A Day for Gaza / February 10, 2026

Gaza Is Still Here

Despite a “ceasefire,” Israel’s killing has not ended. Neither has the determination of the Palestinian people to survive.

Rayan El Amine, Lizzy Ratner, and Jack Mirkinson
(Ali Skaik)

Gaza has been suspended in a bloody limbo for months. The so-called ceasefire with Israel has not brought peace. The bombings and demolitions persist, and Israel’s expanding occupation continues unabated. Since October 10, 2025, when the ceasefire was declared, more than 440 people have been killed and more than 2,500 buildings destroyed. Israel has only allowed a fraction of the essential equipment needed for cooking, heating, and construction to enter the Strip. Gaza is now buried beneath 680 million tons of rubble. Ninety percent of the population has been displaced, many of them several times. Hundreds of thousands live in threadbare tents.

The “ceasefire” is meant to breed apathy among us; the spectacle of modern genocidal warfare has been replaced by the slow bureaucratic proceedings of ethnic cleansing. Washington’s hollow promises to bring “technocratic governance” to Gaza mask a colonial project imposed on a people with no say: a people left to die, forgotten by the world.

This, then, is where we return. In early February, The Nation gave over its website for a day to writers from Gaza. We did this to make it clear that we will remain focused on Gaza and the Palestinian people. No diplomatic proceedings or political distortions will subdue our demand for their right to self-determination—or their right to speak for themselves.

The pieces in this series are an affirmation of that right: a record of Gaza’s refusal, in the face of the world’s neglect, to be exterminated.

—Rayan El Amine, Lizzy Ratner, and Jack Mirkinson
 

Two children are waving Palestinian flags on a wrecked car as displaced Palestinians start to return their houses past damaged houses in Jabalia and Beit Lahia regions
(Ferial Abdu / Anadolu via Getty Images)

Rayan El Amine, Jack Mirkinson, Lizzy Ratner

Today, The Nation is turning over its website exclusively to stories from Gaza and its people. This is why.
 
 

A Palestinian girl carries a gallon of drinking water she filled from a water truck in Khan Younis. Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from a severe water crisis due to the destruction of water wells by Israeli air strikes.
(Abed Rahim Khatib / Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Mohammed Mhawish

The language of ceasefire has been repurposed in Gaza: It no longer describes a pause in violence but rather a mechanism for managing it.
 
 

Before Israel's genocide began, the Colorful Block hummed with vibrancy, a symbol of the pride of the people of Gaza.
(Atia Darwish)

Ali Skaik

What I saw walking one block in Gaza.
 
 

Deema Hattab

Recording what has been erased—and making sense of what remains.
 
 

Relatives and colleagues bid farewell to Palestinian journalists Abdel Raouf Shaath, Mohammed Qashta, and Anas Ghoneim, who were killed in an Israeli air strike.
(Abed Rahim Khatib / Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

Ola Al Asi

Journalists in Gaza have bartered their lives to tell a truth that much of the world still doesn’t want to hear.
 
 

(Ulf Andersen / Getty Images)

Alaa Alqaisi

On Palestine and the geography of vanishing.
 
 

Gaza City, December 8, 2025.
(Abdalhkem Abu Riash / Anadolu via Getty Images)

Asmaa Dwaima

Rewaa was killed by an Israeli bomb. Her absence has broken me in ways I still cannot describe.
 
 

(Moatasem Abu Aser)

Huda Skaik

These pictures are records of a genocidal war, but they are something more, too—they are fragments of Gaza itself.
 
 

Palestinians exercise on a beach in the Deir al-Balah Palestinian refugee camp on June 14, 2023.
(Mohammed Abed / Getty Images)

Engy Abdelal

Faced with endlessly narrowing possibilities, I return to my diary in an attempt to dream, to imagine a future.
 
 

(Rasha Abou Jalal)

Rasha Abou Jalal

After their home was obliterated, Rasha Abou Jalal and her family remain determined to build a new one, even if it must be built out of nothing.
 
 

(Khames Alrefi / Anadolu via Getty Images)

Ismail Nofal

Hamada Abu Layla spent 22 years gathering three university degrees. Now they mock him from a garbage dump.

Rayan El Amine

Rayan El Amine is a writer and journalist from Beirut, Lebanon, who lives in New York City. A former Victor Navasky fellow at The Nation, he served as a guest editor on "A Day for Gaza."

Lizzy Ratner

Lizzy Ratner is deputy editor for print at The Nation.

Jack Mirkinson

Jack Mirkinson is a senior editor at The Nation and cofounder of Discourse Blog.

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