An ice cream parlour survives Gaza’s genocide and gives seven students hope

On the coastal road in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, seven university students – four in medicine, two in dentistry, one in software engineering – are behind the counter of an ice cream parlour.

One student takes the orders, hastily filling ice cream cups, adding nuts and toppings before handing them over to a line of customers with a smile. Another moves between tables in the small seating area, serving customers, while a third manages the kitchen, keeping everything in order. A fourth handles the accounts, processing every transaction electronically since cash has largely disappeared from Gaza.

Behind them all, is one of the founders, Ayyoub Abu Musleh, who is immersed in a call with a supplier, negotiating prices for raw materials that have gone up again due to Israel’s ongoing siege on the enclave.

They call themselves “the doctors”, but their regular customers have taken to calling them “the nerds”. It is a nickname the ice cream vendors wear with pride since it acknowledges their lives beyond Flora, the ice cream and juice shop they opened in March to pay for university courses they refuse to abandon.

This small business, on the Al-Rashid coastal road in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, is the only way these seven students can stay enrolled at their universities and offers hope for a better tomorrow.

Gaza’s higher education system has been largely nonoperational since the genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, with roughly 88,000 university students forced to suspend their studies due to the war.

Since then, the education system has been ruined, with 95% of all campuses in Gaza damaged or destroyed, while 195 of 206 buildings have been severely or completely destroyed, according to one 2025 report.

For most students living in the besieged enclave, continuing their education was impossible, but Flora’s founders are among the few exceptions, although their journey to establish the shop has not been easy.

Jihad al-Saqa, a 20-year-old student in his second year of medical school at Al-Azhar University, described his harrowing experiences before he founded Flora.

“I had searched for work all over al-Mawasi, where I live with my family in displacement after our house and land were struck by Israeli air strikes,” he told Al Jazeera. “The jobs I found paid poorly and demanded 12-hour shifts, which were incompatible with the dedication and focus my studies required.”

When a friend approached Al-Saqa him to join him at Flora, he didn’t think twice.

“Two months in, I’m happy and capable of balancing study and work — despite the physical and psychological exhaustion,” Al-Saqa said. He stands on his feet for around seven hours per evening shift, serving customers with a non-negotiable smile, as he describes it. Hard work certainly, but it pays his tuition fees and helps support his family

Al-Saqa was motivated to study medicine after he memorised 23 out of 30 chapters of the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

“I felt that the medical profession is of great benefit to people, that God uses you to benefit and save their lives,” he tells Al Jazeera. “That’s what drives me, as I’m seeking the reward in the afterlife, not the worldly one,” he humbly adds.

‘A project born through blood’

After the war began, Qassem al-Agha, the only software engineering student in the group and one of Flora’s three co-founders, found it impossible to attend classes at the Islamic University of Gaza.

His father’s income, which supports his family of five children, was slashed to $200 a month, not enough to pay for Al-Agha’s university fees, while their family home was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, adding a further burden on the family.

Al-Agha then set out on a series of jobs and enterprises to support himself, including a clothing shop and vegetable stall. He then sold cold drinks at a kiosk until Gaza’s famine in 2025 saw demand collapse and the business die.

That is when the idea of Flora came about, costing more than $25,000 to build. Al-Agha borrowed from his uncle and a friend, his mother sold a gold bracelet she had kept since her wedding in 2004, worth $1,000, to help the idea of the ice cream parlour to be realised.

“I was so sad watching my mother sell a beautiful memory of her life,” al-Agha said. “But she insisted, so I could find work and return to university.”

The team retrieved old tiles, reinforced iron and timber from their destroyed homes near the “Yellow Line” in al-Qarara, north of Khan Younis, to help with construction of the parlour. It was a difficult task fraught with danger and a daily confrontation with death for the students, Al-Agha remembers.

“A drone followed us near our homes, we barely escaped. My uncle Bassem al-Saqa, 45-years-old, was killed that day on March 3, 2026,” he said.

