Young Palestinian artists from Gaza organized an impromptu exhibition on Tuesday, seeking another way to show the world what happened during the war and the fragile ceasefire.
The series of paintings, depicting much of life in the Gaza Strip, was displayed outdoors, at the mercy of the weather and curious onlookers. They featured a dove, a bullet impact, the silhouette of a person, in a territory where the war between Israel and Hamas has claimed over 70,000 lives.
The sunny day in Bureij, central Gaza, saw children playing and shouting while art enthusiasts took photos of the paintings, reflecting on their meaning.
“They painted their feelings, ambitions, hopes, and visions as part of a continuous four-month exercise in my studio,” stated Ghanem Al-Din, who organized the exhibition of dozens of paintings.
Obay Al-Qarshali, 21, was one of the artists. He recounted fleeing his home in Gaza City at the end of 2023 after the start of the war triggered by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7. He left behind over 30 of his paintings, lost under bombs and rubble.
His exhibited canvas depicted shattered glass, cars covered with mattresses and other personal belongings, and building debris. All of this was too familiar to him and the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, often forced to move more than once.
Obay Al-Qarshali explained changing location at least seven times during the war.
“Because of all these displacements and the sufferings experienced while navigating and carrying our belongings, tents, through the crowd, and many other things, I wanted to express something that deeply troubled me: the fact that we left our homes and places of security, forced to flee, disperse, and change location. This work speaks volumes,” he declared.
The timeline for the next steps of the Gaza ceasefire remains uncertain. Hamas’s disarmament poses a major challenge before the transition to a new governance, territorial stabilization, and reconstruction can truly begin.
Reconstruction is estimated to cost over $70 billion and will take a decade, according to a report released last week by the United Nations and the European Union.
The report notes that Gaza’s economy contracted by 84%. Over 371,000 homes were destroyed, and more than half of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip are “out of service.” Nearly all schools are destroyed or damaged in this territory of over 2 million inhabitants.
While large-scale fighting has subsided since the ceasefire took effect in October, Israeli forces have continued almost daily strikes and shootings around army-controlled areas, killing over 800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed records of the victims, deemed generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts. It does not provide a breakdown between civilians and combatants.
An Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle in Gaza on Tuesday, killing four men, according to Shifa Hospital.
The strike occurred far from the “yellow line” separating Israeli-controlled areas from the rest of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army stated they targeted a “terrorist” at that location without providing further details.
The bodies were wrapped in white fabric and laid on the ground outside for the crowd to pay their respects.
The Associated Press
