London, United Kingdom – Ali Abu Yassin, a playwright from Gaza who continued writing even as Israel’s genocidal campaign devastated the world around him, has won a prestigious award in London. The 62-year-old began writing plays and mastering the oud as a teenager in al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza, one of the largest in the Strip and a target of recent attacks. After the war began in October, 2023, Abu Yasin stopped writing plays and instead wrote about life under Israeli bombardment.
Abu Yasin said for the first two years, he wrote about the situation in Gaza as Palestinians fled and feared for their lives. Since 2023, Israel has killed more than 74,000 people in Gaza and the majority of survivors have been displaced several times over. Abu Yasin works with actors who now rehearse their lines in makeshift tents, against the sound of gunfire.
I saw people around me die. We lived by chance, and those who died, died by chance,” Abu Yasin told Al Jazeera. So, during those two years, I was trying just to provide some safety to my family.
To protect them from famine. And to document what was happening, so the world can hear my voice before I die.” After a break, he wrote several screenplays that he hid and carried with him throughout displacement. In 2004, Abu Yasin began working with the Said Al-Mishal Theatre, a hub for Palestinian culture in Gaza City that was levelled in a 2018 Israeli bombing.
Leading playwrights and theatre directors described the attack as “obliteration of this symbol of Palestinian culture and identity” in a letter to The Guardian newspaper. In 2008, Abu Yasin began writing the Gaza Monologues, a series illustrating life in Gaza, both moments of joy and of pain. A few weeks ago, Abu Yasin left Gaza with the support of an artist residency programme in France.
The war lives in me, Gaza lives in me,” he said. He has found himself conserving small amounts of water and minimising waste, habits he developed by living through the humanitarian crisis. The award ceremony aligns with his trip to France, allowing him to attend in person largely by fortunate coincidence.
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