GAZA, (PIC)
In Gaza, where stories are written in the tears of mothers and the sweat of rescuers, days are not measured by hours, but by the number of lives pulled from beneath the rubble—and by the countless stories that find their endings only in a martyr’s embrace or under the stones of a fallen home.
There, deep under siege and amid the fire of war, stand the men of the civil defense—faces marked by fatigue, shoulders bearing the heaviest burden: to pull life from the heart of death.
These men have no heavy machinery, no proper tools to complete their mission—but they carry something far greater: determination, courage, and humanity.
Faces in the fire
Mohammad Al-Khatib, one of these heroes, says, “For over a year and a half, we’ve been saving lives using only the most basic tools—no excavators, no equipment, just our bare hands that never give up, and hearts that refuse to surrender.”
His voice, a blend of pain and pride, adds, “Sometimes, we dig through the earth with our fingernails to reach a child or a woman under the debris. We work under bombardment. We risk our lives—just to give others a chance to live.”
A voice from the frontline
Mahmoud Dabour, a civil defense member who hasn’t left the fire zone since the very beginning of the assault, recounts from the heart of the devastation, “We expect nothing for ourselves. All we want is to give people a chance to survive. We work in conditions no human should endure, but our faith in our duty gives us the strength to go on.”
He continues, “Every time we recover a martyr’s body or save a living soul, it feels as though we’ve saved the whole world.”
“Every breath we bring back to life is a victory against death and siege,” Dabour says.
Between fire and rubble
Mahmoud Bassal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense, affirms the situation on the ground is nothing short of catastrophic.
“We lack the basic equipment needed to lift debris or rescue the trapped. The crossings are closed, aid is blocked, and every minute that passes costs another life,” he says.
With bitterness, he adds, “The occupation doesn’t stop at bombing buildings—it besieges life from every direction. It blocks the entry of equipment, leaving us to dig through death in search of life.”
An open plea to the world
Despite the lack of tools and the raging fire, the civil defense teams don’t stop. With exhausted bodies, bare hands, and hearts full of faith, they keep doing what can only be described as true heroism.
“We don’t need words of solidarity… we need tools that save lives, a safe passage to dignity.”
This sentence sums up what civil defense workers repeat at every moment, with every rescue mission they undertake—without any guarantee of survival.
Amid the devastation, the purest forms of humanity shine through—men running toward danger while everyone else flees it, simply because they chose to be the bridge between life and death.
