'Dreams buried in the ground'—Gaza graffiti depicts pain and resilience

Under the ever-present threat of Israeli strikes, the pain of Gaza's people — and especially its children — is memorialized on the remains of many bombed-out structures thanks to the work of a local Palestinian graffiti artist.

Bilal Khalid, 33, has painted the walls of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardment in the hope of attracting the world's attention to the "crimes and massacres" Tel Aviv has committed against the Palestinian people.

"I have worked as a photojournalist since the beginning of the war to report on the crimes and massacres committed by Israel against civilians, especially children, in Gaza " he told Anadolu.

Khalid said he decided to change his method of showing the world the devastation in Gaza in a way that would avoid images of death and violence, rather using an artform he much admired and loved: calligraphy.

In his new work, called Dreams Buried in the Ground, Khalid drew the word "dreams" in Arabic calligraphy.

Khalid, who lives in Rafah city in southern Gaza, said he chose the wall of a home where Israeli warplanes killed 13 Palestinians.

'Mute and without motion'

"In this project, we are talking about children who have lost their simplest dreams in life, such as a safe place, clean clothes, and a hot meal. We are talking about more than 16,000 children whose right to life was snatched away and who were killed in this genocide," he said.

Khalid said many dreams have been buried under the rubble of the building he was working on and that thousands of structures in Gaza are no longer standing because of Israel's war.

"We are trying to make our voices heard to the world, even if doing so has changed nothing about what has happened in Gaza so far. Because the world is still watching the Gaza war blindly, mute, and without motion," he said.

But this does not prevent Gaza's people from delivering their message to free peoples in the rest of the world, he added.

"We are trying to prove to the world through art that we are a people determined to survive and live in these lands," he said.