The gardener of Gaza: sowing hope by growing vegetables amid the rubble

In an old bathtub, plastic buckets, a tin can and other containers of all shapes and sizes foraged from the debris left by nearly a year of war, Mohammed Qomssan and his family grow the vegetables that are now a rare luxury in Gaza.

Their aubergines, jute, rocket and peppers are unlikely signs of green plant life in the Jabalia refugee camp – a once-bustling neighbourhood reduced to a landscape of concrete rubble and cratered roads by two Israeli Defense Force (IDF) ground operations.

Qomssan’s family started their horticultural efforts after returning in mid-June from their second time being displaced by attacks to find only two habitable rooms left in their house.

“When we returned, I had such a strange feeling – I can’t describe it. The house we had lived in for 25 years. I was so upset and just sat there. All our memories were gone, all our belongings gone,” he says.

Few of their old neighbours have come back to Jabalia, having fled to southern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation in northern Gaza early in the war. The threat of new Israeli operations means others shuttle between the camp and other parts of Gaza City.

There’s severe malnutrition here – the food we eat has no nutritional value

Mohammed Qomssan

But the Qomssan family decided to re-root themselves in their broken home, clearing out some of the rubble and stretching out a sheet of tarpaulin to create a makeshift living room with an attached garden to cultivate.

“You have to remember I live in the north of Gaza. Fruits, vegetables and many of the goods that you can find in the south of Gaza are restricted here,” he says.

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“There’s severe malnutrition here – the food we eat has no nutritional value. We depend completely on canned food. For a while there was no flour but after a while the occupation allowed the entry of food – it’s all canned food: fava beans, chickpeas, canned meat.”

The markets in Gaza are sparsely stocked and food aid comes sporadically. After a period when there was almost nothing available, fears grew in March that northern Gaza faced imminent famine .

All the farming land in Gaza is gone – it’s been swept away, destroyed

Conditions have improved slightly since then, with the last report in June by the UN-backed food security assessment saying that increased access for food deliveries to the north had eased the situation but concern remained about widespread hunger.

Aid convoys to northern Gaza still face obstacles and attacks, and only two bakeries are operating in Gaza City, which had a population of 600,000 before 7 October, according to the UN.

Qomssan documents his life in Jabalia on social media – tending to the family farm, wandering through rubble-strewn sites with dogs running loose through the empty streets. On his return to Jabalia in June, he posted pictures of the bombed and burned-out homes, and the clinics and shelters for people who have been displaced.

He also posts nostalgic videos about life before the war: clips showing the city’s port, where Gazan families once went to relax, or of fishing along the seashore and vendors on the streets.

But he says today that he and his family are focused on survival, in a part of Gaza that most others have left.

Their little vegetable garden, he says, is a way to try to ensure that survival, especially as they know there will be no harvesting of fresh food for them any time soon, after the region’s farmers were displaced and fields destroyed.

“All the farming land in Gaza is gone, it’s been swept away and destroyed, so we went to the market and found some seeds,” says Qomssan.

“Not everything was available but we bought what we could find and we said, ‘we’ve got this bit of space, we can use it to plant some of the crops’.

“After that, we decided to start growing vegetables, so we could live a little like ordinary people.”