Plestia Alaqad had found a new beginning. The young Palestinian journalist, who risked her life to document the horrors of the war in Gaza for her millions around the world, moved to Lebanon last month to study at the prestigious American University of Beirut.
Alaqad says Lebanon felt like her second home for a while. She had just a few weeks taking lessons and walking the green west Beirut campus before the war found her again.
“It’s devastating to feel like Israel’s wars are just following you,” she tells The Independent by phone. “And it hurts to see millions of people’s lives on pause.”
Israel launched its war in Lebanon last month following a year of escalating violence with Hezbollah. Much of the south, and the capital Beirut, was hit by heavy bombing as Israel launched a new offensive against its neighbor to the north. Hundreds of civilians have been killed and more than one million people displaced from their homes.
For 22-year-old Alaqad, it brought back painful memories.
“When I saw displaced people in the streets in Lebanon and in schools, it reminded me of everything the Palestinian people lived through. It’s heartbreaking because I know what it feels like,” she says.
With the university switching to online classes and bombs falling across the capital, Alaqad was forced to flee her new home and upend her life for the third time.
“I didn’t know what would happen,” she says. “Would the war expand? Would it end? Would the airport get bombed and I get stuck there? So I thought it’s better to leave.”
She now lives in Egypt, and studies remotely. She is starting again, again.
“After everything that has happened, I don’t really believe in planning anymore,” she says.
Alaqad had only been out of university a year when the Gaza war began. She had studied journalism and wanted to pursue it as a career. A natural on social media, she shared snapshots of her daily life in the blockaded territory: a day at the beach, hanging out with friends, or modeling traditional Palestinian clothes.
When the war arrived, she quickly turned her attention to documenting the devastation caused by massive Israeli bombings across Gaza. In one of her videos, she is telling her followers about the smoke pouring in her window from bombings close by, when three large booms shake her apartment.
“I’ll go check on my parents,” she says, before ending the video.
International media were banned from entering Gaza from the first days of the war, so Palestinian journalists in Gaza were the only way for the world to see what was happening.
Alaqad built an enormous audience, with over 4 million Instagram followers. She focused on the suffering of civilians, who were constantly on the run from bombings and advances by the Israeli army. Her videos offered a close-up view of how the war was upending lives and families every day.
Her work earned her plaudits, but as the war drags on into its second year, she has lost hope that journalism can make a real difference.
“People keep telling me how much my work changed the way people view Palestinians, how it played an important role. And for me, if I did all that, and if my work was all that good, then why has the genocide not ended?” she asks.
“That’s why you feel everything you did is nothing,” she adds.
Since leaving Gaza, Alaqadad has continued to speak out about the devastation caused by Israel’s war, which has now killed an estimated 41,000 Palestinians. But adjusting to her new reality has been difficult.
“Life will never be normal. I’ll never see life the same way I used to see it back then, and it’s heartbreaking,” she says.
“It’s sad to see that almost 2 million people have been bombed for more than a year now, and it’s hard to be far away from all of that happening. This is not a movie that I’m watching online, these are people I know.”
At least 130 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza over the past year, many of them her former colleagues. She checks in regularly with her journalist friends who are still there. Just the day before she speaks with The Independent, she was talking to a friend who narrowly escaped death. They left a tented area outside of a hospital just five minutes before it was bombed by Israel. A video of the attack showed a man being burned alive while he was attached to an IV drip.
“When I talk to them, it’s as if they’re just waiting to get killed. They know it will happen. They just don’t know when,” she says.
Alaqad went to Beirut to pursue a Master’s degree in media studies on a scholarship named after Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank while she was covering a protest for Al Jazeera in 2022. The last year has given Alaqad plenty of first-hand experience for her studies and she believes the media has failed in some of its basic duties when reporting on Gaza.
“Until now, the media outlets are failing at naming things what they are. They still call it an Israel-Hamas conflict. If it’s an Israel-Hamas conflict, then why are thousands of kids getting killed?”
“Some families no longer exist. Israel has bombed buildings, houses, most churches got bombed, starving people. So how is that a conflict?”
Alaqad is now working on a book about those first weeks of the Gaza war based on the diary she kept while in Gaza.
She announced the book last month on her Instagram.
“Life is funny. Today, the Lebanese sky above me is in flames. Today is also the announcement day of my book Eyes of Gaza, which I started writing way back on October 7 2023 – or as I knew it, week 1,” she wrote.
Reliving those months of war while writing the book has been tough.
“It’s emotionally challenging to revisit everything I’ve experienced,” she says. “I’m eager to share the book with the world. I believe it will offer valuable insight into the Palestinian experience.”
Alaqad made her name covering the war and the suffering of Palestinians, but she still believes that her earlier work — the videos of her showing normal daily life in Gaza — is just as important.
“One thing I often think about is how can we keep Gaza alive,” she says. “If you search Gaza online, you will only see pictures of us bombed. You won’t see pictures of the places, the people and everything. That’s why it’s important for me to show people the Gaza before, the Gaza I know.
“I want the world to know our names and stories, not to see us as numbers,” she adds.
