This post was originally intended for Valentine’s Day, as a reminder to a world celebrating love that love also exists in Gaza.
The idea began as a plan to share a glimpse of Gaza before the war, during Valentine’s Day, when gift shops celebrate the occasion despite the city’s conservative nature and the presence of “Khamas”.
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| The "Love" heart cushion survives after all in a destroyed house in Gaza by Duaa Tuaima |
I then decided to share the pleas of those lovers who lost their significant others in the war.
Last week, photos and videos have emerged of a young couple who married while living in a displacement, offering a glimmer of hope and changing the course of this post yet again.
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| Palestinian newlywed Shaima Qazeet and Mahmoud Akhiziq inside a Deir Al-Balah displacement camp by photographer Majdi Fathi |
Their names are Mahmoud and Shaima.They were engaged and had already conducted a marriage contract ceremony before October.
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| Palestinian newlywed Shaima Qazeet and Mahmoud Akhiziq celebrated their wedding at Deir El-Balah displacement camp by photographer Majdi Fathi |
They were supposed to hold the wedding ceremony in November, but they postponed the wedding for reasons that are apparent to everyone.
They held their wedding on 16 February, two days after the Valentine's.
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| Palestinian newlywed Shaima Qazeet and Mahmoud Akhiziq celebrated their wedding at a Deir El-Balah displacement camp by photographer Majdi Fathi |
After weeks of waiting, they decided to have their wedding at the displacement camp in Central Gaza, bringing a moment of joy to everyone there.
The attire you see is the traditional wedding dress in Gaza, and yes, it is customary for the bride to cover her face during the wedding.
May Mahmoud and Shaima spend the rest of their life happily ever after regardless of what inshallah.
In a sad twist of event, Mahmoud and Shaima were victims of a mix-up with another newlywed couple who married who on the same day and lived as a husband and a wife only for two days.
Newly married couple Abdullah Abu Nahl and Maryam El-Said Diab married on 16 February too.
The newly wedded couple were staying at the Abu Nahl and found a refuge at a rest house at a Rafah beach. Only it was not safe because, since the start of this week, the Israeli navy has been shelling the displacement camps set at Rafah beaches.
Maryam and Abdullah were killed.
According to Maryam’s father, she was a university student. An A-junior student at the Islamic University, she was really a good daughter according to her grieving father.
The poor man is devastated.
Due to the confusion, Mahmoud and Shaima had to appear in a video to clear up the mix-up.
Mahmoud says that those three days were actually the best three days in his life.
Surprisingly when I did a little search, I found out that Mahmoud and Shaimaa were not the first to hold their wedding ceremony inside a displacement camp.
In January, Reuters reported the story of Mohamed al-Ghandour and his bride Shahad who married in a tent also in a Rafah displacement Camp.
From North Gaza, the homes of both Mohamed and Shahad were destroyed in Israeli airstrikes.
Again, may Mohamed and Shahad spend the rest of their life happily ever after regardless of what inshallah.
The weddings of these two couples serve as a brief break amidst the unending funerals of couples, husbands, and wives throughout the strip, from its north to its south.
This year, Palestinians in Gaza did not celebrate Valentine’s Day as they were merely trying to survive.They are grappling with the Israeli army, a famine imposed by the Israeli army, and a lack of health services, also due to the Israeli army.
Despite these hardships, love still finds its way as we have seen above.
However, with more than 22,000 Palestinians killed, many mourn the loss of their significant other.
Like this lady, who is a teacher who lost her husband. I do not know her exact name but she was living in Jabalia refugee camp.
I know she is a teacher who loved her husband so much and her husband loved her more than her parents.
He told her so on the same day he was killed.
Her husband went to get flour so she could make bread for the family at the start of the food crisis, only to be killed by the Israeli army.
The couple had already lost their house which they worked to build for 16 years. Yet, this woman does not want her house back. She wants her husband back.
This lady said that her husband to take her on the first day of the year and celebrate it at the beach in Gaza along with their children.
It was their special tradition.
According to photographer Tareq Al-Deqes who filmed this video, the woman refused to wash her husband's clothes because they had his smell.
I pray for the safety of this lady who has to be now a mother and father for her children. The widow who becomes a mother and a father to her children is another long-known feature of the Palestinian society since the Nakba.
In December, videographer Mahmoud Bassam filmed that young widow mourning and begging her husband Mohammed to get up. They promised that they would die together but he went first.
I do not know how she feels now or even if she is alive but she lost her husband and her children in an Israeli strike in Rafah.
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| The widow looks to her husband in a way I can't describe it easily in Rafah by photographer Mahmoud Bassam |
The video and photo are from those scenes that you can’t forget.
Days earlier then, photojournalist Belal Khaled photographed this young widow mourning her husband as she was having one last look before burial while carrying his shoes tightly
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| The little widow survived but her husband did not in December in Khan Younes By Belal Khaled |
Her husband, to whom she had been married for only six months, was killed in the Israeli shelling in Khan Younes.
“Six months before the war, we got married and we were dreaming of having a child who would be beautiful and look like him. We lived in a simple house, but we felt like it was a palace in paradise." She rememberred.
“When the war started, they were displaced from Gaza City to
Khan Yunis, which the occupation claimed would be a safe area,” she told
Khaled.
“The occupation destroyed all the dreams we shared.” She said speaking on behalf of many Palestinians since 1948.
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| Holding his shoes too tight close to her heart By Belal Khaled |
“The only memory I have left of him is these shoes, which will stay with me until my last breath,” she added.
Belal Khaled also filmed that young widow saying goodbye to her husband in Khan Younes.
Too many photos and moments captured like this to be recounted.
When it comes to love and Valentine in Gaza, I remember Al-Jazeera veteran correspondent and Gaza bureau Chief Wael Dahdouh and his late wife Amna aka Um Hamza.
