Gaza After Three Years: From the Warmth of Home to Life in Tents

For Gaza’s residents, the distance between life before October 7, 2023, and life in tents is measured in more than lost shelter. It is also the loss of familiar routines, a sense of stability and the ability to make even modest plans for tomorrow.

Before that date, despite the territory’s long-running crises, daily life still revolved around recognizable foundations: a home where families gathered, work that provided an income and schools that children attended.

For those who farmed, land offered another anchor, tying livelihoods to the rhythm of planting and tending crops. These ordinary details did not erase Gaza’s hardships, but they gave households a structure around which to organize their lives.

Three years on, the contrast is stark: the warmth of home has given way to the harshness of tents and the uncertainty of waiting. What once seemed ordinary—a family gathering under its own roof or a child following a school routine—now defines much of what has been lost.