Palestine: Gaza’s Bloggers Remember The War  · Global Voices
Ayesha Saldanha

It is one year since Israel launched its 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip. In this post, Gaza's bloggers remember the war.
Lina Al Sharif, blogging at 360 km2 of Chaos, writes:
We didn’t expect it. Saturday, the 27th of December, Israel attacked several police stations killing more than 225 people and injuring thousands. The timing was very significant as the raids were at 11:25-11:35 am. People of Gaza at the time would be at work, schools, and universities. When the attacks first happened, we thought it was just the regular sonic booms which would leave us annoyed and shocked for couple of minutes then life would move on like nothing had happened. I remember on that day, we didn’t have electricity at home. [November, Israel tightened the siege that the very basics were scarce, on the top of it the electricity.] I ran to check the window of my room, and then, I knew it was not a sonic boom, it was bombs with smokes. The Second hypothesis that came to my mind after I saw the smoke was “the regular attacks”, the F16s and helicopters do their dirty jobs and leave. However, I was wrong again; the news coming from the radio was shocking. Several police stations were attacked all at once, they were not empty.
Seconds after the raids calmed down, frenzy took over the streets, people were running extremely shocked. The mobiles’ network almost collapsed, as everyone was calling one’s family and friends, who might have been close to the sites. My mum rushed to call my father as he was at work, and my other brother. I started to absorb what happened when I saw the footage of that police station; how men were scattered dead and injured. People were crying, screaming and praying. I remember my friend called me late that day saying:”next week we have final exams, but I don’t feel like studying today.” I replied:”me too!”
This is some footage taken by Lina with her cellphone at 11:33am that day:
Abu el Sharif writes at Shajar El ba6a6a:
Abu el Sharif then gives an example:
Samaher Al Khazandar writes at her blog Tales:
Hayat El Alam remembers going back home on the first day of the war:
The family home was actually destroyed during the war:
At her blog Notes of the Night, in a post entitled “Lorca, who accompanied me during the war”, Kawther Abu Hani writes: