The academic is publishing a book about his month spent in the Palestinian enclave between December and January with MSF. A veteran of war zones, he says he has "never experienced anything like it."
by Hala Kodmani
published on May 23, 2025 at 7:19 p.m.
Before addressing the "shock" experienced and described by Jean-Pierre Filiu on the ground in Gaza, it is necessary to underline the exceptional fact of having been able to spend a month in the Palestinian enclave, removed from humanity. A possibility that thousands of journalists around the world envy him , banned from accessing the territory since the start of the Israeli offensive launched in the aftermath of the attack of October 7 , 2023. "What would we understand about the war in Ukraine if only journalists based and accredited in Moscow reported on it?" argues the privileged witness.
His testimony is brought to the readers of A Historian in Gaza , a title chosen by the man who, in the field, simultaneously takes on the roles of reporter, humanitarian worker, academic and, above all, fervent expert on the Middle East, its lands, its peoples and its future.
As part of a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) mission, Jean-Pierre Filiu was in the Gaza Strip from December 19, 2024, to January 21, 2025. He "celebrated" his 63rd birthday on the day he entered the territory, then Christmas and New Year. Housed in the humanitarian zone of Mawassi on the coast, near the southern town of Khan Younès, where a million displaced people are crammed together, he discovered "an abandoned humanity" in this territory he had visited in other times. "I never imagined my reunion with besieged Gaza like this ," writes Filiu, discerning upon his arrival at night "ravaged areas emerging from the shadows."
Details of the unlivable
This isn't the first time the academic has visited a war zone. Author of I Write to You from Aleppo (2013), Filiu has made several trips to Ukraine over the past two years to teach courses on the Middle East at Kyiv University. "Even though I've been to several war zones in the past—Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Somalia—I've never, ever experienced anything like it," he writes about Gaza. His description of the conditions of daily life in the enclave, under fire after fifteen months of conflict, where more than 80% of the population has been displaced, is surprising even when you keep seeing the images and hearing the testimonies. Walking among the "sea of tents" along the beaches, he captures the details of the unbearable.
"Behind the data patiently collected by humanitarian organizations, there is the reality of open-air dumps teeming with barefoot children," writes Filiu. He mentions "holes dug in the sand as toilets... domestic wells hastily drilled at the corner of the tent to ensure a minimum of daily needs" for water. There is the water shortage, but also the excess water when a night of torrential rain, on December 30, floods the tents and their contents. The ordinary daily drama is also that of " making do " that occupies the days of Gazans for their survival: wood gathered for firewood, donkeys as their only means of transport. But also the trafficking and gangs of looters who appear during humanitarian aid distributions, often with Israeli complicity.
Cursed Territory
Jean-Pierre Filiu describes above all the waiting in the tents of "these days that stretch on without a future, yearning for a ceasefire that is always postponed." An anguish that he shared with the population during his thirty days in Gaza. A period when "Gazans dream of the truce currently being negotiated in Qatar." This same truce obtained on January 15 and whose announcement provoked jubilation among the inhabitants, even though the actual ceasefire did not come into effect until the 19th, the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration at the White House .
In this logbook, which is not just a chronicle of the dead, the historian recreates Gaza's past, which was once an oasis full of grain and orchards. He returns to the reasons for the enclave's isolation in recent years, to the rivalries between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, showing himself to be equally harsh in his judgment of both, and pointing out Israel's responsibility at every stage of the life of this cursed territory.
The account of the witness-reporter, who was closest to all Gazans, does not mention his own daily life and living conditions during the month he spent in the field. He acknowledges at the end his privilege and "the limits" of his testimony, given that he was housed in dry, warm conditions with guaranteed meals. In the protected humanitarian zone where he was located, he "saw Gaza City only through the eyes of its former residents."
