GAZA, (PIC)
In a Strip besieged for years, where power is entirely cut off and communication networks vanish behind the walls of the blockade, coffee shops in Gaza were never just places to sip coffee. They were windows to light, spaces for connection, study halls, makeshift offices, and fragile bridges to a world that once seemed within reach.
In those humble coffee shops, students chased dreams they hoped would one day see the light. Employees worked under the hum of generators. Expats connected with loved ones on flickering screens, trying to bridge the gap of exile and distance. Coffee shops were among the last bastions against suffocating isolation—until the planes came.
On the evening of Sunday, April 27, 2025, Israeli warplanes directly bombed a coffee shop on Salah Al-Din Street in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing six Palestinians and severely injuring more than ten others.
According to eyewitnesses and medical sources, the coffee shop’s patrons were civilians who had sought the place to connect with the outside world or to continue their work and studies after the Israeli assault destroyed Gaza’s communications infrastructure. But this massacre was not the first of its kind.
On Saturday evening, April 26, Israeli forces committed another massacre at a coffee shop in the city of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. Fighter jets targeted a small coffee shop where dozens of young people had gathered, trying to access the internet amid the total blackout.
The bombing killed several civilians and injured others, repeating a now-familiar tragedy—overturned tables, shattered computers, and scattered youthful dreams buried under rubble.
Field reports and local testimonies confirmed that both locations were entirely civilian, devoid of any military activity, highlighting a deliberate policy of targeting vital civilian facilities.
Mohammad, a survivor of the Deir Al-Balah coffee shop massacre, told our correspondent that he used to visit the coffee shop to attend his university lectures, given the complete electricity and internet outage.
He said that without any warning, Israeli warplanes struck the coffee shop, killing a number of those present and injuring dozens in a horrifying, bloody scene.
It is worth noting that these massacres are not isolated incidents. Since the beginning of the war of extermination, Israel has deliberately targeted cafés in blatant and criminal violations of civilian and human life.
In Gaza, everything has become a target—even the coffee shops that had become digital sanctuaries from the darkness of the blockade.
Public spaces are no longer safe. Civilians can no longer seek even their most basic rights without being haunted by the specter of bombing and death.
These recent massacres reveal the extent of daily suffering in the Gaza Strip, where the need to connect to the outside world has become a perilous gamble—where the price of life is paid dearly with every attempt to catch a signal or make a farewell call.
