'Everything is destroyed': Dispatches from 21-year-old under siege in Gaza
Tala Herzallah lives in fear amid the ongoing conflict.
Tala Herzallah, a 21-year-old Palestinian student, had just started her final year at the Islamic University of Gaza when Israel began its retaliation following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.
"I was preparing myself for this moment of graduation," she told ABC News. "I was preparing myself for these happy moments, and they are all destroyed now."
The university is destroyed, turned into rubble. Her home in northern Gaza, she says, is now unsafe and her future is uncertain.
Gaza has been hit by hundreds of Israeli airstrikes since the siege began two weeks ago. There are 5,791 people dead, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, including some of Tala's own loved ones.
At least 1,400 people died in Israel in the Hamas attack, according to Israeli authorities.
Through video diaries and Zoom interviews just days after the war began, Tala chronicled her life under Israeli siege.
"They didn't leave anything for me to think of -- the dream of everything is destroyed, literally everything," she said.
She continued, "I dream to Gaza to be free, to Palestine actually to be free. I dream that we all can come and go back to our homes."
Oct. 10, 2023
"We have some food and some water that may be enough for a couple of days, but we don't know actually if we finish these supplies, what will happen? We don't know," Tala said in her first interview with ABC News.
She continued, "Everything is getting very hard: water, food, health, medicines, health services, medicines ... We're not allowed to go in or out of Gaza. They bombed the crossing so no one can go and no one can come out of Gaza Strip. We are living under siege and they are trying to kill us in all ways."
The Rafah border crossing, the only one between Gaza and Egypt, was shut on Oct. 10 after it was hit by Israeli warplanes on the Palestinian side three times on Oct. 9 and 10.
"There is no safety in Gaza ... Everything's being bombed," she said.
Oct. 11, 2023
Tala said her family is running out of necessities. On October 10, Israel declared "a complete siege" on Gaza, cutting off food, water and fuel to the already blockaded region.
She described streets being bombed, consequentially blocking ambulances with the injured to get to care; unable to go and take people to medical facilities.
"My brother have received a message that the building in front of them will be bombed. And we don't know if it's a rumor. We don't know if it's true."
Some of her neighbors have received similar messages, and then a different building was bombarded, she said.
She continued, "You have to stay at your house and wait for death."
"The central hospital that we have, Al Shifa Hospital, is now filled with injured and killed people and it can't have anybody else. And so we don't know where to go with the injured people. We don't know where to go with the killed people. They will be left in the streets."
She and her family have bags packed -- filled with important documents, clothes, money, books, laptops -- waiting by the door. They're ready to begin their escape at the first sign of trouble.
"I took my my university books. My university is bombed, but I don't know, I took them anyway," she said.
There are no bomb shelters or warning sirens in the Gaza Strip.
Oct. 12, 2023
In the morning, Tala watched from her window as her neighbor's funeral procession passed.
"A young man in his 20s, about 25," she told ABC News in a video diary.
"He was just in front of his market, seeing his friends. The other people were walking in the street when the Israeli airstrikes decided to bomb them without any word, without telling them to leave the place."
It is her first personal loss since the beginning of the siege.
Oct. 13, 2023
Tala said, in a series of texts to ABC News: "We're not OK at all."
The texts continued: "They are forcing us to leave our area. And pushing us to go to Egypt step by step. History is repeating itself. They are repeating what happened in 1948!!! Spread our voices please!!"
Tala said the ongoing conflict is a reminder of what Palestinians called the "Nakba" or "catastrophe," when in 1948 they were forced off their lands or fled en masse during the Israeli-Arab War.
Oct. 14, 2023
Tala and her family followed the evacuation order from the Israeli government, fleeing her home in Northern Gaza and moving south.
"We're leaving our house right now and we don't know where to go," she said through tears.
She says she was nearly bombed en route.
"While we were moving as they told us and we were obeying the rules and their instructions and other things, they bombed us."
She and her family made the tough decision to turn back.
"Please let everyone know. We are dying. We have to move. The world has to move. We are dying, guys," she said. "They are brutally killing us. No one is listening. No one listens to our voice."
Oct. 16, 2023
Tala said she heard bombs dropping nonstop around her home the night before. It's been days since she said she has slept well.
"Let me say I'm just alive. I'm not good. I'm not fine. Not well at all."
She later continued, "They have been bombing for 12 hours and they didn't stop. They didn't take breaks. It was just a bomb after a bomb after a bomb."
Like many other people in Gaza, they tried to evacuate their home, but were unable to find a car and did not have a place to stay in southern Gaza.
"Nothing is getting better. Everything's getting worse."
Her family is running out of food, supplies and other necessities -- and they do not know when aid will come. On Oct. 16, aid awaited permission to enter the Rafah crossing.
"I don't know if the supplies that they are saying they will enter will reach us or not, as I am staying still in the Gaza City," she said. "And they are saying that the supplies will only be to the people who live in the south. So I don't know. Things are very complicated and I don't know where -- what is waiting for us."
