In the heart of Gaza, where rubble replaces homes and dreams are rebuilt from ashes, former international athlete Youssef Abu Simaan stands unyielding. Offered safety, comfort, and a life abroad, he chose instead to remain where his heart beats loudest—on the soil of Palestine.

Once a coach at Qatar’s prestigious Al Sadd Club and a physical education teacher in Doha, Abu Simaan returned to Gaza just before the latest war erupted. He could have left. With Qatari residency granting him access to over a hundred countries, he could have spared himself the bombs and grief. But he stayed. He stayed to defy a strategy aimed at uprooting an entire people.

Now living in a tent in Al-Mawasi, Abu Simaan has traded medals for firewood, and competition tracks for lines of displaced civilians waiting for water. The pain of loss is constant—his home in Al-Karama obliterated, his brother, a fellow coach, killed by an Israeli strike, and his father dying in displacement. Yet his resolve is intact.

“Leaving is easy,” he said, “but exile is a slow death. We belong here. We are not leaves to be scattered by the wind.”

Abu Simaan’s story is one of countless others in Gaza—stories of refusal, of staying, not because it is easy, but because it is right. In every footstep he takes across the ruins of Gaza, he carries a message: Palestine is not for sale, and dignity will not be negotiated.