The Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem hosted the “Weaving Hope” bazaar on October 14, 2025, which featured 37 booths showcasing handmade crafts that women from Gaza created. These women have been stranded in Jerusalem for two years due to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The Jerusalem Story Team covered the event, and from the first moment our team arrived, they were overwhelmed with mixed emotions of pain and hope.

The hospital staff displayed pink cubes at the entrance of the hospital’s courtyard that featured information about breast cancer, recognizing that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and emphasizing the importance of early detection.

As visitors descended down the stairs, the dialect of those from Gaza began to flow into their ears, and they encountered handcrafted pieces woven with the tears of their makers.

On the event announcement, the hospital wrote that patients who are receiving or had received treatment for various cancers and kidney dialysis had brightened the path of recovery through their creativity, and the items they created for the bazaar express hope, strength, and connection to life. The announcement concluded with a heartfelt message to attendees that said: “Join us as we weave a space that inspires renewal and reminds us that healing is a journey we live through together.”1

The display tables were draped in pink cloths, and each corner included a name related to the type of items showcased. Behind every table sat three to four women, their faces adorned with smiles that emerged atop floods of tears and pain.

Before speaking with the women, the Jerusalem Story Team circulated the bazaar courtyard with cameras several times to capture the atmosphere.

Once the Jerusalemite musician Kanaan al-Ghoul was ready to perform on his oud, playing national songs, the women gathered around him, raising their smartphones to record videos or video-call their relatives in Gaza, sharing with them a fleeting moment of joy stolen after two years of sorrow.

Al-Ghoul began his performance with a verse from the song “Ya Tayr al-Tayir” (O Flying Bird) by the Palestinian singer from Gaza, Mohammed Assaf:

These words brought the women from Gaza together in a circle, raising their hands in victory signs as they danced and sang the lyrics with tears streaming down their faces before the words left their lips.

Within the circle, phone screens lit up with faces of loved ones in Gaza. There, amid the pain, family members appeared smiling from inside tents, sharing with them the joy that the hospital had kindled through this event.

The Jerusalem Story Team were drawn to an elderly woman from Gaza. Holding her cane in her right hand and raising the victory sign with her left, she was dancing and singing with joy in celebration of the ceasefire, which was announced on October 10, 2025, along with perhaps the possibility of returning home to Gaza.

As she began to talk, her words unfolded into stories reaching back to the year of the Naksa in 1967, when she left Gaza for Saudi Arabia, then moved to Algeria, and finally returned to her hometown in Gaza 10 years ago.

Zainab, known by everyone as “Umm Ayman,” arrived in Jerusalem on October 5, 2023, seeking treatment for vocal cord cancer. She had no idea her stay would stretch to two years, as she’d be trapped by Israel’s war on Gaza.

“I’m from the town of Abasan al-Kabira; I lived a comfortable life in Gaza and despite being away for 55 years in Algeria, my husband and I decided to return to our homeland 10 years ago,”3 Zainab said. “But as soon as we came back, my husband passed away and then the 2014 war broke out, and even though our homes were damaged, we rebuilt them, and we refused to leave.”

The wars kept coming, she added, yet none of them resembled this last one, which she endured from a hospital bed in Jerusalem. She confided to Jerusalem Story her most heartfelt wish during the war: “Every day, I wished I was there, to die on Gaza’s soil. I told my daughter, who is here with me, that if I die and they bury me in Ramallah, dig up my grave once the war ends and take my body back to Gaza.”

Leaning on her cane, a blue rosary wrapped around her right wrist, Zainab wept as she spoke, at times lifting her hand from the cane, waving it in anger or in prayer. At 75 years old, this woman from Gaza has lost many relatives in the war. Those who survived were displaced to tents by the sea in the city of Khan Younis.

Despite the harshness of displacement, she said she longs every minute to set foot in Gaza again.

In Gaza, Zainab founded the Community College Charity Association, which supports refugees in the Gaza Strip. As she spoke about it, she paused for a moment, then broke down in tears and said: “I used to distribute donations to the refugees . . . now people give charity to us. During my stay in Jerusalem, many came and donated money to us. I cried a lot, then I asked my daughter to save it, and when the army invaded the Jenin refugee camp, we sent the money, some medicine, and clothes there; they needed it more than I did.”

Zainab also spoke about her participation in the “Weaving Hope” bazaar. “The hospital provided us with some raw materials to make handicrafts; I’m skilled in wool spinning and crochet, in both Algerian and Palestinian styles, so I taught other women, and together we created many of the pieces that are being displayed today,” she said.

Umm Ismail, another elderly woman from Gaza, arrived at Augusta Victoria Hospital with her husband on October 3, 2023, after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Following a long course of treatment, which ended with his passing last May, Umm Ismail has been living with two layers of sorrow: mourning her husband and grieving with her displaced family in Gaza. Yet, she found in the idea of weaving children’s blankets a ray of light that brightened her life once again.

“I was confined between four walls in the hotel where we are temporarily staying until we can return to Gaza. When we started the handicrafts, I felt like I was releasing my grief through sewing, and it helped me cope with this new reality,”4 she said.

