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Photojournalist Motaz Azaiza risked ever ything to show the world how desperate life has become since the war began
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FOR 108 DAYS from 7 October 2023, Gazan photographer Motaz Azaiza captured the horrors of the Israel-Palestine conflict on camera. Buildings destroyed, bodies buried in rubble, children cr ying and injured from airstrikes, his Instagram feed ser ved the heart-wrenching reality of war to his 18.6 million followers. Then, last month, he made the difficult decision to evacuate to Qatar, explaining online, ‘I spent my whole power on showing the truth and [the war] didn’t stop.’
Days prior to his evacuation, Grazia spoke to Motaz about life in Gaza, where the death toll currently sits at 27,700, according to the most recent Red Cross estimates as Grazia went to press. They also say that more than 1.9 million people have been displaced since Israel took retaliator y action after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel killing 1,200 people and taking a further 240 hostage. As Grazia went to press, 134 hostages remained in Hamas captivity, with The New York Times reporting that at least a fifth of those are presumed dead. Two hostages, Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, were reunited with their families after being rescued by special forces in a raid in Gaza’s Rafah region on 11 February. But Foreign Secretar y David Cameron warned Israel to ‘think very seriously before it takes any further action’ in Rafah, instead calling for ‘an immediate pause in fighting’.
As the conflict rages on, Motaz decribes the increasing despair. ‘Every day, I wake up very desperate, feeling hopeless,’ he explains over WhatsApp video call, the first time he had been able to get internet in weeks. ‘I try and find fresh food each day, because there’s no electricity so we can’t store it. I have to find diesel for the car, it’s so difficult to get and expensive – one litre is about $8. There is no internet connection [most of the time], you can’t make phone calls, so there is nothing to even distract you from your anger or pain.
‘I have more than 20 people in my house, people who evacuated Gaza City after the Israeli army entered, so there’s no privacy, there’s not enough food for ever yone and we can’t shower. Everything makes you feel as though you want to kill yourself.’
The bombing has been so relentless, death so commonplace, that Motaz says people barely react to it any more. ‘Even if there is a bombing at the end of a street, you will find people there tr ying to buy food. It’s so hopeless to stay alive, they may feel scared for a moment but then they will continue their day.’
Before the Israel-Palestine conflict esca
