Gaza by the Sea: Palestine’s Cultural Flagship
Mahmoud Muna is a bookseller and cultural activist in Jerusalem and co-editor of Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture
As I write, it has been a year since Israel launched unparalleled destruction against Gaza, in a war on Palestinian people and Palestinian culture that is in explicit violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. During that time Israel has killed more than 200 cultural figures, including prominent writers, artists, musicians and scholars. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports more than 116 journalists killed. This loss intentionally atomises Gaza’s intellectual and artistic community, exterminating many of the brightest minds that have contributed to the region’s rich cultural fabric.
On the morning of 7 October 2023, in her home in Khan Yunis, the poet Hiba Abu Nada wrote: “We go to sleep thinking about very ordinary things – then suddenly the sound of the alarm changes, Al Jazeera turns red [and] we start to reschedule all our plans. In Gaza, everything changes in an instant.” On 9 October, she wrote: “Where are these fusillades coming from? From our hearts, each bursting from the agony of a Gazan.” The next day, as part of a longer poem, she wrote: “I grant you refuge / from hurt and suffering / in knowing / that the dust will clear, / and they who fell in love and died together / will one day laugh.” On 12 October: “Entire family trees have fallen.” On 15 October: “We are alive until further notice.” On 20 October: “We all wait to learn where we will fall.” A few hours later, an Israeli airstrike on Khan Yunis killed Hiba and her family in their home. She was 32.
Israel’s violence has wreaked havoc on Gaza’s cultural heritage. Two of Gaza’s four museums have been levelled, as well as the city’s ancient harbour dating back to 800 BCE and one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries. Israel has damaged or destroyed at least 195 heritage sites over the last year. It bombed Gaza’s Rashad El Shawa cultural centre to destruction. Samir Mansour’s community bookshop, which was rebuilt by public fundraising in 2021 after previous destruction, has been destroyed again. The library of the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City, established by Sultan Zahir Baybars in 1277 – long after the mosque itself had been founded – once boasted a collection of 20,000 books and manuscripts, including ancient copies of the Quran, biographies of the Prophet Muhammad and works on philosophy, medicine and Sufi mysticism. Now the mosque, and everything in it, lies in ruins following Israel’s bombardment.
Israel’s targeting of institutions and intellectuals is not coincidental. By attempting to eradicate the cultural infrastructure of Gaza, it is seeking to destroy an engine of Palestinian identity and heritage. Gazan poets speak strongly in the Palestinian literary tradition, not least Muin Bseiso, May Sayegh, Kamal Butros Nasser and Mosab Abu Toha, whose verses on love, loss and liberation are memorised by many of today’s younger generations. Refaat Alareer, who taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, and whose 2011 poem ‘If I Must Die’ went viral on social media when he posted it in November 2023, shortly before his death under Israeli bombardment, called himself “a storyteller first and foremost. Even in my teaching I tend to be a storyteller because this is what I learned as a Palestinian from my parents and grandparents – how to tell and retell story, to listen and encourage people.”
Short-story writing has become a prominent literary form in Gaza, since recurring episodes of destructive violence often deny writers the focus necessary to produce long-form works. Writers such as Atef Abu Saif, Asmaa Al-Ghoul and Ahmed Masoud document daily life with vividness and imagination, their intimate stories overturning stereotypical images of Gaza’s bleakness and misery.
“In the photos taken after their death,” wrote Al-Ghoul in 2014, “my family looked so peaceful, with their eyes closed, as if asleep. None of them was disfigured or burned, unlike hundreds of dead children and civilians that US-made weapons had killed before them. We wondered if they died in pain. What happened when the missile, carrying tons of explosives, impacted their modest house and exploded, creating air pressure so fierce that their internal organs burst? Their suffering was perhaps lessened by the fact that they were sleeping.”
The work of artist Ismail Shammout, a pioneer who portrayed Palestinian displacement and struggle on canvas, has inspired a flourishing of Gazan art from the likes of Mohammed Sabaaneh, Taysir Batniji, Shareef Sarhan, Hani Zurob and Nidaa Badwan. The young painter Malak Mattar began creating vivid, deeply emotional art during the 2014 war on Gaza, often depicting the suffering and resilience of Gazan women. She now exhibits around the world. Heba Zagout is another talented artist who mastered painting in vibrant colour to reflect the fullness of life. Sadly, during the first month of the war, she was killed by in Israeli strike on her house alongside her two kids, she was 39 years old.
Theatre continues to be a forum where artists and Gaza’s wider community process issues of social and political concern. It “can be a very important and effective tool for confronting issues around rights, gender-based violence, child abuse and so on – especially since in Gaza there are serious constraints in the public sphere,” says dramatist Ashraf Afifi. The work of groups like Theatre Day Production has expressed the often-unexpressible, and has helped develop actors and directors such as Afifi, Ali Abu Yassin and Naeem Abu Al-Hayja. Through their scripts and scenarios, Gaza’s playwrights continue to tackle themes of survival, resilience and the ongoing struggle for freedom, amplifying the voices of those who live under siege.
