daughters and two sons remain. Maqboula moves them constantly between locations. "Every day I touch their faces and fill my eyes with seeing them. I want them always beside me," she said, wiping away tears.
Emergency vehicles were prevented from reaching the building after the strike, and bodies of more than 53 people — including children, women, and elderly over 75 — remained under rubble for months.
"What was the crime of the children and women in this atrocity committed against them?" she asked. "We only wish for justice and for the perpetrators to be brought to trial. But when?"
Anwar al-A'raj, 37, sits in a pickup truck positioned so the rubble of his five-story building remains visible behind him. The structure once housed commercial shops and eight apartments. Now it's debris beside the tent he erected for his nine children and two wives on the main street of Khan Younis refugee camp.
"It's a direct killing process aimed at pushing them toward frustration and the desire to emigrate," Anwar said of the January 2024 destruction. Seeing it reduced to rubble brings despair and often moves him to tears.
Anwar lost the building and the construction equipment he had rented to others, his primary source of income. Now unemployed, he can barely provide for his children, the youngest of whom, Shaimaa, is under one year old.
The catastrophe was completed when his five-year-old son, Abdullah, was killed in a June 2024 strike on al-Mawasi.
"The calamity is multiple calamities — my house was destroyed, I lost my source of livelihood, and before that, my son was martyred," he said.
"As the Palestinian proverb says: death and ruined homes. Other Gazans and I are shocked by the scale of destruction."
Field observations reveal destruction of entire cities, including Rafah and Beit Hanoun, with near-total destruction in eastern, northern, and central Khan Younis, east Gaza City, and parts of Jabalia and Beit Lahia.
According to the Mezan Center for Human Rights, 95 percent of Gaza's schools have suffered damage. Some 662 school buildings were directly bombed, and 116 suffered indirect bombardment. Israeli forces completely destroyed 33 university buildings and partially damaged 55 others.
Two years of displacement
Mahmoud al-Ghulban, in his sixties, spends days at a small stall selling biscuits and chips to children. His son Ahmed, 13, collects paper and plastic scraps so his mother can cook small amounts of lentils or rice.
Displaced from eastern Khan Younis to al-Mawasi, al-Ghulban describes life in the designated "safe zone" as unbearable.
"My house was destroyed and we've been displaced for five months in tattered tents that don't protect us from summer heat or winter cold," Mahmoud said.
"We live through forms of torture beyond all human capacity — torture in providing drinking water, indescribable suffering in providing food, and other suffering even in the simplest daily routine."
The Israeli military designated areas in central Gaza and al-Mawasi — comprising no more than 12 percent of Gaza's total area according to the Government Media Office — for 1.7 million displaced people.
Al-Mawasi lacks hospitals, infrastructure, and essential services, including water, food, shelter, electricity, and education.
Mahmoud fled following Israeli warnings. "But the truth is that bombing here doesn't stop, death spreads everywhere, and terror has no limits," he said.
"In al-Mawasi, we're like the dead who breathe, deprived of everything basic — vegetables, fruits, meat, healthy oils, and almost everything required to keep us alive."
Mohamed Solaimane is a Gaza-based journalist with bylines in regional and international outlets, focusing on humanitarian and environmental issues
This piece is published in collaboration with Egab