We Still Pray: How Gaza rebuilt 500 mosques from tarps and metal
Shafaq News– Gaza
Walid Hamdan picks his way through muddy corridors to a structure of plastic sheeting and scrap wood. Inside, men stand on bare ground. There are no carpets, no Qurans, no speakers. This is Friday prayer in Gaza now.
"Our mosques were once full," Hamdan told Shafaq News. "Today they are tiny tents."
Across the Gaza Strip, 97% of mosques are out of service. Of the 1,230 that stood before October 2023, 1,050 have been destroyed and 191 severely damaged, according to Ramzi A-Nawajha, director of public relations at Gaza's Ministry of Endowments.
By mid-November 2023, at least 60 mosques had fallen. By March 2024, the count exceeded 1,000. Al-Nawajha called it "a systematic policy to destroy the social and spiritual centers of the population."
Among the losses is the Great Omari Mosque, Gaza's oldest and largest; a 7th-century structure raised over a 5th-century Byzantine church, itself built on a Philistine temple, whose stones held Gaza’s layered history for 1,400 years. A column inside the prayer hall bore a carved menorah from an ancient synagogue, a trace of coexistence preserved across centuries. Locals called it "the Little Al-Aqsa" for its resemblance to the mosque in Jerusalem.
It was struck in December 2023. The central hall collapsed. The minaret, erected by the Mamluks in 1285, partially toppled.
In place of what was lost, the Ministry of Endowments has built more than 500 temporary prayer spaces from tarps, scrap metal, and salvaged wood. They call them "plastic mosques." The makeshift structures lack necessities: copies of the Quran, prayer rugs, amplifiers, water for ablution. Worshippers are exposed to rain, wind, and the constant threat of strikes.
"Anyone who loses ablution suffers to return to his tent and perform it again in mud and fierce wind," Hamdan explained. "We sometimes delay prayers because conditions make it impossible. But we insist on performing our obligations."
Churches have also been struck. On October 19, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit the compound of the Church of Saint Porphyrius —Gaza's oldest active church, dating to the 5th century— killing 18 civilians sheltering inside. In July 2025, the Holy Family Church, Gaza's only Catholic parish, was struck, killing three people and wounding the priest.
Reconstruction for religious buildings alone will cost over $500 million, according to Gaza ministries, but for now, the rebuilding is improvised, plastic and wood where stone once stood. Al-Nawajha described the bond between Gaza's people and their mosques as "part of their identity,” appealing to the international community to protect what remains.
Meanwhile, in the displacement camps, Hamdan and others continue to gather under tarps, praying on bare ground, in the rain.
"The state of our mosques today may be shameful," he said. "But we still pray."
Read more: Erased stones: War’s toll on Gaza’s cultural heritage
