Artists hope to preserve and rebuild Gaza's cultural heritage

Transcript

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Nick Schifrin: Finally from us: a culture at risk.

Gaza has suffered through catastrophic war since the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel. It has been a war that has severely damaged or destroyed much of a rich artistic history.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown looks at the loss, but also the hope that the arts could create a better future. It’s part of our arts and series culture, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: A tapestry of color and coastline, old city markets and ancient monuments, a place layered with more than 5,000 years of history.

For the outside world, Gaza was known as a conflict zone, besieged for 16 years even before the war. But it was also filled with life, both everyday and extraordinary. Now much of it looks apocalyptic. According to the U.N., nearly two years of Israeli bombardment has destroyed 90 percent of its built environment, its infrastructure, residential buildings.

And as of November 2025, UNESCO has verified damage to 145 historical, religious and archaeological sites. Palestinian officials say the actual number is much higher.

Mahmoud Hawari, Palestinian Archaeologist (through interpreter): Gaza is not just a place of war and conflict. It is a place where cultural heritage has flourished for thousands of years.

Jeffrey Brown: Mahmoud Hawari is a professor of archaeology who teaches at several Palestinian universities and has spent decades studying Gaza’s ancient past. He said the destruction is not just a humanitarian catastrophe, but an erasure of civilization’s memory.

Mahmoud Hawari: This is a huge loss not only for the people of Gaza, but also for humanity, because these buildings and this history of Gaza belonging to human history and the human contribution to civilization as a whole.

Jeffrey Brown: From Bronze Age artifacts to Byzantine churches, Gaza’s archaeological richness embodies the sweep of Mediterranean history.

Mahmoud Hawari: In the last 2,000 years, it was an important port on the Mediterranean that brought merchandise from the East to the West. For example, the Roman Empire needed incense and spices that came from India through Arabia and into the port of Gaza and to the rest of the Mediterranean.

In the Byzantine times, it was a learning center for Christianity. In the Islamic times, also it was a flourishing center of culture and learning. And the buildings and the archaeological sites in Gaza testified to these facts.

Jeffrey Brown: Among the lost treasures, the ancient ports of Anthedon dating back 1,000 years, sixth century churches in Jabalia in Central Gaza. The 1,600-year-old Church of st. Porphyrius was thought to be the world’s third oldest church. An Israeli strike in the first few weeks of the war destroyed it.

The seventh century Great Omari Mosque, a crusader church turned early Islamic mosque with its towering minaret and marble columns now in ruins. The 14th century Hamam al-Sammara, an Ottoman era bath house noted for its arched ceilings, marble floors and heated systems, now a pile of rocks.

The Khan Yunis Caravanserai, a medieval gathering hub for merchants from around the world, reduced to rubble. And the Pasha Palace in Gaza City, first built in the mid-13th century, a seat of power during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. Today, it’s a shell of its past glory, a historic structure reduced to rubble.

It used to serve as a museum of history in Gaza and housed thousands of rare artifacts. Now local archaeologists are undertaking the impossible task of recovery. They told the “News Hour” that so far, out of 17,000 precious artifacts, just 20 have been found in the rubble.

Hamouda Al-Dahdar, General Director, Pasha Palace Restoration Project (through interpreter): Most of the artifacts were bulldozed and stolen inside those rooms. Of course, the extent of the destruction is more than 70 percent of the area of the place, but now we are striving to restore this place to the way it was more than before.

Mahmoud Hawari: I hope that this cease-fire holds for some time, so that archaeologists can make an informed assessment of the real damage on the ground. But the decimation of archaeological and historical buildings is staggering, and we will have to grapple with for many generations to come.

Jeffrey Brown: Beyond heritage sites, Gaza’s modern cultural ecosystem, universities, libraries, galleries, studios, art schools, has been nearly wiped out.

A recent report by PEN America, an advocacy organization promoting free expression around the world, documents the destruction or heavy damage to 36 major cultural, educational and heritage sites. PEN America concludes that many of the sites appear to have been deliberately targeted, in breach of international law protecting cultural property.

In a statement to “News Hour,” the Israel Defense Forces said Hamas stores weapons inside civilian buildings and that — quote — “Sites of cultural heritage and locations of historical and cultural significance are treated with the utmost sensitivity by the IDF.”

Meanwhile, for contemporary artists who’ve survived the war, the destruction is deeply personal.

Shareef Sarhan, Gazan Artist (through interpreter): Me and all my colleagues around me, we lost thousands of our artworks because of the laws of either our studios or our houses.

Jeffrey Brown: In Madrid, Spain, far from the ruins of Gaza City, artist Shareef Sarhan lives in exile.

Shareef Sarhan (through interpreter): No artist hasn’t experienced loss of art. We all also experience loss and suffering from the conditions we are living in. Therefore, this is a case of two losses, the loss of family or loved ones, and the loss of the artist’s soul, his work and his art.

Jeffrey Brown: In addition to making his own work, Sarhan ran the Shababeek Gallery that once held nearly 1,000 artworks, a heartbeat of Gaza’s contemporary art scene. One Israeli airstrike in October 2023 erased a generation’s creed of archive.

Yet Sarhan insists Gaza’s memory should not be reduced to rubble and suffering.

We don’t hear too much about Gaza’s culture or art. What should you want — what do you want people to know? How rich is that culture? How varied is it?

Shareef Sarhan (through interpreter): Here are two images of Gaza. The first image is always known in the media, which is that of war, destruction, siege and suffering that people go through. And the second image is a beautiful Gaza, a Gaza that has hope, love and art. And no one talks about this image that is always in Gaza.

Jeffrey Brown: Before the war, Sarhan built one of Gaza’s most iconic public artworks, the Gaza Lighthouse installation crafted from concrete, metal and remnants of earlier conflicts, it too destroyed in this war.

Shareef Sarhan (through interpreter): This work has become over the years a symbol of beauty and freedom in Gaza. Many people took pictures of it, as if it had become Gaza’s monument.

Mai El-Shaer, Artist: Imagine you live all your life there in place, your school, your childhood, your friends, your family, everything. And suddenly it’s completely destroyed. It’s completely gone.

Jeffrey Brown: In Cape Town, South Africa, 23-year-old artist Mai El-Shaer carries her own fragments of loss from her hometown of Rafah. In her new exhibition in exile called Violet Dreams, Mai captures the dual pain of what’s lost and the uncertainty of where to go from here.

Mai El-Shaer, Gazan Artist: Between what’s going now in my country and for my people and what I’m facing now in a new place that I have to survive in, and start from scratch.

Jeffrey Brown: Mae first fled Gaza for Egypt, where she worked with children from Gaza.

Mai El-Shaer: When I went to Egypt, I just stopped doing anything, literally anything. I couldn’t even paint because I was really, really stuck in survival guilt. And then I met these children, and I was like, at least they make me feel like I have to survive because of them.

After all of these things, I tried to — back to paint again step by step. I just felt again that I deserve to live.

Jeffrey Brown: For Mae and others, Palestinian art is a form of record-keeping and resistance, a way to insist that behind the statistics are human beings.

Mai El-Shaer: I want to speak about Palestine and the people that I know. I don’t want just to stay silent, because they deserve to live. They deserve that people remember them. They are not just the numbers. People have to see them.

Jeffrey Brown: For his part, artist Shareef Sarhan looks forward to rebuilding one day.

Shareef Sarhan (through interpreter): I feel hopeful. Without hope, I can’t live. You always have to feel hopeful to have a good future. Maybe sometimes you feel a little depressed, but hope is what propels you to have a good future. So I am always hopeful.

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown.

Nick Schifrin: Hope for a better future.