Since the ceasefire has gone into force, the skies in Gaza have changed. There is an unusual stillness. We do not hear Israeli fighter jets or helicopters any more. The quadcopters are also gone, but the drones – the “zanana” – remain.
The buzzing of Israeli drones is unmistakable. It has been a continuous companion for us in Gaza for many years as Israel developed its drone technology using us as test subjects.
During the genocide, the proximity and volume of the buzzing intensified, sending a clear message: The drones hungered for the souls of Gaza’s residents. For 15 months, these flying machines controlled where we went, what we did and who lived or died. It felt like the occupation had placed a surveillance camera over each living soul in Gaza. It felt like the drones outnumbered the birds in Gaza’s sky.
For 15 months, the buzzing sound never stopped – day or night. It would embed itself into the heads of the people of Gaza, both young and old, and torment them. It would devour our sanity and our optimism that the war would ever cease.
Under the swarm of drones in the sky, even the simplest of activities was a challenge. As you cooked a meal, the sound would create a dark backdrop, disrupting your concentration. You would lose your cool and burn what little food you had.
The drones would wreck your nerves, irritating you and other members of the family, causing tension and escalating arguments.
An older woman at the camp where we stayed once told me, “The drone is eating my mind.” She thought of the continual buzzing as a chronic, incurable headache. It would get worse at night, piercing her brain and depriving her of sleep. If she fell asleep, she would have nightmares about bombing and destruction.
Drones terrorised not just with their buzzing and surveillance but also with arbitrary mass killing. Being outside after dark meant you risked becoming a target. So just before nightfall, Palestinians would rush back to their tents and take shelter. Children, who would normally play outside, would also stay put.
At night, if you felt the need to go to the toilet, you would have two options: wet yourself or risk your life to relieve yourself. Panic and fear would take over your mind as you pressed on your bladder, trying to hold it in.
I knew of several families who used buckets at night to relieve themselves and emptied them in the morning.
Bathing, too, became a dangerous matter in the displacement camps. One could not risk starting a fire towards the evening to warm water because it could attract the drones. So you would have to rush through the process during the day, pouring water over your body and rinsing off the soap as fast as possible as your imagination played games: What if a drone fired? You scrambled to dress quickly because the prospect of dying naked was unbearable.
The genocide saw a new feature introduced to these drones: tricking sheltering Palestinians into venturing out.
Imagine, during a sleepless night, you hear the meow of a hungry cat. Driven by your human compassion, you go out to offer it something to eat. You, too, are hungry, but deep down, you tell yourself, “I can manage, but the cat cannot find food on its own.” You step out to toss it a scrap of food and suddenly a gunshot ends your compassionate act.
Drones and quadcopters used various recorded sounds to trick their victims: a crying baby, a child screaming for help. They preyed on the compassion and solidarity of Palestinians, which endured despite the unbearable suffering of war.
We became so used to being tormented by the drones that in the rare moments their buzzing stopped, we felt something was wrong.
My colleague Wissal told me that one night she noticed that she could not hear any drones. She was terrified. She woke up her family, urging them to pack their bags. The quiet was ominous, she thought.
She recalled what had happened in Rafah one night when the drones fell silent: a horrifying attack was launched that devastated their neighbourhood. Her family managed to escape.
Wissal was right. The silence of the drones turned out again to be a sign of an imminent attack. As the Israeli army started bombing the “safe zone” she and her family had sheltered in, they fled once again for their lives.
Today, as the ceasefire has taken effect, the immediate danger of being killed by an Israeli strike may have temporarily disappeared, but the drone surveillance and buzzing continue. The drones continue to rob us of a sense of safety and autonomy.
The prospect of drone-free skies remains a distant dream, one intrinsically tied to the broader struggle for justice, self-determination and peace. Only with the genuine end of the occupation can this vision of unburdened skies truly become a reality. Until this happens, drones will continue to devour our minds.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.