These are the words of Haneen Al-Omsi— an engineer, researcher, and cultural heritage consultant, and the Executive Director of Eyes on Heritage for Studies, Research and Publishing in Gaza City. Before the war, she had been supervisor of the conservation project for the manuscripts of this very library. When the fighting came, she lost her home within three days. She was displaced more than once— from north to south, through areas the occupation declared safe, only to be targeted again by explosive drones. Her brothers were wounded. The numbers tell a compelling story: KUVRD has trained over 80 underserved artisans, including refugees, women, and youth, and employed more than 50 in fair-wage positions. Each garment connects artisans ' craft to global markets while preserving cultural identity through contemporary design.
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Who said we survived? We have not survived— not until this moment. Because the real war has penetrated deep within us. The catastrophe has engulfed everyone.
When she returned to the library, what she found compelled her to act immediately. The scene, she told us, was painful. The manuscripts had fallen under rubble— damaged and deliberately destroyed. And yet she launched what she describes as an emergency response: to save whatever remains of this tangible cultural heritage.
A LIBRARY CENTURIES IN THE MAKING The Great Omari Mosque is one of Gaza’ s most celebrated landmarks. Originally built as a Byzantine cathedral, converted during the Crusades, and rebuilt under the Mamluks, the mosque sits in the heart of Gaza’ s old town and reflects the layered civilizations that have passed through this ancient crossroads. Its library accumulated over centuries a remarkable collection of original manuscripts and books spanning jurisprudence, medicine, Islamic law, literature and the sciences— a material record of intellectual life reaching back across generations.
“ The library of the Great Omari Mosque is a beacon of knowledge for all segments of society in Gaza City,” Al-Omsi says. It is a description that captures something essential: this was not an archive sealed behind glass, but a living institution, consulted and used by the community it served.
Gaza’ s heritage has always been vulnerable by virtue of its geography and its history. The tiny territory sits at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe, and its soil contains artefacts from Canaanite, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman civilizations. It is, in the words of historians, one of the most layered archaeological landscapes in the world. The war has placed all of this in jeopardy.
THE SCALE OF CULTURAL LOSS As of January 2026, UNESCO had verified damage to 150 heritage sites in Gaza since the outbreak of the war, including 14 religious sites and 115 buildings of historical or artistic interest. An independent United Nations commission concluded in June 2025 that attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amounted to war crimes, stating that more than half of all such sites in the strip had been destroyed or damaged. These figures, stark as they are, do not capture what is immeasurable: the manuscripts that no longer exist anywhere else, the dedications inscribed on title pages, the connections to living communities now severed.
Gaza— its stones, its people, its books, its trees— has been systematically and deliberately destroyed,” Al-Omsi says.“ When we speak of the humanitarian dimension, it was already collapsing before the war due to the siege. After the genocide, there has been a complete collapse across all dimensions. Cultural relief under these circumstances is extremely difficult, facing enormous challenges and a severe lack of resources and funding.”
THE WORK OF RESCUE The Eyes on Heritage Volunteer Foundation, which Al- Omsi directs, is a Gaza-based organization dedicated to the documentation, protection, and restoration of Palestinian cultural heritage. Under her leadership, volunteers entered the damaged mosque and began the painstaking work of recovery— lifting manuscripts from the rubble with whatever tools were available.
“ We use whatever first-aid and cleaning tools are available for the books,” she explains.“ We face a severe and significant shortage of equipment due to the siege and the war. We work with whatever is locally available.”
The initiative, she is clear to emphasize, is focused on rescue only— not cataloguing.“ We need significant funding to continue the rescue and restoration process. And our efforts are not limited to a single library— we are trying to save whatever remains of the surviving libraries across Gaza.”
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We try, with all the hope we can muster, despite the immense pain.
A MANUSCRIPT LOST Among everything that has been destroyed, one loss stands out in Al-Omsi’ s account— the Diwan of Ibn Zuqa’ a Al-Ghazzi, the collected poetry of the Sufi poet and astronomer Muhammad ibn Bahadir ibn Zuqa’ a Al-Ghazzi. It was one of the rarest items in the collection.
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