Time, waiting, and the politics of delay in Gaza during genocide

Abstract This study examines how war reorganizes temporal experience through the politics of waiting, delay, and suspended life in the Gaza Strip, Palestine. Drawing on a qualitative, interpretive design grounded in decolonial feminist and critical temporal perspectives, the study explores how civilians living under conditions of continuous violence experience and make sense of time in their everyday lives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted between September 2024 and March 2025 with thirty displaced participants residing in internally displaced settings across Gaza during the ongoing genocidal campaign following October 2023. The findings reveal that time in Gaza is not experienced as linear or progressive, but as fragmented, suspended, and increasingly detached from future orientation. Six interrelated themes were identified: (1) time as suspended life, (2) waiting for death rather than rescue, (3) waiting as a mechanism of control and exhaustion, (4) time measured through loss, (5) the collapse of the future into an endless present, and (6) temporal fatigue and hopelessness associated with prolonged, unresolved waiting. Across these themes, waiting emerges not as a passive interval but as a structured and politically mediated condition that shapes emotional, psychological, and social life. The study argues that temporality itself operates as a dimension of power in contexts of protracted conflict, where the regulation of delay, uncertainty, and interruption contributes to the governance of civilian populations. By integrating insights from necropolitical theory, decolonial feminism, and critical psychology, the study reframes waiting as a central modality of violence rather than a byproduct of crisis. The findings contribute to interdisciplinary debates on war, temporality, and mental health, highlighting the need for analytical frameworks that account for the lived experience of time under conditions of sustained structural violence.