Life makes its way amidst the horror of Gaza

BeirutGaza is trapped in a crisis marked by devastation and shortages. Official data reveal a dramatic scenario: devastated schools, increasing hunger, and a community subjected to increasingly severe restrictions. The UN estimates that 97% of educational centers have suffered serious damage or require reconstruction, and hunger has reached levels reserved only for the most extreme emergencies. More than 60,000 people have died in this conflict, many of them victims of starvation. The situation threatens irreversible physical and cognitive damage to a generation bereft of children.

Against this backdrop, the figure of Hamada Shaqoura, known as Hamada Sho, emerges. Before the conflict, he worked as a food blogger and promoter of Gaza's culinary culture. But when the war destroyed his home and displaced everything he had built, he decided to use his skills to contribute more than taste: maintenance and dignity. Hamada has ceased to be simply a recipe creator to become someone who prepares food from aid packages in tents. In an interview with TimeHamada said she started cooking for her family, but was struck by the sight of children surviving on scraps. "Food is more than just nourishment; it's an act of resistance," she noted.

The impact was immediate; with support from local organizations, she was able to cook for hundreds of children. With the precarious ingredients that arrive, she has improvised dishes that recall tradition, such as stuffed crepes, tacos Gazan-style, curry, even croissants, thus transforming subsistence food into his way of trying to maintain some normalcy for the children. Cooking with minimal ingredients or improvising mayonnaise with milk and vinegar was an affirmation that life goes on, even if it does so with the bare minimum.

In the overcrowded shelters, children waited for a hot meal or simply a gesture of comfort. Hunger has caught thousands of people at the worst possible moment, and access to food—as agencies like Doctors Without Borders report—remains blocked by restrictions, violence at distribution points, and supply controls.

But the resilience Hamada describes has limits. The skyrocketing prices of basic foodstuffs, coupled with the blockade, have made his work unviable, while hundreds of children suffer from severe malnutrition. As he describes, he can no longer cook and has been forced to distribute drinking water, the only aid he can still offer.

War transforms every aspect of daily life. Critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and electricity supplies are collapsed or functioning intermittently. According to UN data, 97% of educational facilities require serious repairs or complete reconstruction; or, in other words, less than 10% of educational centers are functioning. The schools that remain standing serve as makeshift shelters for displaced people, forcing teachers and students to reinvent classrooms under tents, in damaged hallways, or even outdoors. The lack of electricity, drinking water and school supplies further aggravates the situation..

It's not just the impact of war on infrastructure; it's the demolition of concrete dreams, the collapse of vital projects that, with each bombing, seem vaporized. A life that has become a daily struggle for survival. Gaza has seen its population robbed of the ability to grow, learn, and form families. Gaza's resilience is not a poetic slogan.

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In these extreme conditions, students like Maha Ali, 26, and Yasmine al-Za'aneen, 19, struggle to continue their studies. Maha, who dreamed of becoming a journalist, now struggles to organize her day between informal classes and searching for food. "Before, we wanted to live, study, travel. Now we just want to eat," she told Reuters. Yasmine recalls how her high school was bombed and how she lost the books and notes she had collected for months: "Everything I had built up disappeared in an instant."

Despite the destruction, there are still young people who have not abandoned their aspirations. In these makeshift classrooms, they draw maps, write essays, or study math with shared pencils and borrowed paper. Some teachers travel miles to teach, avoiding debris and risks in the streets. Each lesson is a double effort: transmitting knowledge while protecting the physical integrity of the students.

Educational resilience is also reflected in the students' creativity. They organize informal libraries with salvaged books, create study groups in courtyards and safe corners, and even improvise science labs with recycled materials. They have learned to adapt to scarcity and foster collaboration between families and teachers, although war and hunger mark every decision.

In the streets, the smell of freshly baked bread is a distant memory; today it smells of smoke, dust, and stagnant water. Families continue to count the days without electricity, without medicine, and with increasingly meager rations. Among the rubble, children improvise games with stones and pieces of metal, oblivious to the danger. Life there is measured by every glass of water, every shared meal, and every night survived.