Eman Abu Zayed: With Gaza’s Libraries in Ruins, Palestinians Fight to Preserve Historical Memory

More than 87 public libraries and archives in Gaza have been partially or completely destroyed by Israel’s genocide.

Since the outbreak of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip in 2023, the destruction has not been limited to homes and public infrastructure. It has also extended to cultural and intellectual heritage, as libraries and archives across the enclave have endured major attacks and significant losses. Reports from human rights and academic organizations indicate that more than 87 public libraries and archives in Gaza have been partially or completely destroyed, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of books, documents, and rare manuscripts that form an essential part of Palestinian cultural and historical memory.

Meanwhile, library visitors gradually disappeared from public spaces. Reading habits shifted to homes, displacement shelters, and digital platforms, as people attempted to preserve their cultural practices amid a war that has devastated the territory and disrupted everyday life.

The Islamic University of Gaza: 1.5 Million Books Bombed

Standing before the remains of the Islamic University of Gaza, researcher Riyad Al-Saawi looks at what is left of a 50-year-old institution — one of the oldest and largest universities in Gaza. Since its establishment, the university’s libraries had served as some of the most important cultural and academic repositories in the Strip, housing more than 1.5 million books covering a wide range of disciplines, from literature, history, and philosophy to science and technology. They also contained academic journals, rare documents, and historical manuscripts that reflected the depth of Palestinian intellectual heritage. The long rows of shelves and the quiet atmosphere of study once made the library a haven for researchers and students, who spent hours reading references, consulting studies, and writing their work in silence.

Al-Saawi gazes at the empty space where the shelves once stood and reflects on the magnitude of the loss.

Al-Saawi gazes at the empty space where the shelves once stood and reflects on the magnitude of the loss. “I came today looking for the library where I spent years writing my research,” he says, his voice carrying both shock and sorrow. “It once held more than 1.5 million books, but I found no trace of it.” Every corner of the library had once witnessed moments of discovery and learning; every shelf carried knowledge that had accumulated over decades. Today, it has been replaced by silence and emptiness — an absence that reflects both destruction and resilience.

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Salvaging a Personal Library From the Rubble

Elsewhere in the same landscape of loss, Noaman Al-Hilu, a man approaching 60, sits among the rubble of his destroyed home. Slowly bending over the debris, he sifts through the dust and broken concrete in search of something different from the surrounding wreckage: his books.

Over the course of nearly four decades, Al-Hilu had built a small personal library in his home, collecting titles one by one from bookstores, book fairs, and second-hand markets. For him, they were not simply books but a personal archive that accompanied him through years of reading and learning.

Pulling a dust-covered volume from beneath the rubble, he carefully brushes it off. In a voice marked by both sadness and determination, he explains that what remains today are only fragments of the private library he spent years assembling. Together with his family, he says, he is trying to salvage whatever books can still be recovered from the ruins — not only to keep them, but to pass some of them on to his grandchildren as a memory of a time when books once filled the house.

On the surface, the scene appears simple: an elderly man in the ruins of a home. Yet in its full context, it feels as though time itself is digging through the stones in search of its lost memory.

Cordoba Library: Selling Books Amid Displacement and War

In the Al-Nasr neighborhood in northern Gaza, a young man named Ramzi had run a small bookstore known as Cordoba Library for more than 20 years. The shop was a modest place that offered religious, cultural, and historical works alongside novels and children’s books.

When the war began in October 2023 and waves of displacement spread across the Gaza Strip, Ramzi was forced to move his bookstore several times. He relocated from northern Gaza to Deir al-Balah, and later to Rafah, carrying the books with him each time in order to preserve what remained of his collection and continue his work.

Despite the war and the siege, Ramzi continued selling books online, responding to readers who kept ordering titles even under extremely difficult conditions. For him, the work was not merely a source of income but also an effort to preserve the presence of books in people’s lives during a time of displacement and destruction.

Samir Mansour Library: The Loss of a Major Cultural Landmark

Samir Mansour Library has long been considered one of Gaza’s most prominent cultural institutions. Founded by Professor Samir Mansour, the library expanded over the years into several branches across the Strip, becoming a key destination for students, researchers, and readers.

Its branch located near the Islamic University of Gaza was particularly well-known among university students, who frequently visited it to purchase academic and literary works. The shelves contained a wide range of titles covering literature, philosophy, politics, history, and translated works.

The war, however, did not spare this cultural institution. The library suffered extensive damage, and thousands of books that had been collected over many years were destroyed. Mansour explains that the loss was not only financial but also cultural, as many of the books that burned were rare editions or titles that readers had long waited to obtain.

Amid fuel shortages and an intensifying blockade, some residents at times resorted to burning books simply to light fires for cooking — an image that reflects the depth of the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. Still, Mansour insists that the idea of the library itself cannot be destroyed, and that Gaza’s literary and scholarly culture will endure despite the devastation of the region’s cultural institutions.

Reading as an Act of Resilience

The story of Gaza’s libraries is not merely a passing detail of wartime. It reflects a deep relationship between people and books in a society that has long valued knowledge. Before and during the war, university students, young people, and even children regularly visited libraries to borrow books and read, demonstrating the strength of reading culture in Gaza.

In Gaza, a book has never been just another item on a shelf — it is a window to the wider world in a city under blockade.

During long periods when the internet was cut off amid the war, many people returned to books as a way to pass time and reclaim a sense of normal life despite the surrounding hardship.

In Gaza, a book has never been just another item on a shelf — it is a window to the wider world in a city under blockade. As some displaced families carried their books with them, and others tried to rescue them from beneath the rubble, reading continued to be an act of cultural resilience. In a city exhausted by war, reopening a bookstore or reading a book may appear simple. Yet for many in Gaza, it remains proof that cultural life has not disappeared, and that the relationship between people and books continues despite everything the Strip has endured.

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First published in Truthout. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). You are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

EMAN ABU ZAYED is a writer and journalist from Gaza who believes in the power of words to change reality.