Gaza farmer returns to the grapevines he couldn’t bear to abandon

Gaza City, Gaza Strip - It's 4am, and Gaza is still dark and quiet. But Khaled Abu Madeen has a routine, one that he has recently picked up again after being forced to abandon it over nearly three years of war.

He walks between the rows of grapevines in Sheikh Ijlin, in the southwestern corner of Gaza City, alongside his workers, checking the fruit and cutting bunches from the vines that have survived Israel's genocidal war.

The early morning air is cooler. The first light begins to spread across the vineyard, revealing rows of green that, for a time, Khaled feared he might never see again.

For Khaled, who is 50, this year is more than a harvest. It is the return of a life he thought he had lost.

“I feel like I have returned to my soul,” he says, as he works among the vines.

His family has cultivated grapes and figs in Sheikh Ijlin for generations. The land was inherited from his father and grandfather, and Khaled eventually made farming his full-time profession, leaving behind a career in project management.

Then, in October 2023, the war began. Khaled had the opportunity to leave. His wife is Lebanese-Italian, and Khaled himself had previously studied in Italy, earning an undergraduate and a postgraduate degree.

Moving to safety in Italy made sense. But that would mean abandoning his vineyards, and Khaled couldn't do it.

For the first few months of the war, Khaled stayed in Gaza City, refusing to leave despite the danger.

His wife and children were eventually evacuated to Italy. Khaled stayed behind, trying to remain close to the land and his elderly mother.

Then the Israeli strikes moved closer. He says he received a call ordering him to leave immediately, with a threat that the house would be bombed if he did not.

"I had no choice," Khaled recounts. "I left with my mother and fled to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza."

Away from his vineyards, Khaled says, his thoughts remained fixed on what was happening to his land.

Despite the great danger - northern Gaza, including Gaza City, has been devastated by Israeli forces in the war - he tried more than once to get back.

During one attempt, he went with two workers to check the fields. Israeli forces opened fire, he says, injuring one of the workers.

“We ran away from the shooting,” Khaled recalls. “We stayed for hours until we were able to rescue him after he had lost a lot of blood.”

And yet, despite that experience, Khaled couldn't get the thought out of his head: He had to return to his vines.