These raw, heartfelt voice notes are straight from Gaza’s frontline: ‘Even the silence is frightening’

A pause to hostilities in Gaza was announced on 12 October 2025, leading to hope that the fighting and air strikes would finally end. It was promised that much needed aid would be allowed in.  

Three of Save the Children’s team in Gaza recorded voice notes to capture their reaction. 

In the voice notes, they reflect on the personal impact the war has had on them and their loved ones, alongside what the pause could mean for Save the Children’s work. 

The moment came with cautious optimism and hopes of rebuilding Gaza. However, recent reports of renewed airstrikes show that children continue to suffer. They are once again reliving scenes of fear and loss.

The recent action in Gaza by Israel began in 2023 after a massacre by Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. As of 22 October 2025, more than 69,000 Palestinians are said to have been killed. A ceasefire, brokered in part by Donald Trump, was said to come into affect last month, but Israel launched strikes on 28 October, accusing Hamas of killing a soldier. The strikes killed at least 104 people in Gaza, according to reports. Israel was accused of violating the ceasefire.

Israel launched its attacks on Gaza following a massacre by Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. As of 22 October 2025, more than 69,000 Palestinians were said to have been killed.

Save the Children continues to push for a definitive ceasefire, improved humanitarian access and better protections for children.

The international organisation is one of the largest working in Gaza. They are doing everything they can to provide essential support to children and families and will continue to as long as there is a need.

Read more:

• Teen scholar trapped in Gaza after being blocked by Home Office from joining her mum in UK
• How war-wounded patients are finding hope in a hospital in Jordan: ‘People can rebuild their lives’
• Gaza’s children need more than a ceasefire. We need to give them hope for a safe future

Read the words of frontline staff in Gaza, whose names have been changed. They have also shared drawings by children who have been supported by Save the Children in Gaza.

Omar

Honestly, it’s a strange feeling. We’re not even sure we are truly in a truce right now. We’re uncertain. We no longer know how to live in an atmosphere without aircrafts without bombings or the sound of drones, or how to go out without feeling afraid.

It feels like this is the first time we’ve ever experienced this feeling – the feeling of safety – as if it’s something entirely new to us, something we can’t quite sense. We can hardly believe it even exists.

Something feels wrong. Even the silence itself, unfortunately, has become something frightening. I lost both my father and my mother during the war — may God have mercy on them – not because they were directly targeted, but because treatment wasn’t available. They were sick, and that was the main reason for their death.

In the last two weeks of the war, I lost my house, my parents’ house, and my brother’s house. So now, the entire family has no home to shelter us. I don’t have any clear plans. The war taught us that we can’t plan for anything.

As for the issue of maintaining and sustaining the pause in fighting, it’s not guaranteed. We’re still afraid that something might happen and things will turn around again. This has happened several times before.

The fighting and bombings would resume by one of the parties. They would make up something and the war starts again. And we still hear voices calling for the continuation of the war.

We can’t plan for anything because nothing is in our hands. We don’t know what awaits us in the coming days, and even what we once had is gone. The war may be over, but the only thing that disappeared is the direct threat to people’s lives by bombing. The rest of the threats are still here.

If we talk about the health sector, we haven’t had proper medicines for a long time. Diseases are worsening, and medical cases are getting more severe day by day. Hospitals need long periods for reconstruction, re-equipping, and providing medical supplies. Many medical staff and skilled health professionals have left the country, and many doctors have been killed or injured.

As for the environmental sector, there’s severe sewage networks pollution in areas the army withdrew from, people haven’t returned because there’s no drinking water.

And regarding income sources, daily-wage earners and those without jobs have absolutely no income now. Rebuilding the economy to create job opportunities for people will take years.

As for education, more than 90% of Gaza’s schools are completely destroyed. Who will solve this problem other than alternative education through institutions?

Regarding protection, people are now entering the post-war phase, which means we’ll all go through post-trauma, we’ll need years to recover from its effects.

Think of how long children will need to recover from the trauma they’ve endured, how long it will take them to regain their sense of childhood, safety, and psychological stability.

I’m 45 years old now, and even today, I still can’t grasp the idea that the war is over. For example, yesterday I was walking on a paved road, and when I heard a sound, I immediately thought it was a missile coming toward us.

After two years, will I really be able to comprehend that the war is over and that we’re living in safety? That idea doesn’t exist. Recovering psychologically will take tremendous effort.

