When you watch videos coming out of Gaza, you can almost always hear a buzzing sound in the background. This sound has been keeping Gazans under constant anxious state for almost 20 years.
The sound you hear comes from surveillance aircrafts that roam the skies of Gaza with three main purposes: specific strikes, guiding missiles and the obvious, tracking every move of the people in Gaza.
People call it الزنّانة (zannana) which is attributed to the sound it makes that is similar to the buzzing noise of mosquitoes.
The use of the Zannana by Israel has been ongoing for many years leading up to the current aggression and it is constantly going for 24 hours of the day nonstop. People have always reported suffering from insomnia, being anxious all the time because of the ongoing noise, inability to study and focus and a complete loss of privacy and feeling of safety. It has a foreboding effect on people given its historical use in Gaza.
Israel uses this surveillance aircraft to gather information and determine targets, while placing the people of Gaza in a constant state of distress. This is of course just another piece of Israel’s ongoing psychological war that it imposes on Palestinians every day of their lives.
When you know you’re being watched by an aircraft that has resulted in killing over 2000 people between the years 2000-2022 in Gaza, imagine the constant state of horror you’ll be experiencing on a daily basis as it buzzes around you while you make your breakfast, go to school, or even try to go to sleep.
