On Hani Zurob's worktable, there was a roll of adhesive tape, two cutters, a kitchen blowtorch, a magnifying glass, paintbrushes and a laptop connected to the Al-Jazeera news channel's live feed.
Since the start of the fifth Gaza war on October 7, in retaliation for the bloodbath caused by Hamas in southern Israel, the visual artist who is originally from the Palestinian coastal enclave but has lived in France for almost 20 years, has been unable to take his eyes off the images of his homeland. The small ground-floor studio apartment he uses as an art studio in the 14th arrondissement of Paris echoed with the sound of Israeli bombardments, the cries of the grief-stricken population and the horrified comments of the Qatari channel's correspondents.
Zurob, aged 47, with his graying beard and coal-black eyes, paid particular attention to the banner at the bottom of the Al-Jazeera screen, which lists the day's victims, petrified at the thought of seeing a family member's name. They live in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. "I haven't had any news for 40 hours now," he said flatly. "The last sign of life was a text message from my niece. I'm like a zombie. I've never felt so alone in my life."
By the 19th day of the war, the shelling of the Gaza Strip had caused more than 6,500 deaths, the vast majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Gazan health ministry, which is run by Hamas. Eighty-one Palestinians were also killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank. The Hamas offensive against adjacent areas in Gaza left 1,400 people dead, again mostly civilians, according to the Israeli authorities.
At the other end of Paris, in the 18th arrondissement, another ground-floor studio was home to another Gazan artist, 56-year-old Taysir Batniji. Here too, dramatic images from Al-Jazeera, broadcast on a computer screen, took over the entire space, despite being cluttered with creative tools, such as canvases, pencils, photos and paint pots. "I know the Gaza sky by heart; its colors, its light," said Batniji. "It's the one you see in the Al-Jazeera correspondents' live broadcasts, shot from the roof of a building. But this sky is the only reference point I have left. When the camera comes back down to the ground, I don't recognize anything anymore, it's too destroyed."
Zurob and Batniji are part of the micro-community of Gazan creators who started to settle in France in the early 2000s following in the footsteps of painter Samir Salameh, who died in 2018 and who split his time between Ramallah and Sarthe. The small troupe also includes Paris-based painters Shadi Alzaqzouq and May Murad, opera composer Moneim Adwan, who lives in Aix-en-Provence, Marseille-based filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, and painter Mohammed Joha, who also lives in Marseille.
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