Ultimately, Flora opened on March 19, the culmination of a desperate situation and a determination to live through the genocide in Gaza with dignity.

“Our project was born through blood, hardship, and accumulated debt,” al-Agha, says as he hands over an ice cream to another customer

“[But] Flora is not just a project, it is life, hope and a future for everyone who works here.”

‘Challenges don’t compare with war’

Running the ice cream shop isn’t without challenges, but Ahmed Shabir, a dentistry student at Al-Azhar University, says they still do not compare to what the war put them through.

Shabir was only 18 when in January 2024, Israeli tanks invaded the Amal neighbourhood of western Khan Younis, shortly after he moved his mother and siblings to al-Mawasi. He rushed back home to stay with his father, who is disabled but had no wheelchair.

“I refused to abandon my father, even as the tanks rolled in. For three days, I was used by Israeli soldiers as a human shield during raids on homes and streets in the neighbourhood — hungry, thirsty. I was certain I would not survive,” he told Al Jazeera.

“So, when we struggle to source ingredients, or get much-needed equipment, it doesn’t compare to being a human shield, or to before that, when I tried to move the wounded before they died and came back with my clothes soaked in their blood. We have no choice but to succeed.”

To achieve success, Shabir recognises that, as a business, the product has to stand on its own. “The admiration for what we’re doing won’t last forever. What sustains it is the quality,” he said.

The shop sells ice cream, fresh juices, cake, knafeh and other sweets, with prices ranging from $1 to $7 – competitive, by al-Mawasi standards.

Ayyoub Abu Musleh, who handles accounts and customer reception, says he went into medicine after his experiences at the European Hospital in Gaza, where his mother Wafaa works as a nurse. “As a child, I sat in doctors’ chairs and was called ‘doctor’,” he said.

His father is supporting three medical students: Abu Musleh himself, in his first year at Al-Azhar; his brother Mohammed, in his second year at the Islamic University of Gaza; and his sister Minnatallah, in her fourth year at Port Said University in Egypt. Due to the financial burden, Abu Musleh had to defer his current semester.

He came close to death in his pursuit for knowledge before. On July 7, 2025, after the Ministry of Education announced the start of online Tawjihi registration, Abu Musleh and some friends returned to Khan Younis to retrieve schoolbooks from the rubble of their destroyed homes.

On his way back, a drone struck, killing his 24-year-old friend Adi al-Najili. The blast threw Abu Musleh dozens of metres away but potentially saved his life, as a second strike hit the spot where he was standing seconds earlier. A third drone dropped four bombs nearby and he lay on the ground bleeding for three hours until a passer-by returned with a donkey cart and took him and his friend’s body to safety.

“After all of this, can we be defeated by any challenge?” he says. “Will we surrender to the difficulty of paying university fees when we almost paid with our lives to get our books? Of course not. We may be delayed. But we will not be defeated.”

Saleh al-Abadla, who manages procurement and supply, keeps a small notebook recording every expense and every shekel that comes in. He also works on improving the menu and consulting anyone with experience in the food business for tips.

The shop’s debt load is substantial — almost the entire cost of establishing Flora was borrowed — and he knows it will take time to clear. But the Deir al-Balah municipal elections, and Flora’s modest daily revenue are seen by these students as evidence that institutions built under pressure can stand firm.

“Self-reliance is no longer a choice in Gaza,” al-Abadla says. “It is a necessity. No one knows where Gaza is headed, or whether we will be able to keep studying. So we build what we can, now, with what we have.”

Yasmine Madi, a nurse at an Italian clinic in al-Mawasi, brings colleagues to Flora and tells everyone she knows about this remarkable ice cream parlour, offering Palestinians in Gaza a respite from the genocide.

“It’s not just to support future doctors, the place is calm, the service is excellent, the products are delicious,” she said. “These young men are models that should be followed.”