Amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Palestinians with hearing impairments have been left particularly vulnerable, unable to hear incoming missiles or evacuation orders. Fadl Kuraz is one of the few who have devoted their lives to helping them survive.
As Israel continues to prevent the entry of reconstruction materials into Gaza, Palestinians rebuild their homes with salvaged rebar, recovered limestone, and clay. “This is the evidence of our love for our land,” Fayez Abu Shamala tells Mondoweiss.
As Israeli strikes leveled museums and 5,000-year-old sites across Gaza, volunteers dug through the rubble by hand to save what they could. Meanwhile, looted artifacts quietly resurfaced in a Paris exhibition.
Israel regards any kite flown in Gaza as an “act of war” and has ordered the army to treat them like drones. “I don’t know what we can do that won’t anger Israel,” says Muhammad Owais, 13, who struggles to understand the rules of this new reality.
Children in Gaza used to aspire to become doctors or teachers, but today their dreams revolve around running a community kitchen, handing out aid, or leading a shelter. Yet even though the genocide rewrote their ambitions, it couldn’t erase them.
In Gaza’s displacement camps, survival has bred a new economy: a gym owner forges weights from empty cans, a supermarket owner turns baker, a housewife becomes a street vendor — each person rebuilding a livelihood from the wreckage of genocide.
With reconstruction stalled in Gaza, boys as young as 14 are clearing the wreckage of destroyed homes by hand for as little as $10 a day. Often they are the breadwinners for their families and are forced to abandon their studies to work for survival.
Nearly three years after a November 2023 Israeli airstrike buried them in the rubble, Gaza families recovered 112 of their dead and laid them to rest, including a mother still embracing her three children.
An Israeli strike destroyed two major medicine warehouses in Deir al-Balah, the latest Israeli attack on Gaza’s failing health system. Gaza’s Health Ministry says medicine shortages are now killing three cancer patients a day.
Hours after Donald Trump announced a “historic” agreement for disarming Hamas and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Israel attacked Gaza, killing 19. Palestinians weren’t surprised. “We don’t trust Israel, and we don’t trust America,” said one resident.