Inside a displacement tent in al-Mawasi, a crowded camp on Gaza’s southern coast, Yahya Abu Lahia sits on a plastic chair, holding a small brush and sweeping dust and sand off a piece of mosaic.
"We extracted this piece of mosaic from under the rubble of Youssef al-Astal’s house, which held dozens of valuable artefacts before the war on Gaza," Yahya told The New Arab, referring to a farmer who spent a lifetime gathering Byzantine and Islamic antiquities, including column capitals, tombstones and pottery.
Youssef fled his home in eastern Khan Yunis at the start of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Heavy bombardment later hit the area, and his house was partially destroyed by Israeli occupation forces' operations.
"During the search, I found pieces of mosaic, and I rescued them and put them together," said the 28-year-old. "It was one of the happiest moments of my life."
Yahya is a field technician with Guardians of Heritage, a volunteer team of about 20 men and women that digs for artefacts in bombed buildings across Gaza, then cleans, photographs and catalogues them.
The group launched in 2024 under the Mayasem Association for Culture and Arts, a Gaza-based nonprofit.
It won the 2026 PNT Heritage Award for Community Engagement and Social Inclusion, a regional prize run by the Petra National Trust — a Jordanian heritage group, with the European Union’s delegation to Jordan.
Volunteers recovered the pieces from Youssef's house in al-Qarara near Khan Younis — where he had collected antiquities since childhood and amassed about 74 historical pieces — by digging through the rubble and sifting sand by hand with basic tools.
"Our work under the rubble isn’t a traditional archaeological excavation," said Shaimaa al-Natour, assistant coordinator of Mayasem’s heritage protection programme.
"We work in exceptional conditions that demand extreme caution, because we may come across unstable stones, concrete blocks and fragile pieces that can be damaged simply by moving them."
She said items are bagged or boxed and taken to a storeroom, a corner of the tent, for cleaning, photographing, and archiving.
The team is building a digital archive of every rescued item, backed by the ALIPH Foundation, a fund for heritage in conflict zones, and The Palestinian Museum.
It has documented more than 1,000 pieces of movable heritage so far, Shaimaa said, and the work continues.
One mission was the destroyed al-Qarara Cultural Museum, which held 3,500 pieces before Israel's war on the besieged enclave.
Storing the finds is a challenge in itself.
The team faces a shortage of suitable packing and conservation materials, and struggles to provide a stable environment that protects the artefacts from humidity, dust and temperature fluctuations.
"My belief in the need to protect our cultural heritage is what drove me to volunteer and work with my own hands in the middle of this war," said Yahya.
"With every piece we find and restore, I feel I have saved part of my city’s memory."
Heritage's 'first line of defence'
The Gaza Strip, a narrow coastal territory on the ancient trade route between Egypt and the Levant, was home to about 130 archaeological sites and at least a dozen local museums before Israel's genocide began, spanning the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era, along with museums, mosques and churches that held centuries of Palestinian history.
As of March 2026, UNESCO had verified damage to 164 sites in Gaza since October 7, 2023, including 14 religious sites, 128 buildings of historical or artistic interest, three depositories of movable cultural property, nine monuments, two museums and eight archaeological sites.
It used satellite imagery analysed by UNOSAT, the UN’s satellite agency, and, since an October 2025 ceasefire, rapid on-site assessments where access allows.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said in February that Israeli occupation forces had destroyed 835 mosques completely, damaged 180 partly and destroyed 40 of the Strip's 60 cemeteries.
The office and the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities say 12 local and private museums have been destroyed and looted.
Itimad Abu Amra, 23, joined the Guardians of Heritage team at its launch, after working at the al-Qarara museum since 2018.
Her most recent mission was the Abu Salim Mosque in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, which was built in 1951 and used for Quran memorisation circles and community activities. Israeli warplanes struck it on August 25, causing widespread destruction, she said.
"When conditions allowed, we went straight to the Abu Salim Mosque, and we found historic limestone blocks and a collection of important and valuable books," she said.
"The moment you find an artefact in the rubble, you feel you are facing a trust that must be handled responsibly."
Hamouda al-Dahdar, a cultural heritage expert, called the volunteers "the first and courageous line of defence of human heritage," but said such groups are "in dire and urgent need of institutional and international support."
He called on UNESCO and other UN bodies to go beyond statements and provide direct funding, technical help, damage assessments and missions of international experts.
Hamouda also described the destruction of Gaza’s heritage as "a clear attempt to erase the living material evidence of the identity and historical memory of the Palestinian people."
UNESCO says it is already working on the ground. Together with the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation, it has stabilised five heritage sites in Gaza’s Old City, with seven more under way, and has trained local professionals in damage assessment and emergency stabilisation.
The agency has also called on the international community to "increase support and investment" to scale up the work.
"The Gaza Strip is a unique historical bridge of civilisations," Hamouda said, pointing to Gaza’s Bronze and Iron Age, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic layers.
"Heritage is the living memory of existence. The work continues from within the rubble to protect our identity and pass it on to future generations."
For the team, Shaimaa said, the tent is a symbol.
"It’s a message to the community that a museum isn’t just a building or exhibition hall,” she said, adding that its role can continue in the simplest spaces, as long as people protect its collections and pass their stories on.
"Gaza isn’t only the destruction we see today," she said.
"It’s thousands of years of history, civilisation and human memory, and protecting it is a collective responsibility."
Ismail Nofal is a Gaza-based journalist specialising in human interest stories
This article was published in collaboration with Egab