On the morning of 7 October 2023, the author of the Guardian’s Gaza diary woke up planning to play tennis. “This year I decided to take care of my mental and physical health,” he wrote in his first entry, published six days later. “This means no stress, no negative energy and definitely more tennis.”
Instead, with the news full of how Hamas had broken out of the territory, killing 1,200 people, he found himself scrambling desperately for the documents showing he owned his apartment in Gaza City, in the north of the strip. “If our building gets bombed, I need evidence that this apartment belongs to me,” he wrote.
