Inside a Gaza building with battle, displaced families tell the story of war

The ski building, a quiet road near Omar Al Muhtar Street in Western Gaza City, was a familiar view of Gaza’s lovers.

The street with trees moving to her was once a favorite place to court couples, eager to avoid Gaza’s socially conservative gaze.

But the road, called the “amateur street” Street, the six-storey building that looks at it, is now surrounded by ruins. Few residents remain who remember the old times. Those who are hiding here now do not move from the disapproval of gas, but from the Israeli tanks.

The Gaza War left this once -a -gauge neighborhood in Ruini. The smart shops and restaurants moving to the beach are already full of shrapnel and bullet holes, the park with their French trees is buried under gray ruins.

The Skeik building itself is still standing, but its walls are already sprayed by shrapnel and a large artillery size hole has been pierced over the top floor. Its pre -war persons, replaced by constantly changing candy by displaced people.

Two years after the Gaza War began, this building offers a momentary photo of how the conflict erodes ties with home and community among Gaza people and what impact was.

Previous tenants of the Skik building have long gone. Above the warehouses on the ground floor, eight of the 10 apartments of the building have become temporary homes for families displaced by the war.

Twenty -six -year -old Hindale Dabba lives on the fourth floor with her husband and three young children: nine -year -old Judy, six -year -old Murad and two -year -old Mohammed.

The family arrived here two months ago, paying 1000 shekels ($ 305; 227 pounds) a month to camp in the empty rooms.

“The people who were here before us left because it was dangerous,” Hayndale said. “Shrapnel hits the walls here, but it’s still better than a tent.”

Several family belongings are neatly stored in piles of bags on the walls. The torn sheets cover the gaping holes where the windows were. This is the 12th place where the family has moved.

“When I loaded our belongings on a stroller, I put my children on top of everything and tell them to play with the objects like the kitchen,” Hindale told me. “I tell them we will live a different life a little away from the one we had.”

The family home is less than a mile, in the neighborhood of Al Tufa in Gaza. They fled during the first week of the war after the apartment of a relative over their were struck.

They returned a few months later. But on March 15, 2024, a blow to the building adjacent to them killed Hadele’s mother -in -law, injured the three children and buried Hadeal’s wife alive.

“We spent hours searching for him and found him under the ruins,” she said.

Her husband in El-Din was unconscious. He was taken to Al-Shifa Hospital, where Hindale tells her that she was told that her husband had a skull fracture and was in a coma.

Three days later, he was still treated when Israel sealing the hospital and began a two-week military operation there to eradicate Hamas command posts, the statement said.

It was only when the forces of the Israeli finally withdrew, did Hayndale reunite with her husband, fragile but alive.

Hadel told us that he still needed regular medical examinations. “I took him to a neurologist (in the town of Gaza) before, but six weeks ago all the doctors moved south,” she said.

The home is not just shelter or belongings. All three families we talked to in the ski building had been moving many times over.

“None of my neighbors are my neighbors anymore, because the new people come every month,” Hayndale said. “I don’t even know where my original neighbors were – some went south, some were killed or injured. No longer neighbors.”

On the day our colleague met with Haydale, Gaza City was emptying again, as hundreds of thousands of people headed to more festive areas south.

The Israeli army, advanced through the city, had issued a “last warning” to leave. But the families we talked to were planning to remain placed.

While Hadel was talking to our operator, a series of explosions echoed through the apartment.

Through the windows, huge gray clouds rose to the average distance.

None of her young sons even trembled.

The Skeik building was built in 2008, on the back of the construction boom that swept the city of Gaza in the mid-1990s. Main place in the immediate vicinity of the American International School and a block of the Palestinian Parliament – both in ruins.

It was this central place, near the main Omar Al Muhtar Street, that put the ski building on the path of Israeli tanks during the first months of the war.

Al-Shifa Hospital lies on two blocks to the north. Within weeks after the invasion, Israel’s army moved to capture the complex, saying it was used as a Hamas base.

The troops approached several directions, including the roads around Omar Al Muhtar Street.

A large rectangular hole in the wall is blown up near the back of the Skeik building. Inside, Jewish graffiti is “The Last Samurai” – a reference to a 19th -century Japanese Hollywood movie, ahead of contemporary weapons.

