I fled Gaza to Australia not by choice but as a matter of survival. How can I be a security risk? | Plestia Alaqad

My life in Gaza was constantly at risk. Had I stayed, there is every chance I would've been one of the 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israel

Where should the birds fly after the last sky?" The poet Mahmoud Darwish asked this decades ago, and every day for the past 10 months, I've been asking myself the same question. How can the world be so vast, yet when it comes to us Palestinians, there isn't enough space for us?

My life in Gaza was constantly at risk, and I could have been targeted and killed at any moment. Had I stayed, there is every chance that I would've been one of the 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israel, of which as many as 17,000 are children, over 11,000 women and 113 journalists like me. A Lancet study even suggests that the Gaza death toll could exceed 186,000.