Gaza’s people continue their lives despite their hardship. Patience and faith are two sources of strength for the people of Gaza.

Amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City, Gazans do not stop at the limits of loss alone; rather, they create a full life out of narrow spaces. A five-a-side football match is played on top of the debris, and laughter rises between walls of which only shards remain, in a simple human scene that speaks volumes about a people who refuse to be reduced to an image of destruction alone.

Gazans know that the truce, no matter how many promises it carries, does not mean the end of fear, nor does it put an end to anxiety about the return of shelling at any moment. Yet they greet every morning as if it were a new opportunity to hold on to life and to prove that the human spirit is not easily defeated, even as accusations are exchanged and the land remains weighed down by wounds.

Play as a message

In Gaza, play turns into a message, and standing on one’s feet atop the rubble becomes an act of silent resistance. The children and young men who run after a small ball amid the devastation are not fleeing reality; they are confronting it in their own way, affirming that the right to joy does not fall away, even in the harshest circumstances.

The patience of Gazans is not a passive waiting for salvation, but rather an astonishing ability to rearrange life all over again, no matter how broken its features may become. From the dust, hope is born in the form of a smile, a goal being scored, or a fleeting moment of warmth that restores to hearts a sense of belonging to life.

In this way, Gazans teach the world a lesson that is not written in books: that human beings are capable of protecting their dreams no matter how narrow the space around them becomes, and that hope is not a luxury, but a necessity for survival. In Gaza, among the rubble, life still insists on being lived.