Ibrahim Badra, 23, is a Gazan journalist, translator and human rights activist. He has a bachelor’s degree in both English literature and translation from the Islamic University of Gaza. His interests focus on literature, politics, education and translation.
He was due to be awarded with the diploma on October 7th 2023, the day of the Hamas attacks against Israel when his world was turned upside down. His work activities over the past two years have consisted mainly of defending human rights in Gaza, documenting the daily lives of the local population, and making their voices heard.
Earlier this year, he and Nour Elassy, 22, a Gazan journalist, poet and writer, began contributing to Mediapart from Gaza, chronicling the everyday events of life and death, displacement and hunger in the Strip. This summer, both found refuge in France, from where they continue their chronicles for Mediapart.
Badra’s family were originally from Jaffa. Following the 1948 creation of the state of Israel, and the ensuing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, they set up home in Sabra, a neighbourhood just west of Gaza City.
Badra had lived through seven Israeli-Palestinian conflicts before the war that began in October 2023, following the Hamas attacks that month which left more than 1,200 Israelis – mostly civilians – dead, since when the ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza has led to the deaths of close to 70,000 Gazans, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
In his latest contribution to Mediapart below, Badra denounces the absurdity of what is called a “ceasefire”, officially in place since October 10th, but under which Palestinian civilians continue to be killed by Israeli forces. “Warplanes fly overhead and shells continue to rain down, leaving Gazans trapped between death and despair,” he writes.
A fake ceasefire amid the ongoing theatre of death
In Gaza City, after the occupation forces seized 58% of it and displaced its residents, homes became ruins, and streets have been turned into open graveyards. People walk with trembling feet and heavy hearts, carrying memories on their shoulders like silent coffins, moving forward… not knowing where their fate lies, except that death awaits by the roadside. They have become walking corpses, with the sounds of shelling preceding every step taken.
The city has been crushed by armoured vehicles, warplanes, and indiscriminate shelling, demolished stone by stone before the eyes of the world. This devastation is not a fleeting scene, but the true face of what Gaza endures under occupation. What the world is shown as a “truce” is nothing but a charade.
Since the ceasefire was declared on October 10th 2025, it has been nothing but a cover for ongoing aggression. More than 282 violations were recorded in just one month, while the death toll rose by 242, and that of the injured by 632. Homes were blown up, and infrastructure was destroyed, leaving civilians homeless.
These figures reveal the falsity of the truce, which has become an empty illusion offering only fragile promises. Meanwhile, warplanes fly overhead and shells continue to rain down, leaving Gazans trapped between death and despair.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
On land, in the air, and at sea, all types of weapons are used mercilessly. Within three hours, more than ten tower blocks were destroyed, and ten neighbourhoods vanished in minutes. In one case, for example, a six-minute evacuation warning was given, and a missile obliterated a tower and everything inside. A mother stayed behind her children, expecting to follow them, only for her house to collapse on top of her. Bodies lie beneath the rubble, and children are left without shelter.
I am here only to document, for words that will endure for generations. Gaza is bleeding, and the ceasefire is nothing but a delay in the execution process.
One of the blatant absurdities of this ceasefire is that the blind world mobilizes its resources to recover the bodies of 19 Israeli hostages, while ignoring the more than 20,000 Palestinians who lie missing under Gaza’s rubble, including entire families erased from the civil registry and the world, with no one asking about them.
This encapsulates the double standards in their ugliest form and exposes the true face of what is called a “ceasefire” in the eyes of global powers. This paradox does not concern only the occupier, committing criminal acts, but also the mediators themselves.
While I am writing this article on November 14th, during what they call a ceasefire, citizen Mariam was killed by tank fire in the north-west neighbourhood of Atatra. She was filming the rain over the wet tents in her displacement camp when a bullet struck her directly.
The day before, Duha, a student from Nuseirat, in central Gaza, was killed by the occupation forces along with 18 members of her family. She had been waiting on the results of her high school evaluation, in which she awarded a 96.7% average, and never got to celebrate. Now, tell me: does the ceasefire have any meaning?
Where are you when homes collapse on families, and thousands of people are erased from existence? Is there anyone still alive out there?
For more than a hundred victims – children, women, and families – to be crushed in just a few hours, and then for everything to stop like a cheap video game, as if nothing had happened, is utter absurdity.
The pain remains. It remains in the hearts of orphaned children, widowed wives, grieving mothers, and fragile men, whose lives crumble amidst the ashes and destruction.
We live in a dirty world, and we all know it. But now, everything is laid bare before us.
- A French translation of this chronical, written by Ibrahim Badra in English, can be found here.