We asked Israel’s army if its forces once used the building or fought there. We didn’t get an answer.

But the owner of the Shaker Skik building told us that the block was used as an observer of Israeli troops during operations.

And Israel said he had hit several compounds used by the Palestinian snipers in the area in March.

The ground forces remained in the town of Gaza for months during the first months of the war, launching a second attack on Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024 while Hadel’s husband treated inside.

With such a quick turnover of the residents, no one in the building now remembers what happened in those early months of the war.

But the fighting still continues around him.

In the apartment over Hadeale, 59-year-old Muna Amen Shabet plays with her grandchildren under large bullets holes drilled in the wall.

“Two days ago, the bullets hit here, inside the building,” she explained. “I grabbed the kids and ran with them where it was more fierce. We sat there and prayed to God that it would be fine. The children were horrified.”

Muna is also from Al Tufa neighborhood. She has been living here since August with her husband, three of her children and her grandchildren. They do not pay rent. The family lost everything, says Muna when their home was destroyed for weeks in the war.

“They leveled the whole zone of Al Tufa-all, no house was left,” she said. “We start life again, collect a spoonful of a spoon, a plate on a plate. Hunger comes, and we eat pigeons and live on wild green,” she told us. “After two years of war, I say I’m not alive, I’m one of the dead.”

Another resident, from the northern city of Bate Lahia, told us that his area was already a “wasteland” after Israel’s army destroyed it on the ground. “There are no houses left or even any signs to tell you that there was once a neighborhood here,” he said.

The UN says 90% of Gaza’s residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed. Whole neighborhoods – with their shared history, family relationships and social support – demolished.

But the idea of ​​the home is more difficult to destroy than bricks and mortar.

When our operator visits Muna’s apartment, two of her granddaughters paint a photo. This is an idyllic image of the book of the history of a house less and neatly, with a sloping roof with a red tile. The sun is perched on the horizon, the sky is pink and blue, there are trees and plants.

It looks like nothing where they live.

And the widespread destruction of housing and communities often meant families split to survive.

Of the five sons of Mun, two moved south, another went to stay with his laws. The others, she says, have come and go. Even she and her husband spent months before moving to the skiing building while Muna sheltered with relatives.

The enlarged family that once surrounded her and anchored her world is falling apart.

“We are scattered. The separation is the most difficult,” she said. “Life is carried away. My health is gone. Our home has disappeared, and the most expensive people in our hearts have disappeared – nothing is left for us.”

It’s a feeling that the al-Ansari is shawl knowing well.

Initially by Bate Lahia, now destroyed on the ground, he told us that his mother and sister were sleeping on the street in the southern Gaza while Shaukat lived with his wife and seven children on the first floor of the skiing building.

Four months ago, his brother disappeared.

“He went to take flour from the house of one of our laws in Sherjea (on the northern end of Gaza). We still don’t know what happened to him. We were looking everywhere, but we couldn’t find him.”

The constant stroke of people who move in search of food, safety or shelter make it difficult to maintain families together.

“We lived well before,” Shaukat said. “Now my brother is missing and we are all stuck in different places.”

One by one, the anchors that keep people on the spot – home, community, family – were loosened by the constant eradication of the population of gas and the destruction of its neighborhoods and streets.

Now, sitting in the empty concrete rooms of the Skeik building, Shawkat also watches the future slip away. His children did well at school before the war, he says, but now they forget how to read and count.

The constant movement freezes their lives.

Days later we received a call from Hadeel. She and several other families in the skiing building were back on the move.

The Israeli forces had launched smoke bombs in the area, she told us to signal that they would enter.

“We didn’t see the tanks last night,” she said, “But if we don’t leave now, tomorrow we will wake up to them.”

Hindale packed as we talked, planning to join his brother nearby before trying to head south together.

“We will stay on the street and live in a tent,” she said. “No matter what we do, nothing will restore what is inside us. My children are no longer my children. Now there is more suffering than innocence.”

Throughout the gas, the buildings left standing have become transit centers for families, then separated from the war.

If the negotiations succeed, peace can end their trips and reconstruction can bring them a different type of future.

But their old life is behind them.

This war has erased the way to the past.

Additional reporting from colleagues of Aamir Peerzada and Gaza. Design by the BBC visual journalism team.