Gaza's renowned bookshop destroyed by Israeli airstrike reopens
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Gaza's oldest and the biggest bookshop destroyed by the Israeli aggression reopens its doors, and the Palestinian Culture Minister says "Israel" cannot break the will of the Palestinians.
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Samir Mansour's bookshop first opened its doors 30 years ago.
A renowned bookshop in Gaza reopened Thursday, nine months after it was flattened in an Israeli airstrike during last year's Israeli aggression on the Strip.
The new Samir Mansour bookshop, funded by an international donor campaign, stands some 200 meters from the original site, which was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike on May 18 last year in the Rimal District in the west of Gaza City.
The bookshop was a go-to for everything from school texts to the Koran to Arabic translations of European literary classics.
A historic day
"It is a historic day," owner Samir Al-Mansour told AFP on Thursday. "I am very happy that we have been able to reopen the bookshop," he expressed.
The new bookshop is spread across two floors and covers 1,000 square meters, stocked with 400,000 books -- approximately four times the volume held by the old facility -- at a cost of $350,000, according to Mansour.
"Israel" cannot break Palestinians' will
Hundreds of people, including writers and the Palestinian Minister of Culture Atef Abu Seif, attended the reopening.
"The Israeli occupation can demolish a building... but it cannot break the will of the Palestinians," Seif affirmed.
The bookshop first opened its doors 30 years ago and was considered the oldest and the biggest in the Gaza Strip.
It is noteworthy that "Israel's" 11-day aggression on the long-blockaded Strip last May left more than 250 Palestinian martyred with hundreds of injuries recorded.
