A powerful collection of testimonies from Palestinians facing genocide and displacement in Gaza with hope and resistance.
Displaced in Gaza aims to raise global awareness of how violent displacement has impacted the lives of Palestinians—students, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, educators, and those who already survived the Nakba of 1948. In Gaza, 2.3 million Palestinians have been subjected to starvation, mass destruction, and targeted killing. Yet they endure.
This book is a commitment to the longstanding Palestinian tradition of storytelling, documenting both the horror of the genocide and the resilience of the Palestinian people. The stories in this collection are not merely accounts of suffering, they are assertions of humanity, resistance, hope, and the unbreakable bond that ties Palestinians to their homeland.
Displaced in Gaza is a collaboration between the American Friends Service Committee and the Hashim Sani Center for Palestine Studies at Universiti Malaya.
Ahmed Alnaouq is director and co-founder of We Are Not Numbers. He grew up in Gaza, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from al-Azher University, but currently he is based in London. Ahmed was the inspiration for, and original project manager of, We Are Not Numbers. He later won the UK’s prestigious Chevening scholarship and earned a Master’s degree in international journalism from Leeds University. Today, in addition to his role as a Steering Committee member of We Are Not Numbers, he is cofounder of Border Gone, a media project that tells stories from Gaza in Hebrew. He also serves as advocacy and outreach officer for the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Ahmed’s writings have been published by the Gulf News, New Arab and other websites.
Publication date: September 2, 2025
“One can only hope that the accounts collected in Displaced in Gaza: Stories from the Gaza Genocide will be introduced one day as evidence in international courts to convict the Israeli government and military personnel responsible for the crimes depicted in this book.…. The carnage described in this book continued for more than a year after the testimonials and is still ongoing, despite the so-called ceasefire. For this reviewer, it is haunting to read these stories of contemporary events and life in Gaza by 27 courageous, suffering, traumatized, steadfast and heroic authors, not knowing if all those among them are still alive.” —Electronic Intifada
“The narratives may lack the embellishments of fiction, but they do not need them: the truth on these pages is more powerful than any novel….Displaced in Gaza is a collective cry for the world to listen and a monument to a people’s undying will to survive.”
—Middle East Eye
“This harrowing collection of first testimonies from survivors of the Gaza Genocide—featuring voices from old and young, fathers, and mothers offers an urgent, personal perspective on the realities faced by those forcibly displaced by Israel. It should be read by all people. Read them, then read them again—you will be left wondering how the world allowed such atrocities to unfold and be motivated towards meaningful action.”
–Laila El-Haddad, Author of Gaza Mom and The Gaza Kitchen
“The narratives of these survivors of genocide are an affirmation of their humanity, an ode to loved martyrs, and a record with which to fight for future accountability and justice. It is an archive of enormous importance, yet one that is also lacking: there should be a testimony to each and every victim of Israeli apartheid. Every person in this collection is fighting back against the effort to make our loved ones nameless and silent, to leave their bodies unidentified beneath rubble. They are forcing us to witness, to hold their stories as a living archive against this latest act of extermination, as well as the years upon years of Nakba, of the dispossession and murder that preceded it.”
–Tareq Baconi, president of the board of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network
“Displacement is not a coincidence but the outcome of a premeditated agenda. It's fundamentally a human rights issue and documenting the stories of displaced people in Gaza is an important step towards restorative justice.”
–Nkosi Zwelivelile, grandson of Nelson Mandela
“Displacing people in Gaza has become forcibly normalized. Some Palestinians have been displaced twenty times. The stories in Displaced in Gaza are a must-read.”
–Ahmed Abu Artema, Palestinian poet, journalist, and co-founder of the Great March of Return
“Before you can forgive, you must remember. In these testimonies, Palestinians insist on memory. We are aware how the world is ready to move past our memory as soon as the world determines we are now ‘after Gaza,’ that the genocide has stopped. But after the genocide is still a genocide. Palestinians know that we must overcome this ‘after,’ too. And so we tell our stories to honor the love in our hearts.”
–Fady Joudah, Palestinian poet and author of The Earth in the Attic
“These firsthand Palestinian accounts by survivors of Israel’s ethnic cleansing are chilling testaments to the devastation of displacement. Subject to genocidal violence as part of the ongoing Nakba—settler-colonial elimination—the individuals whose stories are included here are part of a crucial documentation project. This important collection is a call out to the world community to not only bear witness, but to assert our collective political will to end these atrocious war crimes.”
—J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, author of Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity
“Displaced in Gaza presents an essential collection of real-life testimonies that challenge the narratives justifying the current erasure of Gaza and its people. In the Gaza Strip, where nine in ten Palestinians have been displaced since the events of October 7—some as many as ten times—these personal accounts humanize the staggering numbers. These stories remind us of our shared responsibility to ensure that the lessons of history and the pledge of ‘never again for anyone’ apply to Palestinians, as well.”
—Laila Mokhiber, Senior Director of Communications at UNRWA USA