[CAIRO, SciDev.Net] Two years of war have transformed Gaza beyond recognition. SciDev.Net’s coverage has documented this devastation — stories of destruction, suffering, and loss — alongside powerful accounts of resilience and scientific innovation.

As a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas comes into effect in Gaza, we look back at some of those stories.

Since October 2023, the Arabic edition of SciDev.Net has closely followed the consequences of the war on Gaza on the environment, health, and development, highlighting how science can act as a bridge between pain and recovery.

The first reports highlighted the bleak humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, when Israel cut off water, electricity, and fuel supplies, closed checkpoints to aid trucks, and plunged the area into darkness.

Families slept in hospital grounds without water, food, or power. Displaced people relied on canned food, struggling to survive amid a near total collapse of basic services.

More than 2 million residents were deprived of life’s most fundamental necessities.

Yet even in this darkness, ingenuity persisted.

In the first episode of our podcast Spark: Hope from the Heart of Crisis, we heard how Gazans had adapted to life without electricity. Residents repurposed bombed out solar panels and recycled spent batteries to power appliances and charge mobile phones.

In a later episode, the podcast highlighted how, as fuel ran out, some Gazans began converting plastic waste into usable fuel — despite the environmental and health risks — to meet their basic energy needs.

It also spotlighted scientists and engineers working on sustainable water solutions across the region. Among them was Gazan engineer Adi Al-Daghma, who helped implement small-scale desalination projects to provide clean water in the harshest conditions as his city struggled with thirst.

Two months into the war, SciDev.Net documented how the conflict had turned Gaza’s once-green farmland into a barren expanse of grey. Satellite images revealed widespread destruction: fertile soil stripped away, fields razed by military bulldozers, and erosion of fertile soil. Over 50,000 farmers had lost their livelihoods, and experts warned that the soil would need five to seven years to recover — if international aid arrived.

Amid this devastation, young engineer Yousef Abu Rabie launched a grassroots effort to revive agriculture. Using salvaged seeds and rain-fed plants, he and local farmers created a small nursery on the ruins of his home, planting in containers filled with artificial soil made from tree waste. In October 2024, Abu Rabie was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

In another hopeful gesture, the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees sent samples of indigenous seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, protecting them from extinction and preserving Palestinian agricultural heritage for future generations.

In two years of war, hospitals have collapsed under bombardment, sewage has overflowed among displaced communities, and clean water and medicines have become scarce.

SciDev.Net’s reports documented the spread of diseases such as hepatitis A and widespread diarrhoea. With limited diagnostics and dwindling antibiotics, healthcare in Gaza has become a daily struggle for survival.

As food supplies dried up and hunger set in, the situation grew even more desperate. Children lost weight daily, mothers mixed infant formula with contaminated water. The UN has since classified the crisis as a famine, with more than half a million people facing starvation — one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes of our time.

With aid only trickling in, small grassroots initiatives emerged to deliver food in bottles across the sea, but with limited success.

Education — Gaza’s traditional pillar of hope — has suffered catastrophic losses. A joint report by the University of Cambridge, the Centre for Lebanese Studies, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East found that more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s schools were damaged or destroyed, disrupting learning for over 625,000 students.

Several universities were destroyed and more than 100 senior university staff killed, while business incubators and technology centres were also put out of service.

SciDev.Net documented how artificial intelligence was deployed to identify targets, with minimal human oversight.

Experts said this systematic targeting sought to erase Gaza’s scientific and digital capabilities and obstruct its path toward self-reliance. In a wider investigation, The scientists who risk it all for research, SciDev.Net examined how the targeting of scientists is becoming a global trend.

However, despite the collapse of the education system, learning has not stopped. In tents and shelters, students continue to discuss their research projects, often without electricity or internet. The Spark podcast featured stories of young researchers who persevered in their studies, communicating with supervisors through improvised channels.

Outside Gaza, solidarity initiatives are helping bridge the academic divide. In the UK, Palestinian academic Abeer Pharaon launched the Mothers of Hind initiative to support students in Gaza and reconnect isolated universities with the global academic community.

As a ceasefire deal comes into effect in Gaza and focus turns to towards aid distribution and reconstruction, SciDev.Net will continue to explore how science, creativity, and determination can help rebuild lives.

This article was produced by SciDev.Net’s Middle East and North Africa desk and edited for brevity and clarity.