In Gaza, where daily life has become a battle for survival, the stories of Palestinians who lost their homes in the midst of the genocidal war waged by Israel on the Strip 10 months ago come as a mirror-image reflecting the suffering of an entire people, carrying with it bitter human details of what it means for someone to lose their home.
The Al-Sayyid family was living in peace until that fateful night. “The night had fallen, and suddenly, we heard the sound of a huge explosion. Then the voices of the remaining neighbors shouted ‘I had to evacuate the area because there was a threat to blow up the residential tower opposite my house,’” Ahmed, the father, tells the Palestinian Information Center.
At first Ahmed’s family of a wife and seven children moved to a shelter school in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood south of Gaza City, and as the Israeli ground invasion expanded, they moved to Al-Aqsa University in Khan Younis but when the Israeli army withdrew from the city, they went back.
“I did not wait a minute after I learned of the occupation army retreat to the northern parts of Gaza Strip. Me and my brother rushed to inspect our three-story house. As soon as we arrived there, we were shocked by what happened to the place,” Ahmed told the PalestineIn formation Center Tuesday.
“I found a large part of the house destroyed by artillery shells and burning furniture. It was harsh moments. This is the first time I have faced such an experience like thousands of others who repeatedly lost their homes in previous Israeli wars.”
The man, who is in his 50s, stresses “losing a house is not an easy matter. You are not lose stones here. You feel as if someone has token you to a distant world, erasing a lifetime from your memory. In every corner of the house there are memories, feelings, emotions and life experiences.”
Israel has systematically and extensively destroyed homes in Gaza, completely destroying hundreds of thousands of housing units and in just 283 days, it has turned their owners and residents into homeless people living in tents and shelters.
Israel warplanes bomb houses over the heads of their residents resulting in their instant deaths. In many times the people mostly women and children are deeply buried in the rubble of these homes. This is not to forget the aerial bombardment of blowing up residential blocks.
Residents ask why is this happening to us? There is no need for it. International organizations protest and condemn but to no avail.
Ahmed points out the psychological and social pain is more severe than the material loss. “Many a time, my tongue twists and turns when my children ask ‘we are going to get back to our house, how long will it take to repair it, how long do we have to stay here?,” Ahmad waves his hands at a loss.
“How can children feel safe in a temporary shelter? They have lost everything, even their small toys.”
Satellite images by the United Nations Satellite Center show 35% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip are either completely destroyed or extensively damaged due to this Israeli war of annihilation. This means the number of buildings razed to the ground is 88,868.
In its last March assessment, the center used high-resolution images taken by satellites and collected on 29 February, and compared them with images taken before and after the outbreak of the war.
Dreams crushed
Whenever she remembers her home and her memories there, Aya Ahmad, is reduced to tears. “I had a private room and/or a suite. All my memories, books, and office are gone now.”
“I am a medical student at the beginning of my third year, and at the beginning of my university studies, my father prepared the second floor of our house, bought me a large collection of medical books, and prepared a special room for me with an office, on the walls of which I wrote my hopes and ambitions,” Aya told the Palestinian Center
The 23-year-old girl lives in the city of Khan Yunis, and she has never been forced to move in previous Israeli wars on Gaza, as in this war.
“This is the first time I have been displaced, and when we were forced to do so at the beginning of December 2023, we cried a lot then. We took a few of the house’s belongings in the hope that we will get back.
But this wasn’t so, its been 10 months now since the war started, it hasn’t stopped, we were not able to return to our house which we lost subsequently due to the bombing, and we lost most of our personal belongings there. We moved between tents, and we lost many loved ones, and then the destruction of the house increased our pain. My certificates, my clothes, and my memories were all crushed, and with them many dreams were lost too.”
The garden of the house was Aya’s refuge after the rigors of a long university day. She had pleasant evenings with her parents under the palm and lemon trees on summer nights. But no more, for all of the family now are sheltering in tents of those that were forcefully displaced.
“My wish was to return home, I even wanted to return to it after the occupation forces retreated from our area. At the time, it was still standing and was only partially damaged, but the occupation army returned months later and bombed.”
Aya is still confident about rebuilding her house and whatever
the occupation destroyed, despite the pain she experiences whenever she looks at pictures of her former home and the social memories of each moment there.
A UN assessment found it would need a fleet of more than 100 trucks working for 15 years to remove the 40 million tons of rubble in Gaza. Such an operation could between $500 and $600 million.
According to the assessment by the UN Environment Programme, last month, 137,297 buildings were damaged in Gaza alone not to say anything about the destroyed buildings.
Not stones!
As for Abeer Abu Salem, resident in the Beit Lahia Project in the north Gaza, the smell of gunpowder still haunts her, as if it had just happened. “I will never forget what I experienced that evening, and it cannot be erased from my memory. I cannot describe the scene because of the horror of what I saw.”
Abeer recounts what happened: “I heard the sound of an explosion and saw the walls collapsing and columns flying. I tried to escape but could not, and with the air closing in, I found myself in the second room. I cannot imagine that I am still alive. It all happened in seconds, turning my life upside down.”
Abeer stayed in the Indonesian hospital for about a month, before the occupation army forced them to flee to the south of the Gaza Strip. When asked about what it means to lose a house, she answers:
“It is not easy to lose your house you grew up in. The house is full of precious memories. We worked hard for many years so that my father could build it for us as an apartment above the family home.”
She points out the fear she experiences is not related to their ability to rebuild the house that was leveled, as much as it is to the emotional feelings of seeing what happened to the family home.
“We are now displaced. We do not know the fate that awaits us after the end of this cursed war. We cannot think about whether we will truly return to Beit Lahia or whether we will live what our ancestors lived when they forcibly left their homes 76 years ago in the Nakba of 1948 and died on “I hope to return,” she laments.
CrossFireArabia
