Gaza TV drama – lambasted in Israel, mixed reception in Gaza
Iyad Nassar, Menna Shalabi, and director Peter Mimi on the set of Sohab Al-Ard in Egypt, February 2026
Shimaa Elyoussef writes in +972 on 17 March 2026:
Ansam Al-Kitaa was in Gaza City when she saw the trailer for “Sohab Al-Ard” (“People of the Land”), an Egyptian TV series made especially for Ramadan. As the first frames appeared on her phone, she began to cry. “It was not just scenes on a screen,” she told +972. “It was a mirror reflecting the pain we live with every day.”
Al-Kitaa watched all 15 episodes from her home near the “Yellow Line,” which marks the edge of Israel’s occupation of more than half of Gaza since the so-called ceasefire in October. Despite repeated interruptions due to nearby shelling, demolitions, and a weak internet connection, she consumed the show in a matter of days.
As a working journalist, Al-Kitaa has spent months documenting Israel’s massacres in Gaza — collecting interview testimony, photographing destroyed landscapes, and filming the daily lives of survivors. The new series promised to do what she has been trying to for over two years: show the genocide to millions of people who did not see it for themselves.
“I felt for the first time that this pain would not remain trapped in tents, destroyed alleyways, and ruined houses,” she said. “Perhaps our tears behind the camera lens will find their echo in a dramatic scene, or a dialogue that rattles the heart of a distant viewer, embodying even a small part of this suffering.”
Indeed, this is the show’s intention. Mohammed Al-Diasty, who pitched the series to the United Media Services company — a conglomerate responsible for nearly 70 percent of Egyptian dramas — believed that creating a realistic portrayal of daily life in the Strip could humanize Gazans’ experiences since the start of the war. “The series seeks to document the scale of the tragedy the population is living, and how they remained steadfast despite losing the basics of life,” he told +972.