Umm Ismail, who is from Rafah—a city whose features have been forever altered—shared that she doesn’t know if she will ever return home. What she does know, however, is that her love for Gaza runs deep. Perhaps that is what made her suddenly exclaim with emotion. “You see, my dear, if a bus came right now and told me, ‘Let’s go back to Gaza,’ I’d get on it immediately, even if it took me straight to a tent.”

“I lived my childhood, youth, and old age in Gaza. During these two years I’ve spent away due to the war, I have grown old, and my features have changed as if I’ve aged twenty years, not two,” Umm Ismail added.

Palestinian Reem Abu Ubaida from Gaza is skilled in traditional Palestinian embroidery (tatreez). She shared that this practice has helped ease the burden of her medical treatment and her constant worry about her family’s dark and uncertain fate in Gaza.

Reem arrived at Augusta Victoria Hospital for treatment of breast and lymph node cancer on September 24, 2023, after undergoing a mastectomy in Gaza.

“I underwent 17 chemotherapy sessions and 17 radiation sessions in Jerusalem, and now I’m on hormone therapy. My illness was detected thanks to my daughter, who is a nurse; as soon as I told her about the pain in my right breast, she took me to get early detection tests,”5 Reem said.

Reem revealed the deep psychological distress she experienced upon her diagnosis, which was worsened by the news of the outbreak of the Gaza war while she was far from her eight daughters, three sons, and husband, all of whom were displaced to the al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis after the complete destruction of their home.

Before the preparations for the upcoming bazaar began a few months ago, Reem said, “I used to sit glued to the television, following the news all the time, but then I got busy with a needle and a thread; they filled me with positive energy and helped me release my bottled-up emotions and anger.”

Reem expressed her feelings when she heard al-Ghoul sing for Gaza. “I felt pride and dignity, and I realized that Gaza is still here and hasn’t been forgotten, despite all the pain. I felt that we are all one, and I wished my children were with me so we could celebrate the ceasefire together here in Jerusalem,” she said.

From Reem’s display table, where she hopes her journey with breast cancer will soon end, the Jerusalem Story Team moved to the table of the “Dhawq” project (which translates to taste), run by breast cancer survivor Fidaa Hamed who hails from the village of Silwad near Ramallah.

Fidaa’s project was born out of pain at the end of 2021 when she was diagnosed with cancer. The idea for her project arose from her need to occupy herself with something that would distract her from constant thoughts about medications, test results, and endless treatment sessions.

“I began mixing chocolate with dates and making delicious products, then I started thinking about packaging, labeling, and naming the project, and I created Facebook and Instagram pages and began selling from my home. Later, I decided to expand, took chocolate-making courses, and was determined to succeed. Now I have five types of products and a small workshop with women whom I trained myself,”6 Fidaa said.

“If it weren’t for breast cancer, the project wouldn’t have existed. I had never thought about starting a business, but now I’ve obtained the Palestinian trademark from the Ministry of Economy and the Palestinian Standards Institution,” she added.

Fidaa went from being a person who had lost all motivation at the beginning of her illness to an inspiring figure who now attends breast cancer awareness workshops and shares her story as a survivor to support other women who are currently battling the disease.

“I still can’t believe how a small piece of chocolate changed the course of my life forever,” Fidaa expressed.

Among these women—survivors, patients, and companions of those who passed away during their cancer journeys—is Izdihar Shaheen, head of media and public relations at Augusta Victoria Hospital.

Shaheen explained the idea behind organizing the event. Since the women’s stay in Jerusalem had become prolonged with no clear timeline for their return to Gaza, the team working closely with the patients and their companions wanted to engage them in something meaningful.

“We asked each woman what she enjoyed doing during her stay, gathered their input, and brought in trainers to teach various handicrafts. We also provided all the necessary materials for different crafts, from Palestinian embroidery to wool work, ceramics, and beadwork for frames and other creations,”7 Shaheen told Jerusalem Story.

Later, the team decided to hold a bazaar, with all proceeds going directly to the women. Invitations were shared on social media as the hospital sought “to sustain the connection between Jerusalemites and the patients and their families. The people of Jerusalem have not forgotten them nor abandoned them since the beginning of the war, but at some point, things grew quiet, so we decided to revive that connection,” Shaheen explained.

The bazaar was held specifically in October because all the patients from Gaza are cancer patients, including many women with breast cancer, which made it suitable to focus the event on Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Shaheen noted that the “Weaving Hope” bazaar beautifully intertwined the local Jerusalem community with the cancer patients and survivors from Gaza, which was the main goal.

The Jerusalem Story Team left the courtyard to al-Ghoul singing the lyrics of the song “Biktub Ismak Ya Biladi”: “I write your name, my country, on the sun that never sets—neither my wealth nor my children can compare to my love for you.”8 He bid farewell to the crowd with the national anthem “Mawtini” by poet Ibrahim Tuqan (see Ibrahim Tuqan). Tears flowed down the faces of the Palestinian women from Gaza as they listened to the song.