Programs for protection, education, health, infrastructure, water, sanitation, and cash assistance for the poor must continue for a very long time. Unfortunately, these programs will need to keep going for extended periods to provide services to people

On the contrary, it will expose new crises — in education, health, mental and emotional wellbeing, and the economy. All of these issues will surface and reveal people’s growing needs.

We must expand our work and respond more effectively to people’s urgent needs at this stage. I think Save the Children could provide psychological wellbeing support for staff members.

Honestly, we’ve become completely drained. All the other days, I worked around the clock, even on weekends, because we were constantly in a state of emergency. We’re living the same suffering as the displaced people in Gaza, on top of work pressure.

Zain

It’s an indescribable feeling, a mix of emotions, between feeling some degree of peace and, at the same time, a lack of trust about what might happen in the future. But I truly hope that things will get better and that God will compensate people for what they endured in the past period

We no longer have any trust in how things will unfold. We’ve been through this before – like the pause in fighting in January, then war suddenly resumed. So, I don’t think anyone really has confidence, though we still hold on to hope.

We lost our homes and our money. My house was new, I hadn’t even moved into it yet — it was still being finished. I was preparing to get married and move in, but unfortunately, it was destroyed during the first two weeks of the war.  I spent just one night there alone, just to experience it, but I never really lived in it.

My wedding was supposed to be in November 2023, but I had to postpone it because I ended up in the south of the strip while my fiancée was in the north so, I stopped all the preparations and couldn’t complete them.

We worked during wartime and emergencies, but that work came with many restrictions, movement restrictions for us and for people moving in and out of the camps, restrictions on service delivery, and restrictions on bringing aid into Gaza. But I believe that the time when organisations’ work is most needed — especially Save the Children — is now.

During the war, we worked in certain areas, but we must now reach others, like Gaza City and the north. Recently, we were mostly working through partners. If the need during the war was 100%, then now it’s 200%, because people are beginning to return, heal and start over.

This process requires a great effort and support, especially when it comes to water, shelter, and mobility, as people’s movement will greatly affect service delivery.

I’m optimistic [that Gaza will recover], because I feel that the Palestinian people are deeply rooted in this land and as long as they have these roots, they will recover.

Day by day, life will improve. I always say that Gazans love life, and wherever they are, they create life out of nothing. I know things are extremely difficult, and for people to recover and adapt to current conditions will also be very hard.

Marwa

I honestly can’t express how I feel, because there is a mixed feeling – are we really in a genuine truce, or are we going to face the war again?

Until this moment, we don’t feel or sense that the war has truly ended. The feeling of fear still controls us and I still feel psychologically unstable about the idea that the war is over.

I can’t feel joy, nor can I feel that safety has reached me, my family, and my children. I am waiting to see what will happen in the near future. I feel that we are heading toward a stage of uncertainty, and we don’t even know how things are going.

The destruction we see around us – of our homes and where we used to live – has honestly given me a deep sense of frustration making me unable to enjoy the moment we had been waiting for over two years.

I feel that this situation is extremely difficult and cannot be described in a few words. Compared to others, I don’t want to say that I lost a lot, but for me, it is a lot. My house was destroyed. Yet, thank God, I consider myself luckier than many others. Still, I have lost myself – my old spirit.

I can no longer return to enjoying the life we once lived. I have two daughters, and I even feel guilty because I cannot provide them with a safe environment.

They are supposed to be learning, but there is absolutely no educational environment. They just stay at home, and I feel that I am losing so much of my investment in my children because my life goal was to invest in their education, and I’ve lost that investment.

I don’t even want to talk about material things, whether our homes, our entire city, or the places where we used to feel safe. We’ve also lost the people we used to sit with and see. All these things together, we’ve lost them, and we won’t be able to rebuild or return to them again.

I don’t know whether I can tell that we’ve felt safe because when we hear the sound of a passing truck, we still feel that a missile is coming toward us.

[Save the Children] is supposed to have a very big role. The community, people, and partners are expecting a lot from it. It could be something that eases our burden.

As you are talking to me right now, we are trying to work on people’s recovery and plan for the next phase, which is what helps relieve our burden. We are trying to figure out how to start over with people.

We hope to be able to continue, without big obstacles, with open crossings, and easier roads and streets for movement, without checkpoints, so that we can reach more people, especially those most affected in distant areas we couldn’t access during the war.

We hope the next phase will be one in which we can work together to bring recovery to Gaza.

Find out how to support Save the Children’s work here.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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