Fadi Rafiq Assaf, 35, said he has lost dozens of family members since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023. Via ABC News
(GAZA) — Fadi Rafiq Assaf, 35, once a businessman who bought and sold clothes, stood amid the rubble of his past life in Beit Lahia in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. His home, his family, his entire world — gone in an instant during the first months of war between Israel and Hamas.
Now, as the future of the territory is debated amid ceasefire negotiations, he says he wishes to leave the strip.
“I want to get out of Gaza by any means,” Assaf told ABC News after returning to the ruins of his family house earlier this month.
On Dec. 3, 2023, an Israeli airstrike reduced his five-story home in Beit Lahia to debris, burying 54 members of his family beneath it, he said. Among those killed were his wife, his sons, his parents, his brothers and their wives, his nieces and nephews and his cousins, Assaf said.
The deaths coincided with the Israeli Defense Forces’ expansion of its campaign in Gaza after the worst terror attack in Israeli history, with strikes targeting Hamas in “every part” of the strip, IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that day.
Burying his family with his bare hands
Only two other of Assaf’s family members survived the strike on the house, he said — his 37-year-old brother, Shadi, and his 16-year-old son, Baraa. But Shadi’s survival came at a cruel price: He suffered a spinal cord injury, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Assaf has become his caretaker since the injury. He said he has asked for help from his relatives to take care of his teenage son so he can focus on his brother’s situation.
After the strike on his house, Assaf said he retrieved 24 of those who were killed from beneath the rubble and buried them with his bare hands in a nearby plot of land. The other 30 family members remain entombed under the debris to this day, he said.
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health says more than 48,000 people have died and 111,000 injured in Gaza since the start of hostilities, many of them women and children.
Israel maintains that it had been targeting Hamas and members of the terror group used civilian structures, like hospitals, as bases. As a result, many targets with civilians were hit including hospitals, apartment buildings and schools, resulting in an outcry from people in the region and members of the international community.
With no time, space or safety to process the tragedy, Assaf said he had to travel about 7 km, or a little over 4 miles, to the south on foot, carrying his injured and disabled brother on his back and crossing through military checkpoints and war-torn roads.
Once they got to Khan Younis’ European Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip, they waited three months for a promised medical transfer abroad, Assaf said. Their hope was crushed when Rafah in the south was taken over by Israeli forces, shutting all crossings. Then, the hospital itself became a death trap with military forces advancing, Assaf said, adding that they became the last people evacuated to another hospital.
They eventually went back to the north around mid-February in a car after the IDF opened the roads to the north in the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. They currently live in a donated tent in the north, just 300 meters — around 300 yards — from the ruins of their former home, knowing that bodies of 30 other family members are still buried underneath. But there are no resources to retrieve the bodies, Assaf said.
Assaf said he’s not sure if the bodies of the family members he buried are still resting at the same place. He showed ABC News the makeshift graves he dug for those he had buried, pointing out that the area was later bulldozed, erasing his family members’ final resting places.
“Now they have no markers, no existence,” he said, staring at the flattened plot of land.
‘I want to sleep in peace’
Since a ceasefire deal was reached in January, about 650,000 displaced Palestinians had returned to their homes in Gaza City and north of Gaza City, the Hamas-run Gaza Government Media Office told ABC News.
The fate of Gaza has been discussed at length, including a proposal from President Donald Trump to remove residents from Gaza and redevelop the land, a proposal that drew widespread backlash, with some calling it ethnic cleansing.
Asked about the proposal, Assaf said he would be “the first person to leave,” adding he would never return.
“I want to treat my brother and live with my son in peace, I want to sleep in peace,” he said.
Struggling to put his feelings into words, he said he found himself in pain. “Fatigue. Loss. Pain. As if the war started today. I have lost myself,” Assaf said.
Assaf is not the only one willing to leave Gaza. There are other Gazans who shared with ABC News their interest in pursuing a life outside of the strip, as they have lost everything.
Omar Dogmash, a 24-year-old law master’s student, said Gaza feels like a “swamp” to him and he wants to leave.
“I don’t just hope to leave Gaza, I really want to get out of this swamp. Gaza is now a swamp that is not suitable for life, for education or even for establishing a simple future of dreams,” Omar told ABC News on Wednesday.
He said he is waiting and closely following the news on opening the registration process for immigration to Canada. “That can help me leave and complete my life and education and career there,” he added.
About 90% of the 2.1 million people who were living in Gaza prior to the war have been displaced, according to the United Nations. While Assaf and Dogmash share a willingness to relocate, many Palestinians interviewed by ABC News have said they yearn to rebuild Gaza for themselves, the only place they say they have or will ever call home.
“The land of Palestine, for the people of Palestine forever, and we will not be able to leave it no matter what happens,” Suad Al-Nairab, an elderly woman based in Gaza City, told ABC News.
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