Yesterday I noticed the title of an article in The Nation, Why Palestinians Can’t Sleep. Ironic, or not, I’ve had trouble sleeping lately, and am writing this at 3 a.m. I know of others who are having trouble. I’ve been working to try to minimize focusing on this country’s authoritarian plunge, but it’s sometimes hard to do.
But there are much more sinister reasons Palestinians can’t sleep. I already knew the answer. Not much has been written about it in this country, but there is the nearly constant buzzing (‘droning‘ sound) from drones in the skys above Gaza. A constant reminder of possible death from the sky. “The bombing keeps us hanging between heaven and earth.”
I swear I couldn’t sleep without the drones’ noise. Toxic but true.
Duha Hasan
In a Palestine known for its night journeys, in a place where prophets have traversed the skies, people continue to have their nights disrupted by violence. Even during the ceasefire, Israel has blocked humanitarian aid, cut off electricity and water, and resumed attacks. “The war is not back,” Duha said in her message, “but still we don’t know what will happen.”
Days after the Gaza ceasefire deal in January, Duha had shared photographs and videos of her home with me that she and her family revisited after being displaced countless times. Duha’s bed, desk, and bookshelf matched the rubbled condition of the rest of her home.
This prompted a question—one that I’ve been thinking about a great deal over the last year. How did Duha sleep in such circumstances? How has she been sleeping for the past 17 months?
“The last night I spent in my home, I didn’t sleep at all. Nor did any of my family members,” Duha recalled. “We all said the shahada many times and thought that this night was our last night. The tanks were five minutes away from our house and all kinds of artillery was firing. Then, our journey with displacement started.”
She then reflected on a chilling detail that impacted her sleep: “In November 2023, when the four-day truce started, they banned the noise [of the drones]. I swear I couldn’t sleep without the drones’ noise. Toxic but true.”
…
The sleep crisis knows no boundaries within Palestine. “We aren’t sleeping, no one sleeps in Gaza,” a parent in Gaza told me in November 2023. (Many of the people in this story asked to be kept anonymous.) “One of the 2-year-olds, before he sleeps, says a prayer with his hands up in the air every night, ‘Ya Allah, let us sleep and wake up, and not die.’ From the day we are born until we die, the sound of the drone lives in our ear. We don’t sleep. The bombing keeps us hanging between heaven and earth. When we wake up and have slept, it’s because we haven’t slept in days.”
Why Palestinians Can’t Sleep. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture. For Palestinians, it’s a regular way of life. By Zehra Imam, The Nation, March 17, 2025
Drone Warfare
Using drones to carry out targeted killings has become an integral part of the United States’ ‘war on terror’. Afghanistan in the late 1990s was the laboratory where the US developed armed drones as it searched for a way to deal with Osama bin Laden who was then ordering attacks on American targets from his safe haven in Kandahar. At that time, Washington was uneasy about ordering an assassination, especially one likely to result in civilian casualties. After 9/11, such doubts disappeared and it embraced drones, using them to carry out targeted killings of Islamist militants in many countries. In this first of two dispatches, AAN’s Kate Clark looks at armed drones in Afghanistan.
The project to create armed drones grew out of the need felt by Washington to eliminate the threat posed by bin Laden.
It was the need for accurate, absolutely up-to-date information about the target that drove the development of armed drones. They had already been used for surveillance in the Balkans, but now the decision was taken to increase their range and reliability and to arm them. Shortening the wait between target identification and strike, it was thought, would reduce the possibility of a precise strike with minimum ‘collateral damage’.
Fear of becoming caught up in a drone strike as a result of running livestock, collecting firewood in the mountains or cultivating fields where insurgent groups hide and pass through is economically damaging and encouraging depopulation. Activities that manifest and reinforce important social ties and networks are curtailed by the presence and fear of drones. This includes: providing hospitality to strangers who visit homes and may turn out to be Taliban; gathering to celebrate weddings; observing funerals; discussing the day’s issues at night after subsistence work; and simply moving around the village after dark.
Williams, J. (2015). Distant Intimacy: Space, drones, and just war. Ethics & International Affairs, 29(1), 93-110.
https://doi.org/10.1017/s0892679414000793
In other words, even if drone strikes were successfully targeting Taleban and other combatants, and this was popular among civilians, this was not creating the conditions for anything like a resumption of ‘normal life’. Nor did the killings feel like a victory for those on the ground.
Drone warfare 1: Afghanistan, birthplace of the armed drone by Kate Clark, Afghanistan Analysts Network. Feb 27, 2027
Israeli officials said they had been given a “green light” by President Donald Trump to resume heavy bombing of Gaza
The atrocities committed by drones continue, despite a ceasefire agreement that is supposed to be in place in Gaza. The following story happened today.
The morgue of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on March 18, 2025. Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Editor’s note: Due to the ongoing Israeli attacks, Abubaker Abed relayed his reporting and eyewitness account to Jeremy Scahill by phone and text messages.
DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA—The U.S.-backed Israeli government resumed its intense genocidal attacks on Gaza early Tuesday morning, unleashing a massive wave of indiscriminate military strikes across the Strip and killing more than 410 people, including scores of children and women, according to local health officials. The massacre resulted in one of the largest single-day death tolls of the past 17 months, and also killed several members of Gaza’s government and a member of Hamas’s political bureau. The Trump administration said it was briefed ahead of the strikes, which began at approximately 2 a.m. local time, and that the U.S. fully supports Israel’s attacks.
“The sky was filled with drones, quadcopters, helicopters, F-16 and F-35 warplanes. The firing from the tanks and vehicles didn’t stop,” said Abubaker Abed, a contributing journalist for Drop Site News who reports from Deir al-Balah, Gaza. “I didn’t sleep last night. I had a pang in my heart that something awful would happen. At 2 a.m., I tried to close my eyes. Once it happened, four explosions shook my home. The sky turned red and became heavily shrouded with plumes of smoke.”
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Israeli officials said they had been given a “green light” by President Donald Trump to resume heavy bombing of Gaza because of Hamas’s refusal to obey Trump’s directive to release all Israeli captives immediately. “All those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News. “All hell will break loose.”
Massacre at 2 A.M.: Israel Resumes Indiscriminate Attacks Against Gaza, Killing Over 400 People. Israel says President Donald Trump green lit a scorched-earth bombing of Gaza that wiped out entire families and killed dozens of infants and other children. By Abubaker Abed and Jeremy Scahill, Drop Site, Mar 18, 2025
The genocide is changing all of us into something different- what will each of us become?
Roger Peet
Yesterday I sat in a studio in Jepara, Indonesia, and watched a man carve a hexagonal brick pattern into a teak-wood statue of a figure from Chinese mythology. One jet-lagged morning later I drew up this version and tiled into it the message I can’t stop thinking about. The genocide is changing all of us into something different- what will each of us become?
Artist Roger Peet
unflinching 