‘Every moment we live must be documented’: A doll, letters and keys help displaced Gazans hold onto their identity

By Billy Stockwell and Sana Noor Haq, CNN

(CNN) — The final lick of paint was barely dry on the newly built, white-tiled Al-Hasanat home when the war in Gaza erupted in October.

For three-year-old Ayten, the apartment in central Gaza was a source of immense pride. “This is our beautiful house,” she would say to anyone who would listen, her father, Ahmed Al-Hasanat, recounted.

But two weeks after the family moved into their new home, they were forced to flee the besieged Al-Mughraqa neighborhood, said Al-Hasanat. When they returned in November, they found their apartment badly damaged by Israeli strikes. A doll belonging to Ayten lay among the rubble, peeking out from behind a broken door.

“I cried for my area, my house, and everything around me,” Al-Hasanat told CNN in June. “Ayten said, ‘Our beautiful house is gone, Dad.’ Then I entered the apartment and brought her the doll.

“She said, ‘Daddy, my doll died.’”

After more than nine months of fighting in Gaza, the plush toy is now a precious reminder of the lives they led before the war. The Israeli military offensive has torn families apart, erased entire communities and reduced cultural sites to debris. Almost the entire population – up to 1.9 million people – has been displaced, according to the United Nations. Several Palestinians told CNN they could take only their most significant personal items on long and hazardous journeys of displacement.

From neatly organizing letters while staying in labyrinthine tent camps, to keeping branches from family olive trees, some say they are doing all they can to keep memories alive. For many, repeated displacement means reliving the trauma of generations uprooted by al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe,” when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes in historic Palestine, during the creation of Israel in 1948.

Others told CNN the preservation of family heirlooms symbolizes a collective effort to hold onto Palestinian identity – and the hope of returning to their homes in Gaza.

Israel launched its military offensive on October 7 after the militant group Hamas, which governs Gaza, attacked southern Israel. At least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others abducted, according to Israeli authorities.

Israeli strikes in Gaza have since killed more than 39,000 Palestinians and injured another 90,000, according to the Ministry of Health there.

“Every moment we live must be documented,” Al-Hasanat, a father-of-three, told CNN.

A box of memories

Before the war, Fadi Adwan was studying for an electrical engineering degree at the Islamic University of Gaza, his dream since he was a teenager. These days, he fiddles with a navy and gray scientific calculator inside a tent in Rafah, in the south.

Israeli strikes destroyed several of the university’s buildings in the early days of the war, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

“Since I was in the 10th grade, I always had a calculator in my hands,” said the student, in his early 20s. He and his family have been displaced at least five times since October, he added. “I was thinking that we would go home after a month or so, but things were not the same in this war as previous wars.”

Israeli bombardment has largely wiped out academic and cultural institutions in Gaza, according to the UN. More than 75% of schools in Gaza will need either full reconstruction or major rehabilitation work to be functional again, the UN reported in June. Thousands of students have been killed and injured since the start of the war, WAFA reported in early July, citing the Ministry of Education and Higher Education in Gaza. Students told CNN days spent on campus have been replaced by repeated displacement and bloodshed. Some have held onto their university notes, inspired by hopes of rebuilding their future after the war.

“I stood with tears in my eyes in front of my wardrobe, gazing at my belongings,” 20-year-old Haya Ismail told CNN, as she recalled her final minutes in her home in Gaza City, amid the sound of approaching bombing last November.

As her family prepared to flee, Ismail instructed her three sisters to fill a small box with their most treasured possessions. Her younger sister, Dina, contributed a necklace and some handwritten letters from close friends.

Ismail said she chose to pack her third-year university notes, which were neatly written in English with a flash of pink and yellow highlighter underscoring the words “first lecture,” according to pictures seen by CNN. Seven months later, Ismail says she sits staring at her notes in a relative’s house in Deir Al-Balah, where her family have been displaced.

The handwritten pages are a tribute to her much-loved university professor, Refaat Alareer, who was instrumental in helping young Palestinians tell their stories in English. The famed poet and writer spoke to CNN in October, months before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza.

“Dr. Refaat’s voice is what keeps ringing in my head whenever I see my notes,” said Ismail. “He made us aware of the power of words and writing in delivering messages to the world, so we as Gazans will be heard.”

Cycles of displacement

Ismail wonders if she will relive the plight of her grandparents, whose lives were uprooted in 1948, when they were children. Her only living grandparent – her paternal grandma, who has Alzheimer’s disease – still remembers the horrors of al-Nakba, Ismail said.

Streams of Palestinians have been forced to flee under Israeli bombardment since October, as the war uproots new generations. Some told CNN that their experience echoed their ancestral history.

“I hate it when I realize that I am reliving the exact wretched fate my grandparents once lived… I too will be traumatized and attached to my past life for as long as I live,” Ismail said.

Cycles of repeated displacement – without the promise of return – are embedded within Palestinian communities, according to Rochelle Davis, an associate professor of anthropology at Georgetown University.

“Every Palestinian in Gaza has the awareness that when you leave (home), you may not be going back, because of the experience of the Nakba and everything that’s happened since,” she told CNN. “That is very different than many refugees in the world today.”

CNN previously reported on Palestinians in Gaza filling “emergency bags” with important documents and a select few keepsakes, leaving them by the door in case looming Israeli invasion forced them to flee – even before October 7.

“I used to wonder why they were leaving their homes in 1948,” said Adwan, the electrical engineering student. “But when this war happened, I understood why they left their homes; because of the horrific massacres that took place and because of the blood that was shed.”

Longing for ‘Palestine’

Small green leaves cling to a withering olive branch which 19-year-old Raghad Ezzat Hamouda took in October from a tree which had been planted by her father in their home in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza.

Having been displaced at least six times, Hamouda has preserved the branch – and a keffiyeh, the traditional scarf worn by many Palestinians, that belonged to her grandmother, Tamam – as they remind her of her “beloved homeland,” she says.

“Our ancestors were displaced by Israel in 1948, and the scene today in 2024 is repeated,” she added.

Once a marker of Palestinian life, Hamouda says her black-and-white fishnet-patterned keffiyeh is now a symbol of loss.

She said 85-year-old Tamam, a Nakba survivor, was injured when Israeli tanks opened fire as the family fled from northern to western Gaza in December. She was pushing her grandmother in her wheelchair at the time, she recalled. The teenager said her grandmother bled to death before they could get her to a hospital. “My grandmother was very affectionate and loved her grandchildren very much,” she said. “She loved to smile and gave us hope, especially during times of war.”

The IDF told CNN it could not comment on allegations of the targeted attack without geographic coordinates and the specific time, but provided CNN with a generic statement it has often used during the war in Gaza. CNN provided the location and date for the assault in question.

With no end to the war in sight, other Palestinians told CNN they have held onto their house keys as a reminder of home. Many may never be able to use them; Israel’s military campaign has destroyed 150,000 homes in the enclave, the Government Media Office in Gaza said on July 7. But for generations of Palestinians dating back to al-Nakba, the house key has become a potent symbol of a shared hope to return home, according to the Museum of the Palestinian People.

Along with house keys, some Palestinians will also have passports and land deeds from the 1940s testifying to pre-existing ownership of land in what is now Israel, according to Dr. Scott Webster, an academic from the University of Sydney. At least 70% of residents in Gaza are refugees, those who were displaced from their homes during the creation of Israel and their descendants, Amnesty International says.

“The house key is important because it brings with it all the memories, memories of the house and the garden around it, and the grapevines,” said Adwan, who has held onto his keys while being forced to flee multiple times, including from the besieged Al-Shifa Hospital.

“My father and mother have been working hard for 30 years to be able to build this house… It was partially destroyed in 2014. We built it again and it was destroyed again,” he said. “We are people with lives and memories… Maybe one day someone might care about our cause and help end our suffering.”

‘I am no longer me’

Palestinian parents told CNN they were juggling their own fears for survival while trying to reassure their children under a constant threat of Israeli strikes. Children across the Gaza Strip are experiencing loss of appetite, persistent anxiety and emotional outbursts, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 15,983 children, the Government Media Office reported on July 7.

Guardians may use personal objects – including toys – to provide emotional support for displaced children, said Davis, of Georgetown University. Meanwhile some adults hide their psychological trauma because they do not want to overload younger generations, according to Dr. Samah Jabr, a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and head of the mental health unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

“We are talking about historical trauma that affects masses of individuals,” she told CNN. “It damages the social fabric of the Palestinian people.”

For Al-Hasanat, saving Ayten’s doll from the wreckage of their home was an attempt to soothe his daughter’s psychological trauma.

“She used to always laugh and spread happiness,” he said, explaining that she has now developed anxiety-related habits.

“I want to look for a safe place for the sake of my children, and for the sake of a happy life for Ayten, who needs a lot to return to the way she used to be,” he added. “The pain is indescribable. We have become without feeling or sensation.”

Since their visit in November, Al-Hasanat said, their apartment has been completely destroyed by bombing. “Nothing remains of the house,” he said.

Ismail, the literature student, says the stress of war has made her feel like “a stranger in my own life.”

“That’s how I and all Gazans feel after being snatched out of our lives and being forced to evacuate,” she said. “I am exhausted, counting days waiting for this all to end. I feel I am no longer me.”

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CNN’s Tim Lister contributed reporting.