In the heart of the Gaza Strip, along Salah al-Din Road crowded with displaced people, the small wooden cart swayed under the weight of their few belongings, while their faces bore features that had not known rest for a long time. And despite the exhaustion of long days and the pain of harsh displacement, their faces carried something like a smile—a smile not born of joy, but of a pride that refuses to break.

“Owners of the Land” They sat on the edge of the cart, their gazes falling on the destruction stretching around them, yet their eyes had not lost the spark of hope… The mother, cradling her youngest, lifted her head as if to tell the world: “We are not victims, we are the owners of the land.” Meanwhile, the father gripped the cart’s ropes firmly, defying the winds of aggression that sought to uproot whatever remained for them.

The road was long, and the sky was heavy with the smoke of bombardment, yet their hushed conversations revolved around the homes they would return to, and the olive trees that would once again grow in their yards. Amid oppression, they wove the dream of return with threads of faith and patience, as though planting trees in a barren wasteland, certain they would one day turn green.

A Silent Message Every smile that appeared on their lips was a silent message, saying that oppression could never extinguish the spark of belonging. They did not raise white flags, but instead lifted their faces toward the sun, believing that light would conquer darkness, no matter how long it lingered. Their resilience was not a slogan, but an action they lived in every step along this desolate road.

And so, between the rumble of wooden wheels and the footsteps of the weary, the scene became a portrait of both pain and dignity. These displaced people did not only leave their homes—they carried with them their pain and their dreams, determined to remain standing before history with open chests, smiling in the face of an ordeal that sought to extinguish them, but could not.