GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The only grand piano in the Gaza Strip is debuting to the public for the first time in over a decade after its restoration.
Japanese and local artists played the piano and sang to a rapt audience Sunday at a theater nestled in the Palestinian Red Crescent Society's building.
The Japanese government donated the piano 20 years ago. But a 2014 Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza destroyed the theater that housed it. The piano survived but was unplayable and left in the abandoned theater.
A Belgian charity, Music Fund, sent in experts to restore the piano after it was discovered. The four-year project was completed last month.
The piano survived three wars and a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza since the Islamic militant Hamas group assumed power in 2007.
