At dawn in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, Ahmad Ghaben walks towards his field with his sons. It lies only 500 metres from the “yellow line", behind which Israeli forces are stationed.
Every day, gunfire echoes across the soil. Every day, soldiers attempt to push him away, to undo what he and his children have rebuilt with their bare hands.
After the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in October 2025, he and his sons returned to their land and the rubble of their home. Nothing was left as it had been: no tools, no seeds, no seedlings, no water systems.
“We literally dug through rock,” Mr Ghaben told the National. “We worked with the simplest, most basic means just to make the land breathe again.”
Before the war, his family owned 0.4 hectares of fertile farmland. Today, only a quarter of that has been rehabilitated. On it grows cabbage, onions mint and radish, offering small patches of green against a grey horizon.
The return, for Mr Ghaben, means more than mere daily survival. “This land is from my grandparents and my father,” he said. “With it, I inherited farming and love for the earth. I taught my wife and children how to care for it. We all became farmers.”
The destruction of Gaza's farmland makes its people even more reliant on aid deliveries that Israel heavily restricted during the war, resulting in famine in parts of the territory. Since the ceasefire deal was struck, Israeli forces have continued to block the entry of some goods and the Rafah crossing with Egypt has yet to reopen.
Strawberries gone
Beit Lahia was once famous for its strawberries, exported en masse and known for their high quality. But the nurseries were destroyed, the irrigation systems shattered, the wells and generators ruined during Israel's war. Strawberries were no longer possible. So the family planted vegetables instead. “It’s a message,” Mr Ghaben said. “We are still here. We are still rooted.”
The cost of farming now exceeds the harvest. Water is scarce, tools are salvaged from rubble and hoses are patched together from scraps. Still, he works in hope that Gaza’s conditions will improve and border crossings will reopen.
Mohammed Abu Ouda, a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, said more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s farmland has been destroyed. Nearly half lies behind the yellow line, inaccessible to its owners.
Even in reachable territory west of the line, most farmland has been flattened by Israeli military operations. Where once 18,000 hectares were cultivated, only about 400 remain in use today.
“Farmers now work under extremely harsh conditions,” Mr Abu Ouda told The National. “They have no tools, face severe irrigation problems, and lack seeds and seedlings. Yet they persist, despite danger and repeated gunfire.”
In southern Gaza, in the town of Al Qarara near Khan Younis, Osama Al Fajm works alongside his brothers and cousins on land that once stretched across more than 1.4 hectares.
For two years, they could not reach it. When the ceasefire came, they returned and stood in silence before the unfolding devastation. Olive trees were gone, citrus groves were erased.
“The most horrific sight of my life,” Mr Al Fajm recalled. “All the labour of years disappeared in a moment. Fertile land became barren ground.”
For days, grief weighed on them. Then they made a choice: “We decided to return and revive it.”
They salvaged tools buried in sand. They replaced plastic seedling trays with empty food cans. They used second-hand hoses and watered by hand where irrigation systems once ran automatically. On land smaller than 0.2 hectares, they planted spinach, parsley, radishes and rocket.
The danger did not stop. Mr Al Fajm’s brother and cousin were injured while working the land. Still, they returned.
In a place where destruction has erased fields and futures alike, green leaves rising from Gaza’s earth carry a quiet but powerful message: “Life is still trying. And so we are” Mr Al Fajm said.
