Witnessing Genocide under Forced Displacement: Palestinian Refugee Women and Gaza on Screen

This paper explores how Palestinian refugee women in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan experience the Gaza genocide through mediated witnessing while living under forced displacement. Drawing on narratives from in-depth interviews and focus group discussion it examines how women encounter bombardment, destruction and death via television, social media and phones. Far from detached observers women describe profound emotional, moral, and political responses including the intergenerational impact on children experiencing the Nakba visually for the first time. The analysis shows that witnessing collapses spatial and temporal distance between Gaza and the camps, activates historical memory and revives Palestinian political consciousness. By foregrounding refugee women’s perspectives the paper argues that witnessing is embodied, relational and a site of political theorisation revealing how displacement, memory, and media intersect in the formation of survival strategies and collective identity.