Tareq S. Hajjaj
Mondoweiss / June 17, 2023
Many in Gaza have had their houses destroyed multiple times during Israeli attacks over the last 15 years. Some families still in debt from rebuilding their home the first time, now find themselves having to rebuild again.
Yahiya Abu Obeid, 55, sits with his two sons and several relatives in a tent next to his home in Dier al-Balah, southern Gaza. The view before him is of a pile of rubble that used to be home to his ten family members. He spends most of the day looking at the rubble and pacing around it. By the end of the day, he leaves for his new rented home, leaving his memories behind but carrying his anguish with him.
It’s not the first time his home has been bombed. His home was completely destroyed during the 51-day-long Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014. “I suffered through the process of rebuilding my home after Israel bombed it in 2014,” Abu Obeid tells Mondoweiss. “I built it with my sons’ sweat and hard work. I put everything into it, and it took me three years to build it stone by stone. Those years have been erased in front of my eyes.”
A total of 224 families were made homeless during the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza in May 2023. They face a long process of reconstruction that will take several years before they can resettle. According to the Gaza government’s final statistics, a total of 3,300 residential housing units were damaged or destroyed during the attack.
In the meantime, 3,840 homes continue to await reconstruction going as far back as 2008, reflecting the severe lack of funds. “We have lists of homes that were completely destroyed during the war in 2014, and we still are unable to rebuild them,” the Government Media Office said in a statement.
Waiting is suffering
Both times before the Israeli warplanes bombed Abu Obeid’s home, an unknown officer, introducing himself as “the Israeli intelligence,” called him or one of his relatives to inform him that “you have 10 minutes before we bomb your home.” It was barely enough time for them to escape with their lives. All his family owned was buried underneath the rubble, and they aren’t allowed to dig for their belongings following orders from the Gaza Construction Ministry.
“[The Israelis] called my nephew and told him to warn me and the neighborhood,” Abu Obeid says, recounting the day of the airstrike. “They said we will bomb Yahiya’s house, and told us that everywhere within a 100-meter radius needs to be evacuated because this time they will drop something heavy, not like last time.”
Abu Obeid’s nephew found him sitting with a neighbor in a crowded alley and told him about the call he had received. At first Abu Obeid did not take it seriously, but when he returned to his home, what he found shook him.
“I found my daughters and my wife running away from our home, terrified and crying,” he says. “I could not believe it, I was shocked. They were panicking and hurried to me and hugged me, and I had to calm them down,” he continues.
The family immediately left the area and watched from afar as the airstrike blew their home apart.
“When our house collapsed, my mind went blank for a while. I was not able to do or say anything, because the bomb was so massive,” Abu Obeid says.
The bomb also damaged all the surrounding buildings, pushing over 20 families to leave the area. Neither Abu Obeid nor any of his neighbors posed any threat to Israel. All the same, they barely have the resources to rebuild their homes. Waiting for reconstruction is something he has become all too familiar with.
“I waited three years after my home was destroyed in 2014 to have it rebuilt. For two of those years, I wasn’t able to pay my rent, so I went to my destroyed house and settled on the sand, and gathered pieces of fabric to cover our heads,” Abu Obeid says. “No one looked after me or my family for two whole years. We spent our nights catching ants that crawled over us at night as we slept on the ground.”
The destruction of his home also means that Abu Obeid is losing out on work because all the tools he uses for his construction job are buried under the rubble.
“I can’t understand this level of unfairness,” Abu Obeid laments. “Israel forces us to live a bitter life full of tiredness. It’s getting to us psychologically and mentally. I spent my finest years securing my family a home, and the Israelis repeatedly destroyed it. And every time I rebuild it over several years, they destroy it again. It’s like wiping out the last 20 years of my life.”
It has been one month since the most recent airstrike, and Abu Obeid has received no word about when he might be resettled. The rubble remains piled in front of him, creating the same scene he had witnessed before. “This is not the kind of life we wish to live, but the criminal occupier forces us to live this way,” he says.
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, Jawad Agha, said in a press release that the challenge to the reconstruction process is that international donor priorities have shifted in the region, leading to a delay in the reconstruction effort. Agha maintained that the delay aims to break the will of the Palestinians, and he called on donors to fulfill their pledges by concluding the Gaza reconstruction project. According to the ministry, the latest attack on Gaza caused damages exceeding 10 million dollars.
‘Just like the Nakba’
Fatima Basher, 63, and her son Sami, 31, also sit beside the rubble of their home as their children play among the ruins. As they speak, they explain that losing their home in the recent Israeli airstrike meant they were out in the street and the family would be dispersed. Their home used to house four families (a single home in Gaza often houses 3 – 4 families) and a total of 11 people. Now, every family is located in a different place.
Like Abu Obeid, this is also the second time that Basher’s family home has been bombed. After the first time, Basher’s family had to sell parts of their land to build a new house, and now that they have been twice displaced, they are facing a new obstacle — they cannot rent a house. People in the area refuse to rent to the family because they think the family is a liability since their home has already been bombed twice.
“We used to gather and see each other every morning and evening. Now we don’t know how the rest of us live,” Sami Basher says. “We couldn’t find four places for all of us in the same building to rent.”
Sami recalls the reason for the Israeli airstrike with exasperation. He had received a call from an Israeli military officer, informing him that his family must flee their home to avoid being caught in the airstrike. As for the reason — it’s because the family owned a clay oven. “During the call, the Israeli officer asked about it, and we told him that it’s an oven for cooking and baking,” Sami recalls. “But he mocked us and said it is a rocket factory and that they will bomb it.”
Sami confirms that no one in his family nor any of their relatives is affiliated with a resistance faction in Gaza. In 2014, they had received a similar phone call warning the family that their home would be bombed, but the Israelis did not give the family a time window for when they would strike. The family kept waiting, and after a month their home was bombed. It took them two years to rebuild.
Their first home was comprised of 250 square meters, but when their home was reconstructed, it was only 180 square meters. The apparent reason that was given to them was a lack of funding.
“I close my door and keep the key in my pocket even today. It’s just like the Nakba for me,” Fatima Basher says. Her son disagrees with her.
“It’s worse than the Nakba,” he insists. “These days, our homes cost us everything we have. I still have debts to pay workers who built our home after the first bombing, and I’m going to have to pay it even though the home they built has been destroyed.”
Sami considers the reason why their homes were targeted. “It seems to me that they want us to leave our lands,” he concludes, but then says defiantly: “But even if they turn our land into ashes, we will stay on it.”
Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent, and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union
