After spending two years living in a tent, Palestinian potter Jaafar Atallah decided to turn the very earth beneath his feet into a home for his parents. With cement and steel difficult to obtain in Gaza, he gathered around 15 people, collected local clay and experimented with mud bricks until they managed to build a dome-shaped dwelling.
The Financial Times reported on Atallah’s effort in June 2026, describing how his family’s traditional pottery skills had become a way to seek shelter amid widespread destruction and shortages of construction materials.For Atallah, the project was about more than building walls. It was an attempt to give his parents a measure of protection and dignity after their home was destroyed during the war. The dome drew on a familiar shape from his family’s pottery tradition: the bread ovens they had made for generations.
This time, however, the structure was large enough for people to live in.
From pottery to building homes
Atallah had earned his living making bowls, vases and other pottery items using clay found near his home in northern Gaza. The war destroyed the family’s home and pottery factory, forcing them to relocate and rebuild their lives elsewhere in the territory.After enduring life in a tent, he began exploring whether the same material used in his craft could help create a more substantial shelter.
With help from family members and other workers, including his father, who was also a potter, he collected clay and shaped it into bricks. The process was not straightforward. The team experimented with different mixtures and tested several prototypes before finding a combination that could hold together.
The mixture included clay, water, ash and powdered glass. Atallah also developed a waterproof glaze for the bricks, attempting to make the structure more resistant to the elements.The result was a domed clay dwelling that the team described as strong enough for a person to stand on top of it. The construction offered an alternative to the fragile tents in which many displaced Palestinians continue to live.Atallah explained the practical difference in an interview with the Financial Times, saying that food could be stored in the clay structure, unlike in a tent where fresh produce could spoil quickly in the summer heat.
He described the heat inside tents as torture, underscoring how extreme weather compounds the hardship of displacement.
A housing crisis with few alternatives
Atallah’s initiative comes amid a severe housing crisis in Gaza, where years of bombardment have damaged or destroyed homes, public infrastructure and businesses. The Financial Times and Asharq Al-Awsat reported that shortages of essential construction materials, including cement and steel, have pushed residents towards improvised methods of repairing or rebuilding shelters.According to UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has restricted the entry of construction materials into Gaza, calling them 'dual-use' mateirals and citing concerns that items such as cement and steel could be diverted by Hamas for military purposes, including tunnel construction. The restrictions have left residents and humanitarian organisations struggling to find materials for reconstruction.
Israeli authorities’ security rationale and the consequences for civilian housing are central to the wider dispute over rebuilding the territory.According to figures cited in the Financial Times report from the United Nations, around 1.9 million people in Gaza were displaced or living in tents. Many shelters lack adequate sanitation and basic utilities, leaving families exposed to heat, cold and flooding. With conventional construction materials scarce, residents have turned to whatever they can recover locally.
Some collect stones and concrete fragments from destroyed buildings, while others reuse steel reinforcement bars or make mud-based mortar.
These approaches may help protect a tent or repair a damaged wall, but they are not a substitute for a comprehensive reconstruction effort.The Norwegian Refugee Council’s Gaza shelter coordinator, Iyad Abu Hamam, cautioned that recycled concrete does not achieve the strength required for many building applications.
The improvised use of rubble and mud therefore has significant limits, particularly when it comes to roofs and structures that must meet safety standards.
Turning rubble into a resource
Atallah is not the only Gazan trying to find building materials in the remains of destroyed homes. Teenage sisters Tala and Farah Moussa have been experimenting with bricks made from crushed concrete debris, mud, ash and powdered glass.Their idea emerged after their own house was bombed. The sisters, who had been displaced multiple times with their family, began crushing concrete into smaller pieces and testing different mixtures to make usable blocks.
After five or six prototypes, they developed a mixture suitable for applications such as pavements and partitions.In May 2026, the sisters won a youth innovation award from the Swiss-based Earth Foundation, receiving $12,500 that they hoped to use to organise workshops and teach others their technique, according to the Financial Times and Asharq Al-Awsat.Their work reflects a broader effort to reuse materials that would otherwise remain part of Gaza's enormous rubble piles.
However, the sisters' bricks and Atallah's clay structures should not be mistaken for fully tested replacements for conventional construction materials.Builders have also salvaged steel reinforcement bars from destroyed buildings, although corrosion can limit their usefulness. Others have collected cement that reportedly surfaced in the Maghazi area after Israeli forces pumped material into a tunnel to seal it.
Sharing a possible way forward
Atallah's project has attracted attention beyond his immediate community. After he shared videos of the construction process online, pottery groups around the world offered support. The videos also helped spread the idea that locally available clay could be used to create shelters when conventional supplies were unavailable.Khalil Abu Ramadan, a social media personality known for making clay sculptures, documented the construction and helped promote the approach.
Atallah subsequently began working on another clay home for himself and his wife.The aim is to encourage other families to explore similar methods. For people living in tents, the prospect of a more substantial shelter is compelling, particularly when temporary accommodation offers little protection from extreme temperatures or other hazards.Yet building with locally available materials is not necessarily inexpensive.
Even clay, rubble and other resources can involve considerable labour and costs in Gaza's wartime economy. Nor does a dome's apparent strength establish that it can withstand every structural or weather-related risk.
Hope amid the destruction
As per a New York Times report, efforts such as Atallah's within a broader picture of Palestinians attempting to rebuild their lives. Even after a ceasefire agreement, residents have continued to face destruction, displacement and uncertainty.
Families are trying to restore livelihoods, children are attending makeshift classrooms, and communities are searching for ways to reclaim everyday routines.The clay homes represent one small part of that struggle. They cannot replace the scale of reconstruction required across Gaza, but they demonstrate how traditional skills and locally available materials can be adapted to meet urgent needs.For Atallah, pottery has taken on a different purpose. The clay that once supplied his family's livelihood is now being used to create shelter for those who lost their home.
His work offers a glimpse of what rebuilding can look like when families cannot wait for conventional supplies to become available.The larger challenge remains unresolved: improvised homes can provide some relief, but lasting recovery will require safe access to construction materials, adequate infrastructure, technical expertise and the resources needed to rebuild damaged communities.