Asmaa Elhardi used to wake up early to pray. It was Saturday. Light spilled through the windows of her apartment in northern Gaza.
Then a rocket was heard and everything went up in flames. Elcaldi and her husband fled with only their laptop and important documents.
Then, “without any notice, the whole building was flattened to the ground,” she says from south-west Sydney, where she now lives. “Some of our neighbors were killed.”
Elhardi has been in Australia since November.
“I still feel it very clearly,” she says this week, almost a year after fleeing her homeland. “I have this kind of trauma in my body and I feel like it could bomb at any moment.”
Being in Sydney can be “more difficult than being in Gaza”, she says. There, at least “watching the genocide with family and friends knows they are safe.”
“When you're in another country, another continent, your mind can trick you, your worries can be exaggerated, and you can go crazy.”
The International Court of Justice said it was “plausible” that Israel had committed a violation of the Genocide Convention. The Israeli government has insisted that the military operation was a legitimate response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and dismissed claims of genocide as “false” and “outrageous.”
On October 7, militants killed around 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians. Of the 250 people abducted by Hamas that day, half were released during a brief ceasefire in November, and the other half are believed to have died.
More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel's military offensive began, most of them civilians, local health officials say. The United Nations says almost 2 million Palestinians displaced.
“I feel like I left everyone behind.”
Elcaldi first moved to Sydney in April 2023 on a scholarship to study a master's degree in public policy at the University of Sydney.
She visited Gaza last August and was due to return to Sydney in early 2024, “but then the war happened”.
She and her husband fled to Rafah a week later. Separately, her family left their home in northern Gaza six weeks later.
“Thank God they were able to succeed,” Elhardi says. “They were running down the street [with] Gunshots rang out above their heads. ”
In November, she was “one of the luckiest people” evacuated by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs. However, her husband's name was not on the list.
“The moment I stepped out of the Rafah intersection, my heart felt like it was going to break,” Elhardi said.
“I feel like I left them all behind and rescued myself. I felt so guilty and ashamed that I cried until I got to the hotel at Cairo airport.”
“I lost the will to live”
Elhardi, who is currently on a student visa, has returned to her studies. And her husband arrived in Sydney.
She cleans the house, prepares lunch, and studies. Al Jazeera is always on TV and she stays up late to contact her family.
“We are safe, but our families are back in Gaza. There is no help for us.”
Her mother and two brothers were evacuated to Turkey, but her father remained in Gaza with his uncle, aunt, cousins and in-laws.
“Sometimes the connection is so bad that we can't contact him,” Elhardi said of his father.
“I'm afraid he's in danger. We can't settle down, we can't live sane and normal lives. We can't just live our lives blind. ”
Elhardi says the hardest part is losing something that “no longer exists.”
“I keep having flashbacks at very random times,” she says. “There's a void inside of me and I can't fill it. I don't get to interact socially and go out into the streets and see people living normal lives and realize that my people aren't like that.” I don't even feel the energy to look. Some days I don't even have the energy to get out of bed. I feel like I've lost the will to live.”
For Nesma Khalil al-Kazendar, a former construction engineer in Gaza, fleeing was confusing and frightening.
“None of us understood what it was, what happened to us, what was going to happen next,” she says.
She fled with her husband and two daughters, ages 3 and 5, from their home in Gaza City to a relative's house, then to a shelter in Khan Yunis, then to Rafah. They took refuge in Cairo a week before border crossings were closed.
“My house was burnt down, then bombed, and my parents and in-laws' houses were destroyed,” said Khalil Al Khazendar, from Sydney, currently living on a bridge visa.
“Every day was worse than the last, and every day we faced the possibility of losing our lives.”
Khalil Al Khazendar and his family arrived in Australia in June 2024.
she is studying english and running hand of palestinea business that sells dukkah. She says staying busy helps your mental health. Someday, she hopes to work as an architectural engineer again.
“We are grateful to Australia for opening its doors to us and accepting us in these difficult circumstances,” Khalil Al Khazendar said.
“But my feelings are very hard as I see my country and my family going through the worst times from here.”
After a year of war, Khalil al-Khazendar says, “I just want to go home and find safety today, not tomorrow.”
“I want to regain a sense of security that is never possible when you are away from home, home, family, friends, and work.”
“Everyone here is doing what they can.”
The emotional burden of witnessing war falls on the shoulders of Australia's recently arrived Palestinian and diaspora communities.
Lamia Sultan, a Palestinian-Australian lawyer and Sydney community leader, is struggling to find the words to describe how her community has coped over the past 12 months.
Many of the diaspora are first- and second-generation immigrants whose children were born in Australia but have deep ties to Palestine.
They could only watch as Israel continued its shelling of Gaza.
“You feel exhausted, you feel guilty, you feel frustrated, you feel angry…the despair is even deeper,” she says.
“Every day, sometimes every hour, we receive messages and calls from relatives and family friends asking for help. Everyone here is doing the best they can within strict restrictions, but… The price is high.”
According to Sultan, guilt determines emotions. “From the moment we open our eyes to the moment we fall asleep, we are caught up in the thought of 'why us?' Why am I able to wake up in a comfortable and safe environment, but my loved ones… Why can’t we do that? That guilt is eating away at our communities.”
“It's traumatic on so many levels.”
Mr Sultan said the Palestinian diaspora in Australia often bypassed mainstream news to stay informed.
Instead, they watch live videos sent directly from Gaza or shared in WhatsApp groups. They see death and destruction occur.
Author and academic Randa Abdelfattah said Palestinians in Australia were witnessing the “dehumanization” of their loved ones, and this was mobilizing the community.
“We have come to the realization that the dehumanization of the Palestinian people is complete,” she says.
Anger over the Australian government's response to the conflict has sparked weekly protests in Sydney and Melbourne.
Abdel Fattah says the ongoing protests have allowed the community to vent their frustrations and show solidarity in defiance of attempts to shut them down.
But people are traumatized by having witnessed war up close, often out of a sense of duty.
“It's completely traumatic to see this scene of horror and slaughter becoming the norm,” Abdel-Fattah says.
“This has been traumatic on so many levels and has changed the way people relate to each other in their workplaces, social circles and communities.
“We witness babies being buried during our lunch break and are then expected to continue on duty as if it was all normal or nothing was happening. And we just keep asking ourselves: 'Why doesn't the world stop after seeing this?'
“They can build tents on the rubble of houses.”
Elhardi said the past year reminded him of 1948, when “all the land was stolen and people couldn't go back to their homes.”
Palestinians refer to their flight, expulsion, and land stripping as their catastrophe, or Nakba.
But Elhardi says the war was much worse. “The amount of destruction, the type of weapon, the size of the bomb, its intensity.”
She hopes to return to Gaza someday, but worries that life in the north will become impossible.
“I hope my suspicions are wrong, because… 1.5 million people living in a very small area in the South is inhumane. I need to return to my hometown.
“They can also build tents on the rubble of houses, but at least they can [would get] Return to land. ”
Khalil Al Khazendar says: “My only wish is to be able to return to my hometown when it is safe and rebuilt, even if it means not being able to return to my home, my family, or my friends.”
