My Gaza was beautiful. We had beachfront views. Trump thinks we’re broken, but we will rebuild

If faith had a voice, if hope had a tongue, it would manifest in people’s poetry and songs. All you need to do is listen.

Through the 15 months of what has been described by international law experts as genocide, and in between the sounds of screams, explosions and dogs fighting over pieces of unburied human flesh, the people of Gaza sang.

Sabawi with her son Nahed in Gaza in 2023.

In their tents, inside hospitals, wearing their Press vests, their prayer clothes, their scrubs, wiping tears, tending to wounds, they sang. And the song they sang became more popular than any other in Palestinian history, even more than the national anthem.

“We will remain here,” they sang.

It was first sung on October 24, 2023, after Israeli forces issued an order for the evacuation of al-Awda Hospital. Doctors and other medical workers stood outside the hospital and sang a lyric written by a Libyan doctor, Adel al-Mashaiti, in 2005. Their song went viral: “We will remain here until the pain is gone.”

Since then, Gaza’s hospitals, schools, universities and entire infrastructure have been repeatedly targeted, at times with 2000-pound bombs courtesy of the United States. What do you think it was for?

Samah Sabawi’s beachfront apartment in Gaza in 2023. It has since been trashed. 

Palestinians understood from day one that this was about ethnic cleansing. Israelis were clear about their genocidal intent. Yet most of the political and media establishment kept their silence. What did you think it was about, when Gaza was wiped off the map?

Did anyone really believe it was necessary to drop 2000-pound bombs on hospitals, burning people alive? The wholesale death and destruction lacked any meaning other than as an act of revenge and ethnic cleansing. So please spare us your shock at Trump’s articulation of that reality.

To make Gaza unliveable has always been the plan. But if you think that Palestinians agree that Gaza or any part of Palestine can ever be made “unliveable”, you have clearly never met a Palestinian in your life.

Let me take you back to the headlines made by the United Nations when it predicted “Gaza would be unliveable by 2020”. I visited Gaza in 2023. The city was not only liveable but magical, befitting its reputation as a phoenix, the mythical bird reborn of its own ashes.

A Palestinian couple enjoy a summer day while a girl takes photos on Mediterranean Sea beach of Gaza City in August 2022.Credit: AP

We had just moved into a new apartment along Gaza’s beachfront. (Yes, Mr President, we had gorgeous beachfront properties that your country’s bombs destroyed.) There on our balcony we would have morning coffee, the sea before us, the red-tiled roofs of Rimal out the side windows, and we reflected every morning on the miracles that Gazans achieved despite continuous military offensives and 17 years of stifling siege by Israel, a siege that limited building materials as well as basic food supplies.

The city was on a par with the best Mediterranean destinations I have visited. Clean, beautifully landscaped and kept, organised and welcoming. The beach was lined with cafes made mostly out of recycled material, restaurants and hotels built with the rubble from previous wars, rooftop gardens yielding organic fruit and vegetables. The city was the embodiment of the miracle of living.

Today, after a year and more of holding our breath hoping for a political solution, we take stock of our losses. Our apartment was severely damaged, Israeli soldiers trashed it and drew graffiti on its walls depicting the star of David. But we are determined to fix the damage. All we need is for Israel’s aggression to stop. My grandfather’s home in the old city of Tuffah is half destroyed, the other half held together by the grace of hope and faith, and now it is housing five families in need, providing them shelter as they clear out the rubble of this war, and rebuild their homes. And yes, we lost almost 40 family members, some buried, others are still under rubble, but we have learnt to go on. Gazans have become the world-leading experts at rebuilding a city from its ashes.

Now we hear Trump’s Zionist advisers whisper to him something about Gaza’s beachfront properties.

As if what is missing is the imagination and acumen of white saviours, not the halting of the bombs and the ending of the siege.

As if we Gazans are incapable of building or dreaming when we have time and time again shown the entire world otherwise.

As if the land is vacant, not owned by generations of Palestinian families.

As if we measure the worth of our land by dollar signs and not by emotional ties that bind us through centuries of uninterrupted inhabitation.

As if when our home is broken we would abandon it, not love it and try to put it back together again.

As if ethnic cleansing is not a war crime.

As if Trump in his four-year term can wipe out the Palestinian people’s 4000-year history.

Samah Sabawi is co-founder of Palestine Australia Relief and Action (PARA) and the author of Cactus Pear for My Beloved: A family story from Gaza (Penguin 2024).

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