From three months ago Al-Jazeera Arabic released unseen footage of Dahdouh and his family.
That unseen footage showed a tender rare beautiful moment when Dahdouh called on the mobile phone his wife after days of working in the field covering another Israeli mini-war in Gaza in May and she answered the call with simple words “Oh, my love” with a true loving voice.
The big man whose name means in Arabic “mount” suddenly blushed as he closed the speaker in front of the documentary team’s camera. “hey, take care, I had the speaker open and we are on air” He said trying to be serious as much as he could. That little moment was full of true love.
Amna and Wael Dahdouh had 8 children. The eldest was Hamza and the youngest was Sham.
Amna and her children 15 years old Mahmoud and 6 years old Sham as well as her grandson Adam were killed on 25 October along with 21 others of their family.
They stayed at the Nuseirat refugee Camp in Gaza per the directives of the Israeli army for alleged safety. The Nuseirat Refugee Camp is still shelled by Israel and civilians above them
Dahdouh was on air filming when he found his daughter Kholoud calling screaming that they targeted their house. I remember that day because I watched the whole unforgettable ordeals.
It was right after he covered of the Israeli shelling of the Baptist Hospital days earlier. It was the beginning of the direct targeting of not only Palestinian journalists but also Al-Jazeera journalists in particular Wael Dahdouh.
On 15 December, Dahdouh survived Israeli shelling yet his Palestinian Belgian veteran cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.
Dahdouh was injured severely in his hand yet he continued to work. He even worked after when his eldest son, 27-year-old Hamza who was also a journalist and a camera operator was killed on 7 January.
Here is Hamza mourning his mom Amna Dahdouh on her birthday on 30 November telling her that he missed her so much and that he was wondering when they would meet again. They did meet after 38 days I believe.
Hamza Dahdouh and his friend Mostafa Thurya, a freelance drone video journalist, were both killed by an Israeli missile in a direct targeting while in their car in Khan Younes. The two young men were heading to cover the Israeli shelling of another school turned into a shelter in the city.
The young widow of Mostafa Thurya broke down when she came to collect his stuff from the journalists tent where he was staying at Nasser hospital in Khan Younes.
Wael Dahdouh kept working till his last dispatch to Al Jazeera from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes on 15 January early morning before crossing the Rafah border crossing and then heading to Doha for treatment. Four of his children have already joined him in the Gulf state.
“It was hard to see your wife, your life partner lying unrecognizable with no features, it was intolerable pain,” He said to AJ+ Plus before leaving for Egypt.
The veteran reporter who became a symbol of resilience said that he would carry the pain of losing his family till the end of his life.
From a couple of days ago, Hamza Dahdouh’s wife Wafaa published on Instagram a prayer mourning her young husband.
I can’t forget the story of 24-year-old Hadeel Abu Sada. She and her family were tragically killed in their home during an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia Refugee Camp on October 16.
Heartbreakingly, this was to be the day of her wedding, which has now been indefinitely postponed. Hadeel and most of her family met their end in the same place where her father was killed by Israeli army shelling back in 2007.
Now here is how the Palestinians in Gaza celebrated Valentine's in the past and yes it is a commercial day. Most of the photos were taken by veteran Gaza photographer Majdi Fathi who photographed and filmed the couple who got married this Valentine's in a displacement camp.
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| A Palestinian sitting with his wife On the Mediterranean Sea coast in Gaza on Valentine's day 14, 2016. Photo by Majdi Fathi |
Many won’t believe but Palestinians in Gaza under the rule of Hamas used to celebrate it.
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| A couple pass by a souvenir shop on Valentine's Day in Gaza on February 14, 2018 by Majdi Fathi |
It was a big day for gift shops and flower shops despite the blockade that suffocated the strip for more than a decade.
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| Palestinian couple standing in front of Valentine's decoration outside a gift shop in Gaza on February 13 , 2021 by Majdi Fathi |
And yes there were Salafists, not from Hamas who harassed the Gift shops on that day, but that did not stop them from celebrating it annually because it is a season, and it had their clients that grew every year.
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| A Niqabi shopkeeper preparing those cliche Valentine's "You and I" gifts at a flower shop in Gaza on February 13,2018 by Majdi Fathi |
Now after nearly five months of war, I do not think that there are any gift shops left in Gaza nor there are florists or flower nurseries like in the past in Beit Lahia of North Gaza or in Rafah in the South that reached its peak in the 1990s.
In past before the Israeli siege, Gaza used to export 60 million flowers to Europe as there were more than 100 flower nurseries over 100 thousand dunums. Yet after the siege and with each war launched by Israel, the farmers turned their flower nurseries into food corps.
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| A Palestinian farmer picks flowers in a farm on Valentine's Day in in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip in 2022 by Majdi Fathi |
In 2023, the total area of flower nurseries in the strip before 7 October reached 335 dunums only in Rafah, Khan Younes and Beit Lahia.
Here is also a report from China’s Xinhua news agency about the Valetine in 2019.
You must know that despite all the photos and videos filmed by Palestinians in Gaza showing them enjoying every moment in the strip, it was under huge siege.
That siege made Gaza like a big open prison. The Palestinians made the impossible to adapt and survive in that big open prison in every possible way.
Now I will end this post with this old photo and new video.
The old photo
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| A Palestinian couple sits by the sea on Valentine's Day in Gaza City on February 14, 2017. by Mahmud Hams |
I'm pleased they found a space for their own; this is Gaza, the city of love and war💙 pic.twitter.com/rtsNUGgIzj
— Ahmed El-Madhoun (@madhoun95) February 19, 2024
There is always hope.
Hello Zeinobia. Have you ever thought about renaming this site into “Gaza Chronicles”?
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