Research & Investigations
Genocide warps time's meaning for Gaza residents
Image credit: DAWN
TOP News Brief
The passage from Dawn describes how Israel's military campaign has fundamentally altered how Palestinians in Gaza experience and measure time. Rather than following conventional daily routines or planning ahead, residents organize their lives around immediate survival needs and factors that would be considered ordinary elsewhere. Nearly three years into the conflict, time itself has become a waiting game structured by whatever enables people to endure each day.
The piece suggests that normal temporal frameworks—weekly schedules, monthly goals, future aspirations—have ceased to function for Gaza's population. Instead, Palestinians navigate existence through a lens where the present moment dominates all planning and thought. The author notes that even brief moments, such as a meeting by the sea, reveal the profound psychological and social transformation that prolonged conflict has imposed on the territory's residents.
