The news of Anas al-Sharif’s killing hit me like a physical blow. A journalist with Al Jazeera, Anas was not my friend in the everyday sense – we never shared coffee, never walked the streets of Gaza together. But he was my neighbour.
He was born in the same place I was born: Jabalia refugee camp. His family’s home stood in the same crowded lanes where I grew up, among the same walls scarred by decades of displacement and war.
