Since Oct. 2023 Gaza has been living the same doomsday for 2 years and counting

While time seems to race ahead in cities across the world, it has stood still in Gaza—the war-ravaged coastal enclave frozen since the start of Israel's genocidal war two years ago.

Here, days are not measured by hours but by airstrikes; months are counted in homes and loved ones lost. Life moves to a broken rhythm of bread queues, water tankers, and the constant buzz of military drones overhead.

In Gaza City's al-Rimal neighbourhood, 45-year-old Omar Abu Shahla spends his days going from one place to another in search of water for his family, who refused to move south as ordered by Israel.

Two years ago, he ran a small aluminium workshop and lived with his wife and four children. Back then, he felt he was "the happiest man", as he had everything he wanted in life.

But everything changed after 7 October 2023. "In the first weeks, we thought it would be like previous wars," he told The New Arab. "We would stay in the school shelter for a few days and go back home. But this time, nothing stopped. The neighbourhoods changed, and so did we."

Abu Shahla and his family fled to Deir al-Balah, then to Khan Younis, only to return home months later when the bombing eased.

"In February 2025, we came back," he says. "We rebuilt what we could with our own hands and hung new curtains, hoping it was over. But months later, we were on the same road, fleeing again."

He described the past two years as "one endless day". "The Israeli army killed my son in the first year, destroyed my workshop in the second. No one laughs any more. Even the children seem older," Abu Shamala said.

Like most Palestinians in Gaza today, Abu Shamala now relies on food aid.

"There's no electricity, no television, just the sound of planes. For two years, I haven't known rest. It's like we live on the world's edge, watching others move forward while we are stuck in the same morning," he added.

'War became our routine'

In al-Moghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, Aseel Adnan, 38, has lived in a tent since the first month of Israel's war.

"In one week, I lost my husband and three brothers. We fled home to a UNRWA school, where a hundred people were crammed into one room. There was no clean water, no privacy, no food," she told TNA.

That first winter in 2023, the tents leaked in the rain, and the children fell ill for a lack of medicine. "I told myself the year would pass, and we would return, but the second year was even worse," she said.

In March 2025, as Israeli airstrikes returned to the Gaza Strip, she was displaced for the third time. "War became our routine. We wake to the sound of planes, bake bread on a wood fire, and wait for the night to end in peace," she described.

Today, she sells bread to other displaced families, earning just enough to buy flour. "We don't count time by month any more. I still keep Eid clothes that my children never wore. I don't believe in tomorrow," Adnan added.

At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, 52-year-old Dr Atallah Marzouq still reports for duty every day, two years after the war began.

Standing before the damaged entrance of the hospital, he recalled the day the emergency ward collapsed. "After that, there was no real health system. We treated people in tents, without anaesthesia, without equipment. We weren't just doctors; we were trying to keep people alive," he told TNA.

Since October 2023, Dr Marzouq has not taken a single day off. He sleeps inside the hospital on a narrow cot between the intensive care and surgery units, waking to the sound of ambulances or explosions.

"I no longer remember what my own home looks like," he said. "My life has become the hospital—its smell, its noise, its fear. I eat here, I pray here, I sleep here. Days and nights have no meaning any more. Sometimes I realise it's Friday only because I hear the call to prayer."

Before Israel's war, he used to drink coffee at sunrise before heading to work. Now, as he said, he drinks it at midnight between surgeries.

"I don't remember the last time I saw my neighbours or sat with my family. The hospital has become my entire world," he added.

By the second year of the war, Gaza's medical system had collapsed. "Electricity is gone, medicines are gone, and patients die in silence. We used to treat war injuries. Now, we fight hunger, infections, and chronic disease. Some of the wounded lost limbs months later because they couldn't find antibiotics," the doctor explained.

"The war has changed everything," he continued, "People live waiting for the next strike. No one sleeps deeply any more."

'Time has frozen'

In Nuseirat Camp, Ibrahim Khalil, 27, belongs to a generation that has grown up under siege and come of age during this war. Before October 2023, he was studying accounting at Al-Azhar University. But when his home was bombed that December, he lost his parents and brother.

"In the first year, we were running to survive," he told TNA. "In the second year, we were trying to live. I opened a small coffee stand for my sister and me. Some days we make ten shekels, and some days we do nothing. But working reminds me I'm still alive."

"Outside, the world talks about elections, movies, and new seasons. Here, we count the nights we weren't bombed. Two years have passed, but for us, it's the same endless day," Khalil said.

"The first war took our homes. The second took our hope, while this war took all our lives, hopes for a better future and even the chances of survival," he added.

Two years on, 90 per cent of Gaza's buildings have been destroyed or damaged by Israel. Over 1.4 million displaced Palestinians live in tents or abandoned schools.

According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, the Israeli army has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians since 7 October 2023, and injured nearly 200,000—the majority of whom are women and children.

Twenty-five of 38 hospitals are out of service, while 13 operate under extreme strain. Over 100 primary health centres have been destroyed, and Israel has killed at least 1,701 medical workers.

The health ministry also reports 460 deaths due to malnutrition and famine, including 154 children, and more than 51,000 children under five suffering from severe hunger.

Even if the current mediation efforts in Cairo succeed in stopping Israel's current genocidal war, various Palestinian analysts point out that there are no guarantees that Israel will end its systematic violence unleashed onto the strip, nor end its ruthless decades-long blockade that has stalled previous reconstruction efforts in parts of Gaza destroyed by the Israeli army before 2023. 

"Despite multiple mediation attempts," Ramallah-based political analyst Ismat Mansour argued, "There is no comprehensive ceasefire, no reconstruction plan. Israel uses the blockade as leverage, while Palestinian factions remain divided."

"But people here don't just need aid—they need an end to the cycle of war," he concluded.

Two years on since Israel's war began, Gaza remains caught between ruin and resistance, a place where the clock has stopped, but the heart still beats.