Gaza’s cultural influence spreads to the kitchen. Khobbayzeh, a wild herb related to mallow, also known as cheeseweed, grows throughout the Gaza Strip on the fringes of agricultural lands and beside paths and tracks. It is used like spinach or kale, added to salads, boiled in a stew or wilted and seasoned as a side dish. As a food of the poor, cheap, versatile and widely available, it is often underappreciated. But during the winter of 2023–24, under the horrific conditions of Israeli-directed famine, khobbayzeh rescued the starving residents of northern Gaza. Unable to source fruit or vegetables, thousands survived by foraging for wild khobbayzeh. Since then, vendors and greengrocers around Palestine – and beyond – are seeing a surge in demand for the weed from consumers across the class spectrum. Khobbayzeh has become a symbol of solidarity with the survivors of genocide, as well as a way to rediscover overlooked culinary traditions linking Palestinian land with the Palestinian table.
Atef Alshaer, who was born in Rafah and now teaches at the University of Westminster in London, notes the idiosyncracies of Gazan cuisine. “Fish is not such an important part of culinary culture in the West Bank,” he says, “but Gaza has fish dishes that are unique, such as zibdiyit gambari, spicy prawn tagine. Then there’s feseekh, dried, salted and fermented grey mullet. It’s totally Egyptian, eaten nowhere else – except in Gaza at Eid.”
One of Gaza’s most striking recent cultural breakthroughs has been in popular music – and not just in hip-hop, which continues to function as a powerful tool for self-expression, grassroots resistance and social commentary. In 2013 Mohammed Assaf, aged 22 and resident in besieged Gaza, auditioned for Arab Idol, a TV talent show based on Pop Idol and The X Factor. His journey to participate was as incredible as his talent: he faced enormous obstacles simply reaching Egypt to attend the preliminary auditions, eventually having to bribe frontier guards to let him leave Gaza and cross the border. After two days on the road he arrived in Cairo after the deadline for acceptance, but at the last minute a fellow contestant who had heard him sing backstage dropped out and gave Assaf his spot.
After three rounds of auditions and ten heats on stage in front of cameras and judges, singing songs of love and home, loss and hope, Assaf was crowned the series winner, sparking celebrations among Palestinians worldwide. His victory was seen as a triumph not only for his talent but for the Gazan spirit, refusing to be controlled and caged, aspiring for freedom and success. Assaf continues to perform today and has been named a goodwill ambassador for peace by the United Nations – though the Israeli authorities now bar him from returning to Gaza.
For over 77 years, the Palestinian people have experienced physical displacement from their historical homeland. Those few million who managed to remain within the borders of historic Palestine have been subjected to brutal military occupation, campaign after campaign of dehumanisation, deprivation of political rights and social fragmentation under intrusive systems of technological and bureaucratic surveillance and control.
Since its formation in 1948, the Israeli state has assassinated writers and artists, looted the homes and libraries of scholars, shut down festivals and cultural institutions, banned books and restricted cultural exchanges with Arab countries, arrested journalists and bombed places of study and worship. In 2018 Israel enacted a basic law that downgraded the Arabic language – spoken by 51% of the people living within its self-declared borders – from official status to merely “special”. In May this year, the Israeli government barred the Al Jazeera media network from reporting in Israel – and then, on 22 September, Israeli soldiers forced their way into Al Jazeera’s Ramallah offices and barred it from reporting in the West Bank as well.
Nevertheless, the cultural aspect of the Palestinian genocide – Israel’s “culturcide” – continues to fail. Having survived decades of brutality, the Palestinian people embrace their cultural identity as a source of unity, expressing nationhood, heritage and a connection to the land and its resources. Palestinian cultural production as a form of resistance is rooted in the works of the writer Ghassan Kanafani, influenced by Fanon. Kanafani argued for an “engaged intellectual”, whose creativity cannot be separated from the national consciousness. His famous short story Letter from Gaza, written in 1956, movingly captures the intellectual tussle between individual advancement and the revolutionary commitment to culture and nation.
“No, my friend, I won’t come to [America], and I’ve no regrets,” writes Kanafani’s protagonist in Letter from Gaza. “But you, return to us! Come back [to Gaza], to learn … what life is and what existence is worth. Come back, my friend! We are all waiting for you.”
The Israeli authorities, inevitably, viewed Kanafani as a threat, and eventually assassinated him in Beirut, blowing up the writer, aged 36, and his 17-year-old niece Lamees in a car bomb in 1972. But Kanafani’s ideas, of course, outlived him and continue to mark an important departure point for Palestinian cultural figures across many disciplines.
As part of a team of editors working with the progressive publisher Saqi in London, I am proud to have been able to include Kanafani’s work – and the work of many of the writers, poets and artists mentioned in this piece – in a new book. Daybreak in Gaza serves to celebrate and preserve Gazan culture and society, past and present. It extends Palestine’s long track record of self-narration and rejection of submission, rising above the rubble to demand justice, accountability and freedom. It nullifies Israel’s culturcide.
*title image credit: a man behind barbed wire at Al-Shati Camp, Gaza, 1940s-50s. Photo: Hrant Nakashian
The opinions expressed are those of the contributor, not of the RSAA.
Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture
This book is a record of an extraordinary place and people, and of a culture preserved by the people themselves. Vignettes of artists, acrobats, doctors, students, shopkeepers and teachers offer stories of love, life, loss and survival. They display the wealth of Gaza’s cultural landscape and the breadth of its history. Daybreak in Gaza humanises the people dismissed as statistics. It stands as a mark of resistance to the destruction and as a testament to the people of Gaza.