Oct. 17, 2023
Tala's cousin and her husband's family were all killed last night.
"We woke up on this news: She was bombed," she said.
"She was actually with her husband's family again, without warning they bombed their house, and they are getting them out of the rubble using very simple tools because now nothing is available to use," she continued.
Tala said the time it takes to get people out from under the rubble makes it difficult to save those who are injured: "He or she will be killed because of the time they take to get them out."
Her cousin was just texting her the night before, asking her how she is and how's her family.
"In just one night, we lost them all."
Oct. 19, 2023
"Another new night ... and a new terror. They are bombing in my area," Tala said.
Tala and her family – her father, mother, brother, his wife and their two children – have moved to the nearest hospital, as their home is no longer safe. Around them, she said the buildings were being hit, one after the other.
"They started bombing the buildings without warning anyone. We thought our building would be the next."
As they packed up and moved to their new shelter, they could hear the airstrikes continue to turn homes into rubble. The hospital, though, had no guarantee of safety either.
"When we reached the hospital, we adults, we older people, we were shaking and they were, the children -- my nieces -- they were really terrified," Tala said.
"We tried to calm them down. We tried to wash their faces and do whatever we can to them. We started to play with them, to laugh, to have some jokes that it's safe. Like it's nothing."
She continued, "It really hurts that these children are having such a life, such a frightening life, with no crimes. They haven't done anything in their lives. And they can't live like all other children."
They spent the night there with hundreds of others, as the news of the explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital weighed heavily on her family.
Between 100 and 300 people were killed in the explosion, according to the U.S. intelligence agencies.
"I hope the morning comes very, very, very soon," she said.
Oct. 20, 2023
Tala and her family are attempting once again to move south after almost being hit by airstrikes several days before while attempting to evacuate.
"Not because the south is safer, but ... they don't bomb the streets that much. They bombed the bakery, they bombed the school there, they bombed houses, but they haven't reached the point to bomb streets."
She continued, "But in the north ... they are bombing streets very randomly, that's why we decided to march to the south again."
When she returned home from sheltering at a local hospital, she said she discovered that a store across from her window was bombed. The journey south was also full of close bombardments, so much she said she thought they wouldn't make it. But they did.
Oct. 23, 2023
As Tala's parents were packing bags ahead of their journey south, Tala said what could be her "last goodbye" to her home.
"That's many, many, many memories," said Tala of the moments she shared with her loved ones in the family home. "I hugged my pillows. I hugged my teddy bears. I told them that I will come back."
As Tala closed the door to her home, she said she kept asking herself if she will come back one day and what it will be like.
"[Will] we come back and find our house, like as we left it, or will it be ... will it be free and safe and we won't be dead?
The car would stop for minutes at a time as airstrikes fell around them.
"We were just praying, like, asking to reach safely. My brother's wife calling us and we didn't answer any of them because ... we don't want them to be more worried."
She continued, "It was actually raining bombs everywhere and we were just looking at the destruction and the devastating scenes. It was really awful."
Tala and her family relocated to a home in the south.
"They are so kind, so generous," she said. "They are literally very nice."
She's grateful to have a place to stay. She says she is shy and an introvert, and is adjusting to the large group she's now living with.
Oct. 24, 2023
The hospital system in Gaza has collapsed -- with 12 hospitals and 32 health centers out of service, according to the Ministry of Health. Authorities fear more will soon be out of service in the coming hours as they run out of fuel and as airstrikes continue to hit Gaza amid the ongoing war.
"They are literally out of service and most of the Gaza houses are out of bread and water," said Tala. "If the world doesn't move ... in one or two days, you'll find all Gazan people dead."
She continued, "They want to kill us all in silence. And believe me, if this happens, the blame won't be on them only. The blame will be on the whole world because they are just watching and doing nothing."
Oct. 27, 2023
Another day brings another personal loss for Tala: Her cousin died in his family house, destroyed in an Israeli attack as the retaliation against Hamas continues.
"He was killed with his two sons and daughter and his wife," she said in a brief voice memo, devastated.
She continued, "They are little children, they are pure civilians, they do nothing. Their apartment ... It's so awful. So horrible. I can't find the words to say."
Oct. 29, 2023
Tala, through tears, told ABC News she doesn't know how to express the overwhelming emotions she's experiencing amid the ongoing onslaught of attacks throughout the region.
"I feel like I'm out of the world, like no one knows about me now," she said.
Many Gazans have lost internet and phone service for days at a time, making it hard to keep in touch with family members, loved ones, and the rest of the world.
“I knew nothing about anyone," she said. "Really weird for the first time in my life to have this experience... to be out of touch with everyone in the world except the people that you live with."
She continued, "I can't talk with my brothers. I know nothing about them. I don't know if they're alive or not if they need anything or not – it's just so, so hard, too hard."
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