Returning to Gaza City, a family finds bulldozed graves and little hope

Hiba and Mohammad have suffered immensely during Israel’s war on Gaza, and have little to look forward to.

Gaza City – Hiba al-Yazji and her husband Mohammad have been through hell and back in the past two years. They have lost dozens of family members – killed in Israeli attacks. Their homes are gone. They’ve been forced into displacement multiple times. And now they’re waiting, not sure what the future will bring them and their 10-year-old daughter, Iman.

The family arrived back in northern Gaza last Saturday, a few days after the Gaza ceasefire began, but just a day before Israeli attacks threatened to collapse the deal.

Hiba says she was sorting through her scattered belongings beside her tent when she heard explosions in the distance, and wondered whether the war had returned. That would likely force the family back south, repeating a journey they have taken again and again during the war.

“We honestly don’t understand anything any more,” Hiba told media days later, as she pulled up a chair and sat atop the mound of sand where her family’s tent was pitched.

So far, the ceasefire has largely held since the heavy outbreak of violence last Sunday, when Israel killed at least 42 people.

But Hiba and Mohammad have suffered so much over the past two years that their uncertainty over the future is understandable.

The couple had stayed in northern Gaza when the war started. But less than two months into it, that decision cost them dearly.

“I lost my entire family: my father, my mother, all my siblings. My husband, who is also my cousin, lost his entire family too,” she said, tears filling her eyes as Mohammad sat beside her in silence, his own eyes red.

The strike killed 60 members of their extended family.

“Almost my entire family was wiped out: my mother, father, my six siblings, their spouses, and their children. My wife’s family, too – her parents, siblings and their children. My uncles and their families were all killed,” Mohammad said.

In total, Mohammad lost 36 relatives, including his parents, six siblings and their children and wives.

Hiba lost her parents, four siblings and two nieces in the same strike.

To compound matters, Hiba’s younger brother, who survived the initial attack, was killed a month later in particularly harrowing circumstances.

Family killed

Israeli tanks advanced near the home of a relative that Hiba and Mohammad had moved into after the first attack.

“We ran – me, my husband, my daughter and my brother – to a nearby house and hid in the basement. At that moment, the tanks were firing at anyone who moved. My brother was shot directly in the back.”

Her voice trembled as she added, “His body stayed with us, beside us, for four more days while we were trapped.”

“No water, no food, nothing. But fear controlled us so completely that we couldn’t think of anything else. We were just waiting to die at any moment.”

When the tanks finally withdrew, the family left their hiding place and buried her brother’s body nearby.

“After all this, do you think we still want to live?” Hiba asked, her tears flowing freely.

To an outsider, the losses Hiba and Mohammad have suffered are almost incomprehensible. Even with the war declared over, it is not something they can simply move on from.

“I wanted to die,” she said. “My husband and I are like branches cut off from a tree. We live with unbearable pain. I wished a strike had taken us too. Surviving feels like a punishment.”

In September, the couple left Gaza City to go south, as Israeli tanks approached. But they found life there in the displacement camps, away from everything they knew, to be unbearable.

And with the Israeli advance on Gaza City called off as a result of the ceasefire, they decided to return.

But nothing prepared them for what they would find.

“All our family homes were destroyed, even the house we recently moved into, my wife’s family’s home, was gone. Our cars, our wedding hall business, all flattened,” said Mohammad, whose family was known for real estate in Gaza.

The couple’s greatest shock came when they discovered that the graves of their relatives, buried near their home, had been bulldozed and their remains scattered.