We will not leave… Gazans face forced displacement from their city

While the city of war is relentlessly pounded and forcibly emptied of its people, the roar of artillery and the whir of aircraft continue, and while neighborhoods are gradually extinguished, a small oven opposite Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City remains glowing like stubborn embers amidst the rubble and smoke.

A popular restaurant was the last remaining sign of life in the besieged city, remaining a symbol of human steadfastness in the midst of the battle for evacuation, feeding those who have clung to Gaza and refused to leave, and making bread a statement against death.

“Gaza is our motherland, and no one abandons their motherland,” restaurant owner Hussein Al-Helou told Al Jazeera Net as he watched his customers milling around the place in search of a bite to eat during the siege, or a fleeting moment of safety amidst the chaos.

The restaurant seems to be a haven for those who have decided to stay, whether they are patients on recovery beds, nurses and doctors seizing a moment of rest, journalists catching their breath between rounds, or displaced people who find in these bites an artery that keeps them resisting.