Israeli Forces Bomb, Loot, Vandalize Our Homes in Gaza. We Long for Normal Life.

Part of the Series

Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation

Your home is not just a building. It is a space carefully crafted by your family — a place that witnessed your first steps, heard your whispers, and held your laughter and tears. It is the place where your childhood lives.

Every room tells a tale. A nook holds old toys. There’s a window where the morning sun kissed your face, and the threshold you crossed thousands of times.

Imagine a peaceful neighborhood around your home — a narrow, quiet street shaded by olive trees whose branches stretch to cover the sidewalks. You have neighbors who are like family, exchanging greetings and stories. Children play and laugh in the alleys. Every evening, the scent of taboon bread fills the air, and the call to prayer echoes gently, giving the neighborhood a feeling of peace and timelessness.

This home, in the heart of this neighborhood, is more than just a shelter — it is a part of you.

Now imagine that in a single moment, it all turns to dust.

A Home in Nuseirat

Aya Adnan Ibrahim Al-Derawi is a 20-year-old medical laboratory student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Aya is my dear friend, and she shared with me this story of her family’s home.

Their house in Nuseirat had a small courtyard with a lemon tree, a rooftop where laundry swayed in the wind, and windows that caught the first light of morning. But on December 12, 2023, an Israeli airstrike reduced it to rubble and ashes.

“We had a safe, warm home that held us all together, standing proudly in a four-story building,” Aya said. “Everything disappeared, except the loss — a loss that never leaves, haunting every moment of our days.”

Since that day, Aya’s family members have been wanderers, searching for shelter while trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their souls and fragmented memories.

That tragic day, Aya lost not only her home but also her older brother, Yasser Adnan Al-Derawi. She speaks of him with deep love and respect: “My brother was a lawyer — kind, gentle, and honorable,” she told me. “His face was always cheerful, his spirit light and beloved by all who knew him. He was the calm that chased away every fear.”

We are not just mourning lost buildings or material possessions. We long for the quiet comfort of days when we did not have to count the seconds between bombs.

She emphasized that Yasser’s loss was not just the absence of a person: “It was the loss of a whole world — safety, love, and brilliant legal work. His presence was peace on Earth, a beacon in darkness.”

Yasser’s passing took him to a place of eternal peace, but the weight of his absence crushes Aya’s spirit daily.

“I carry the heaviness of longing — I fight the feelings of loss, the dark days, the burning of my soul, and the sharp sting of missing him.”

She pleaded to God, “We accepted, though it was hard to accept; so please be pleased with us and take care of us.”

Aya told me that when the house collapsed, taking her brother’s life, something inside her broke beyond repair. “It felt as if my heart was homeless, the Earth became too small, and the sky drifted far away.”

Yet, despite all the rubble, Aya still sees her home clearly in her mind: a refuge, a source of peace, and the most precious place she can never replace.

A Home in Khan Younis

Islam Abu Mohsen, a 24-year-old civil engineering student from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, told me about his life before everything changed. He works as a digital content creator and is a professional trainer in barista skills — a young man trying to build a future amid the ruins.

He described his home in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in Khan Younis — a modern, beautifully designed house, with large windows that filled every room with sunlight. “The area was very lively,” he told me, “close to malls, restaurants, and schools. It was safe — relatively safe — and we lived surrounded by a warm family atmosphere, despite all the harsh conditions in Gaza.”

Islam shared how everyday life inside that home was stable and peaceful. “Each of us had our own daily routine. I was focused on my engineering studies, working on digital content, and training others in barista arts. Every day, we gathered around the dinner table — laughing, sharing stories, trying to hold on to a sense of normalcy. The house had a soul; it was a place of safety, comfort, and beautiful memories.”

Then came the devastating night of October 14, 2023. Islam described it vividly: “At 7:00 pm, suddenly the whole area was engulfed in a ring of fire. The smoke was suffocating; we literally felt like we were choking. We couldn’t understand what was happening. Ambulances couldn’t reach us — it was as if our neighborhood had vanished from the map.”

He described his family’s final moments in the house. “We were sitting at the dining table, cooking pasta, ready to eat — and then the bombing started. We never finished our meal,” he told me. “The pasta tray remained untouched for more than five months. When we finally returned, it was rotten.”

The losses went far beyond food. The house had been looted. The walls were covered with mocking graffiti drawn by Israeli soldiers. “It hurt deeply,” Islam said, “but I tried to stay patient and trust in God’s justice. It was not just material loss.”

Thankfully, no one in his family or neighborhood was physically harmed, but the psychological wounds ran deep. “The fear and shock affected us all profoundly. We live with constant anxiety now because of what happened.”

After losing their home, Islam and his family first took shelter in a school, then moved to a tent in Khan Younis, where they lived for five difficult months.

