Gaza beekeeper Ibrahim al-Dabba resumes rooftop beekeeping after war damage

Perched on the edge of a rooftop high above Gaza City's bombed-out landscape, Ibrahim al-Dabba lovingly tends his community of bees, cultivating a rare source of hope among the ruins of the Israel-Hamas war. Al-Dabba and his sons, donning protective netted hats and wielding metal bee smokers, gently inspect the neat rows of teeming hives.

Perched on the edge of a rooftop high above Gaza City's bombed-out landscape, Ibrahim al-Dabba lovingly tends his community of bees, cultivating a rare source of hope among the ruins of the Israel-Hamas war.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Perched on the edge of a rooftop high above Gaza City's bombed-out landscape, Ibrahim al-Dabba lovingly tends his community of bees, cultivating a rare source of hope among the ruins of the Israel-Hamas war. Al-Dabba and his sons, donning protective netted hats and wielding metal bee smokers, gently inspect the neat rows of teeming hives. As each frame of honeycomb is lifted out, hundreds of bees buzz lazily above the shattered urban neighborhood — an incongruous setting for an apiary, but one the veteran beekeeper had little option but to choose. Al-Dabba, who heads the Beekeepers Cooperative in the Gaza Strip, said the war which erupted in October 2023 obliterated the Palestinian territory's beekeeping culture. "We had more than 40,000 beehives and more than 450 beekeepers" before the war, he told AFP from the rooftop in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. "The situation was good, with more than 1,000 families making a living through the beekeeping sector," he added. "The war came and destroyed the beekeeping sector by more than 95 percent becau