There is something profound about the sight of plants growing among the rubble, or people carefully cultivating them around their tents.

To someone passing by, it may seem like an ordinary sight: a plant growing in an old container, a seedling finding its way through a small patch of soil between stones, or a green branch struggling to survive beside a tent battered by wind and rain. Yet, in truth, this is about much more than gardening.

It is an expression of the human spirit refusing to become like the destruction surrounding it.

I came home from school exhausted after a long day. We spend hours sitting on the floor because there are no chairs or desks in our classrooms. All I wanted was to return to the place where I sleep and rest for a little while. But what awaited me was far worse than I had imagined.

I found my mother and father carrying buckets of sewage water and emptying them outside the place where we live. The water had flooded the space, and its foul smell filled the air.

I looked at the place where I sleep and felt deeply discouraged and broken. I had already used up all my energy at school, but I couldn't just stand by and watch my parents face this problem alone.

This is a new image documenting what happened to Mohammed Al-Bayouk, who, several days ago, received a phone call from an Israeli army officer while inside a school in Khan Younis. He was given no more than two minutes to choose: leave the school and be targeted and killed alone, or have the entire school bombed with his family inside. Faced with this threat, Mohammed went up to the school roof alone, where he was struck by a missile and killed instantly. 💔

During one of the bombing campaigns, a building collapsed on a man, burying him beneath the rubble. Only his head and one hand remained visible. The area was close to the Yellow Line, and no one was able to reach him or rescue him. Two days later, a Civil Defence team managed to reach him despite the ongoing bombardment. They attempted to rescue him, but came under intense fire themselves. While he remained trapped beneath the rubble, rodents had gnawed at his hand, causing gangrene. The team was forced to amputate it there, in an attempt to prevent the infection from spreading further. The rescuers promised him they would return to pull him out as soon as the bombing stopped. Forty-five days passed. The bombardment in the area never stopped. The man remained trapped beneath the rubble, waiting for a moment of calm that might give him another chance at life.

These three years have been deeply etched into our memories, and they will leave their mark on our future as well. Three long years have passed over us like an entire lifetime; years in which we never imagined, at the beginning, that we would have to learn what survival meant day by day, or that simply staying alive would itself become a form of resistance. 🕯️

On October 7, I did not know that this day would divide my life into everything that came before it and everything that came after. I did not know that the simple things I once thought were ordinary — our home, our beds, the road to school, my mother's voice calling us, a cold glass of water, a quiet night — would one day become things I longed for, the way a person longs for a homeland they never chose to leave. 🏠💔

Since that day, the meaning of place has changed. A home was no longer simply walls, and a bag was no longer just a bag. Each of us began carrying a home inside our memory, carrying with us whatever we could save from a life that had once seemed so ordinary. 🧳🏚️