From the first week, back in mid-October 2023, I observed that what was happening in the Gaza Strip was not a war, but a cleansocide (two crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide).

I have been writing and lecturing about the subject extensively, and I warned against the repercussions of using the term "war" to describe what has been perpetrated, as this gives legitimacy to Benjamin Netanyahu. "War" is the only way to exonerate Netanyahu!

Over the past two years, I have made sure to be in personal contact almost every day with several friends and colleagues from inside the Gaza Strip: friends, acquaintances, activists.

Only technical difficulties (the occupation cutting of telecommunications) prevented daily communication and interaction with anyone from inside Gaza, "the world's Qibla", to follow the details of the crimes of the #MotherBalfour disaster, from where I am in the empire of "Auntie" England, "Balfour’s Mother "!

In the middle of this month, September, Gaza had, and still has, its voice echoing anxiously in a live broadcast from the Palestinian House/Darat Falastin in Cambridge.

These are the live voices of children, women, men, elderly individuals, bombs, planes, and missiles, all coming to us via the sea phone waves of Gaza.

On 18.09.2025, however, I received this monologue from a friend of mine, a Palestinian educator in Gaza City, providing a vivid firsthand testimony about the crimes of cleansocide.

My dear friend,

Out of sheer force and not on my part, my family and I were forced to leave our apartment in Gaza City on Thursday, September 18, 2025, carrying our belongings at a cost that exceeded our means.

We all walked (including our 2-year-old child) for more than seven hours under the blazing sun, the darkness of the night, and the rugged terrain of the Nazi enemy's bulldozers.

This is one of the two main aspects of the cleansocide. Whilst genocide is continuing, the Israeli occupation has "cleansed" our area of ​​us—its residents, called demographics —and forced us to leave. Our tears quenched our thirst along the way.

I left to deliver our simple belongings, which, if winter becomes severe, will not protect us from the cold or the rain, and we are powerless. I placed what we owned in a spot the enemy claims is safe. The last two years, however, proved to us that there is no safety in all parts of the Gaza Strip or Palestine.

My family and I left the house as we bid farewell to the corners of our home and kissed its walls, which we had repaired after the first bombardment during the first displacement, in preparation for displacement, indeed, for the evisceration of our souls.

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On the edge of the abyss: A story of displacement, survival from massacre

This is my situation, my friend, and the situation of thousands of families who accompanied me on the road from northern Gaza to the governorates of central Gaza.

A journey of suffering in every sense of the word, so what about someone with a heart condition like me?!

I know you'll ask about food. Yes, we ate lunch an hour and a half ago (close to midnight), and of course, it was at my expense. It consisted of some canned food, some simple vegetables, and bread. Not sure how we will secure our food for the coming period. We experience suffering, harsh life, and displacement every moment.

In all honesty, my friend, I would not have left our home in Gaza City, and I remembered what you wrote about your late grandmother, Madame Khoury, during the Nakba in the "spring" of 1948, and how she refused to be forced out of her home despite the displacement of the majority of Yafa's population.

However, choosing a life of displacement in our case was primarily a search for a place of safety for my family and children.

But it is a journey of suffering from morning until evening, and we do not know what our day will look like tomorrow, if morning comes.

You know, my friend, the hardest thing in the world is displacement.

Oh God, the state of the people in Gaza makes even stones weep.

By God, we are a people who deserve life.

Before my eyes, people are dying on their way a thousand times while being displaced.

I ask your son to continue to pray for us all and for our safety. May he answer your prayers when they are offered from you—from "Umm Balfour” (England: The Mother of the Balfour declaration) as you called it in your recent article.

Our love to you.

Your brother,

A displaced person, son of a displaced person.