Palestinians look to salvage Gaza’s history amid ruins of war
In Gaza City, residents and heritage workers are confronting a new kind of loss as they inspect damage left by Israel’s military offensive against Hamas—seeking to preserve what they can of religious and cultural landmarks that have anchored Palestinian identity for centuries.
Muneer Elbaz, a Palestinian heritage consultant involved with recovery work at the Great Omari Mosque, recalled visiting the site with his family before the war. “These were the best days,” Elbaz said, as he remembered walking through markets around the mosque and praying at a place he described as connecting worshippers “from one era to another.” Today, he said, much of the mosque stands in ruins, a result he linked to Israeli strikes during the two-year war that continued amid an uncertain ceasefire.
Elbaz described the rubble as disorienting, likening it to “a tree that had been uprooted from the land.” He said that, for many Palestinians, the physical collapse of such structures carries a deeper meaning than damage to stone and mortar—because the sites connect communities to a shared past and ongoing cultural continuity. He and other workers have been focusing on recovery and on preventing further deterioration even as restoration and broader reconstruction remain heavily constrained.
The scale of the conflict has reshaped what communities can attempt to rebuild. The Israeli offensive has killed “over 72,000” Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has erased entire extended families, according to the same account. With major military operations largely halted, Palestinians have been gaining a clearer picture of what strikes destroyed across the enclave, including at historic places that predate the modern state.
Multiple bodies have sought to document the damage. The U.N. cultural agency, in an ongoing assessment based on satellite images, said it has verified damage to at least 150 sites since the war began, including 14 religious sites, 115 buildings of historical or artistic interest, nine monuments and eight archaeological sites. The assessments, as described in the report, have also placed the conflict’s cultural toll into sharper relief: heritage sites that once stood for layers of history now appear fragmented amid ongoing recovery efforts.
At some locations, the Israeli military’s account of targeting has been met with disputes over what was hit and why. In the case of the Omari mosque, the Israeli military said its forces struck “a Hamas military compound and an anti-tank missile array” and also hit “a terror tunnel” at the site, without providing evidence for those claims in the report. Amir Abu al-Omrain, an official with Gaza’s endowments ministry and part of the Hamas-run government, denied the allegation about the mosque, according to the same account.
An independent commission established by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council said it was not aware of evidence of a tunnel shaft in the mosque. The commission also said that even if a “legitimate military objective … would [have] justified the resulting damage,” that justification would not have applied to the damage that occurred, the report said. The Israeli military has previously accused the commission of bias.
Elsewhere in Gaza, the damage has extended beyond Islamic heritage to Christian and other sites. The Saint Porphyrius Orthodox church complex, which had been sheltering displaced Palestinians, was hit in an Israeli attack early in the war, causing deaths and injuries, the report said. The Israeli military said it targeted a nearby Hamas command center; UNESCO said the church complex was moderately damaged. UNESCO, the report noted, said it does not have a mandate to assign responsibility for the damage it assesses.
Some sites appear to have been spared, underscoring uneven destruction. UNESCO said it has found no evidence of damage at the Saint Hilarion Monastery dating to the 4th century. Under international law, cultural property should not be targeted or used for military purposes, and the Israeli military has said it takes sensitivity around cultural and religious sites into account, aims to minimize damage to civilian infrastructure, and adheres to international law.
For those working on the ground, the task has included not only documenting damage but trying to stabilize what remains and secure artifacts that can be found. The center for cultural heritage preservation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank said it was doing urgent rescue work at the badly damaged Pasha Palace, which housed centuries-old artifacts that, the report said, appeared to have been looted. Hamouda al-Dohdar, an expert working at the site, said missing items included an Ottoman-era Quranic manuscript, jewelry from the medieval Mamluk era and a Roman-era sarcophagus from which only some fragments had been recovered.
The mosque’s long history has made its destruction a particular point of grief. The Omari mosque—named for Islam’s second caliph—was initially built in the seventh century, and later, the report said, Crusaders converted it into a cathedral before it returned to being a mosque after they were expelled. Stephennie Mulder, an associate professor of Islamic art at the University of Texas at Austin, said the mosque was damaged during World War I when the British shelled Gaza in their campaign against the Ottoman Turks, and was later rebuilt. Mulder said in the report that, for many Gazans, the Omari mosque stood as a symbol of “multiplicity, resilience and persistence,” and that “The building itself told the story of Gaza’s past as a crossroads of trade, armies, empires, and religious traditions.”
As people assess whether and how the structure could be rebuilt, religious calendars have begun to sharpen the emotional impact. Workers have been filling wheelbarrows near a damaged minaret in recent days, and the report said some Palestinians anticipate Ramadan prayers at the site with a large tented structure erected for the occasion. Hosni Almazloum, an engineer working at the site, said the mosque’s prayer hall ceiling had collapsed and columns had crumbled, and that it could be rebuilt if construction supplies are allowed in; for now, teams have been focused on recovery, sifting through stones and storing them.
Even as a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted most fighting in October, the report said it offers no timeline for Gaza’s reconstruction. It also pointed to additional barriers, including the blockade imposed when Hamas seized power in 2007, limitations on reconstruction supplies and ongoing obstacles such as neglect of some sites before the war. Hamas-run authorities, according to the report, have also leveled parts of what archaeologists believe was a Bronze Age settlement to make way for construction projects.
For Elbaz and others, the work comes amid personal grief and a sense that heritage loss is occurring alongside everyday survival. Elbaz said that before the ceasefire, “grief was a luxury he couldn’t afford,” and he asked, “What would you begin to cry over?” as he weighed crying for “the historic mosques” against crying for home, history, children’s schools or streets. Now, he said, he sometimes weeps away from his children as he processes what the war has taken. “Gaza is our mother,” Elbaz said. “We have memories everywhere — in this tree, this flower, this garden and this mosque. Yes, we cry over every part of Gaza.”