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Smartphones hold entire archives of life, memories, and evidence in Gaza
As Israel destroys all signs of what Gaza once was, Palestinians hold on to records and memories on their devices
Malak Hijazi
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Every night before she goes to sleep, Reiman Harazin, 31, goes through the photos she has saved on her phone. That way, she hopes, she won’t forget any detail of her life in Gaza, however small.
Harazin’s phone, which she has had since 2022, holds pictures of her destroyed home, the street where it stood, family gatherings, and years of ordinary moments. Some of what it contains no longer exists anywhere else, including the view from her bedroom window and a pigeon that used to perch on the sill.
Harazin hasn’t deleted a single WhatsApp conversation, not even those that might seem insignificant. She still returns to her chat with Nevin, a friend who was killed earlier in the genocide. “She was checking on me and praying for the war to end,” she said.
Harazin is afraid of losing her phone because “I would never live those details in my life again,” she said.
That fear reflects a broader reality in Gaza, where Palestinians have lost not only their homes, but also the lives they once knew. Many fled under bombardment or evacuation orders, with no time to gather documents and keepsakes: photo albums, certificates, property deeds, and other records of their lives.
The scale of that loss is reflected in the physical destruction across Gaza. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), about 82% of structures in Gaza have been damaged, with two-thirds of those destroyed. An August UNRWA update, citing a new U.N. Satellite Center satellite assessment, found that the number of destroyed structures had risen by 9% since the ceasefire was declared in October 2025.
The destruction has reached beyond homes to Gaza’s archaeological sites and cultural institutions. Of 316 key heritage sites assessed by the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, 226 have been destroyed or significantly damaged. In late November 2023, Israeli shelling destroyed Gaza City’s Central Archives, home to more than 150 years of records.
Mahmoud Natour, a professor at Al-Aqsa University and its director of continuing education, had used his phone before the war to reach family and colleagues, follow the news, and stay connected to his work.
As education shifts online, however, the device has taken on responsibilities it was never designed for, becoming, as Natour puts it, “a tool for survival, a keeper of memory, and a way to document what we live through and protect what remains of the details of our lives.”
Natour uses his phone to check on his students, send course materials, and keep some thread of teaching alive. Even his conversations with students have changed. Before asking about an assignment or lecture, the first question he asks is whether the other person is safe and where they have ended up.
He also saves copies of his ID, birth certificate, passport, degrees, medical records, and property papers, alongside years of research and lecture notes. When families flee an airstrike, there is no time to gather them.
“A photo saved on the phone, or a copy sent by email or messaging apps sometimes became the only remaining proof that an original document—now lost or burned—had ever existed,” he said.
Digital copies do not carry the same legal standing and can disappear with a dead battery, a stolen device, a corrupted file, or a lost password, especially when internet access is unreliable.
“So relying on it was a forced and fragile solution, not a complete system for protecting rights,” Natour said.
Harazin knows that fragility too. Keeping her phone charged is a daily struggle. Her days begin with finding water, then food, then a way to charge the phone and conserve its battery for the flashlight after dark. An internet connection can be just as essential: It is how she learns which areas are being hit and where evacuation orders have been issued.
Hazarin remembers her second displacement from Shuja’iyya in 2024, when an immediate evacuation order appeared on Facebook.
“We knew there were no solutions left. We had to flee at that late hour, under heavy bombardment,” she said.
For Palestinians in Gaza, smartphones have become lifelines serving multiple purposes, Natour said, “a warning and distress signal, a map for displacement, a teaching platform, a mobile library, a repository of documents, an archive of memory, and a tool for documenting violations.”
The phone hasn’t ended the fragility, but it has given us a small space to face it.
Mahmoud Natour, Al-Aqsa University professor
But he also stressed what that adaptation reveals: the collapse of the institutions, records, and systems that should have protected people in the first place.
“Resilience here is not a luxury or always a chosen form of heroism, but a necessity imposed on people so they can continue,” Natour said.
But even this portable archive is not guaranteed. Since the so-called ceasefire, Israel has continued to restrict goods it classifies as “dual-use,” a category that has covered everything from vehicle parts to solar panels, mobile latrines, X-ray machines, and generators. Phones were allowed into Gaza briefly after the ceasefire, but imports tightened again by December.
“The phone hasn’t ended the fragility, but it has given us a small space to face it,” Natour said. “It has kept the complete destruction of place from becoming a complete erasure of people, memory, and story.”
Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor
