From journal entries by Maram Humaid, an AlJazeera.com journalist in Gaza, written during the first week of the Israel–Hamas war.

OCTOBER 9

I’m the mother of two children, one of them a two-month-old baby. As confusion filled my mind, I started putting my children’s clothes into a bag along with our IDs and passports, a routine I’ve developed during military escalations. Following a brief, tense discussion with my husband, we decided to evacuate to my parents’ home, which is in a safer area of Gaza. Outside on the street, we saw neighbors with luggage also heading to safer places.

I…