Islam’s story reveals a harsh truth: Families that once lived comfortably in Gaza now face unimaginable loss — their homes, memories, and stability reduced to rubble and uncertainty.

What remains etched most vividly in my mind after speaking with Islam is a simple memory he shared, a memory that carries the weight of a lifetime: “I loved sitting in the garden, tending the fruit trees, cleaning it myself every day. That simple, daily routine was what gave us a feeling of stability — it was the thread that kept our lives grounded.”

What It Means to Lose a Home to Violence

It sounds so ordinary, yet for us in Gaza, home was everything. Our domestic routines — those small, repetitive moments of waking up, sharing a meal, laughing over small jokes, tending to the garden — were our anchor amid endless chaos. Home was the fragile thread that connected us to a world that felt safe and predictable, a world that once embraced us like a warm hug.

Please understand: We are not just mourning lost buildings or material possessions. What we grieve for is far deeper. We long for the ordinary. We long for the quiet comfort of days when we did not have to count the seconds between bombs.

A home is never just walls and stones — it is the poem of our lives, the reservoir of our memories, and the sanctuary of our souls.

We ache for life before the annihilation — a life where stability was not a luxury but a given. We crave just one day, even one minute, when the normalcy we once took for granted wraps around us again, shielding us from the unrelenting violence and despair.

This longing is not just nostalgia — it is the essence of survival. That yearning keeps us alive. It reminds us who we were, who we are, and who we must become.

So yes, we yearn for normal life — not as a distant dream, but as a rightful claim. We yearn to live, simply, peacefully, with dignity intact. Because behind every shattered wall, behind every lost home, there beats a heart still dreaming of stability, safety, and the return of those simple, beautiful routines.

Islam showed me photos of homes that were true jewels of Gaza’s architectural heritage.

His friend Mohammed’s house, once an iconic symbol of Gazan craftsmanship, now reduced to ashes after being burned completely.

Another home — a masterpiece with furniture so rare and elegant that even its epoxy resin tables were priceless — now shattered, meaningless to those who destroyed it.

Gaza was once dotted with palaces and historic landmarks — beauty and history intertwined. Today, they are all dust and memory.

My Family’s Losses

I, too, have lost places I love.

On November 1, 2023, tragedy struck with a force that shattered my family’s world. The Israeli occupation bombed my uncle’s house. That day, my aunt Asmaa was martyred, along with her newborn daughter Fatima — who had barely breathed for two months — and my uncle’s wife, Neveen.

My uncle’s house had always been a warm sanctuary for our family. I remember how, especially during Eid, my father would drive there, the car’s tires crunching on familiar streets, and we would spend peaceful hours with my aunt. The kitchen windows caught the golden afternoon light. Those simple, profound moments now feel like a distant dream, fragile, unreachable, yet etched deep in my heart.

Then, on December 30, 2023, the occupation forces destroyed my grandfather’s four-story home — the place that had embraced me since birth. Every corner held a memory, every step told a story. The garden where we ran free, the winding corridors, the rooftops where my cousins and I chased each other under the sun — those spaces were our private world, our refuge.

We never played in the streets; the area beneath my grandfather’s house was our haven, filled with laughter and safety. On that cruel day, my uncle Abd al-Salam, his 13-year-old son Huthaifa, and his 8-year-old daughter Hala were killed.

There is also my sister, Doaa. Her house was bombed on January 14, 2024 — just 10 days after her wedding. We sought shelter in her home in Khan Younis for over a month. That beautiful house still lives in my memory, especially the guest room and her office, filled with echoes of our shared moments.

Doaa lost everything in that strike — her home, her sanctuary, every piece of her life.

Home in Gaza is never just walls and roofs. It is memory layered on memory, fragile and stubborn at once. It is the smell of bread rising in clay ovens, the laughter that once filled courtyards, the weight of photographs carried across generations. As the poet Mosab Abu Toha writes:

What Is Home?

It is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were uprooted.

It is my grandparents’ black and white wedding photo before the walls crumbled.

It is my uncle’s prayer rug where dozens of ants slept on wintry nights before it was looted and put in a museum.

It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and roast a chicken before a bomb reduced our house to ashes.

It is the cafe where I watched football matches and played. My child stops me.

Can a four-letter word hold all of these?

A home is never just walls and stones — it is the poem of our lives, the reservoir of our memories, and the sanctuary of our souls. When a home is destroyed, entire worlds of safety, love, and identity crumble with it. Losing a home means losing an inseparable part of oneself — a never-ending journey to reclaim what was lost, the sense of belonging and stability. Now, amid the rubble and ruins, the true home remains within us — in our memories, in every heartbeat yearning to return to the warmth of peace and security.