“It took us a few minutes to accept that this pile of rubble was our home,” said Islam Dahliz, whose family was ordered by Israeli forces to evacuate Rafah in May.
Minutes after the fighting stopped in Gaza on Sunday, Islam Dahliz and his father and brother set out for the neighborhood where they had lived until Israeli forces ordered them to leave. They were looking for the family home, but the landscape around them scrambled the senses. Familiar landmarks, streets, neighbors’ houses — everything was rubble.
Then Mr. Dahliz recognized the local wedding hall, he said, or what remained of it. That meant their home stood — had stood — behind them, in a spot they had already passed. They just hadn’t recognized it, this house that Mr. Dahliz’s father had built more than 50 years ago.
“It took us a few minutes to accept that this pile of rubble was our home,” said Mr. Dahliz, 34, who works with local aid groups. They stood there, speechless.
His 74-year-old father, Abed Dahliz, felt the wind knocked out of him, he said. His sons had to help him back to their tent to rest.
“I was shocked when I saw my entire life — everything I worked for — flattened to the ground,” said Abed Dahliz, a farmer all his life, his voice soft and trembling. “The home I spent so many years building, pouring my savings into, is gone.”
This was not the moment they had hoped for and pictured all these months, as they were forced to move from tent to tent to tent, packing up and starting over four times in all. They had imagined a return. A resumption of their lives.