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KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — For Samar and Abdullah al-Farra, a Palestinian mother and son, a half-ruined house in the southern Gaza Strip is the only home they have.
It is also a tomb.
Like thousands of families all over Gaza, 38-year-old Samar and her 17-year-old son are trying to recover the remains of loved ones buried under rubble — an agonizing collective effort that has swiftly gathered pace since a truce was reached last month between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
Of their family of 13, Samar and Abdullah al-Farra were the only survivors of a trio of Israeli airstrikes that smashed into their three-story home and nearby buildings in the city of Khan Yunis — which in centuries past was a way station for camel caravans — near Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.
It was Dec. 14, 2023, a little more than two months into the ferocious war that broke out when Hamas-led fighters breached Gaza’s border fence and killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel.
On the night of the strikes — a microcosm of what was to become one of the deadliest and most destructive bombing campaigns in recent history — the Al-Farra siblings, ranging in age from infancy to 19 years, took shelter together in the home’s basement, along with their mother. Ten of them died together there.
A separate blast fatally injured their 51-year-old father, Sabri, and a 21-year-old cousin, Mahmoud, who were caught outside on the street as they tried to check on relatives nearby, family members said.
Beginning soon after the bombing, friends and neighbors helped the Al-Farras dig out most of their dead — but not all. Still missing all these months later are four bodies: Dina, 11; Ali, 7; Yusra, 5; and Saber, a 2-week-old boy.
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In the airstrikes’ aftermath, the chaos of fighting quickly claimed the family’s neighborhood, which already had been declared a closed military zone by Israeli authorities. Samar, still recovering from childbirth, and her surviving son soon joined a vast wave of displacement that would sweep up nearly all of Gaza’s more than 2 million people.
After months of living off and on in a nearby tent camp, Samar and Abdullah reclaimed their shattered house late last year. With so many people left homeless, more than two dozen relatives have since joined them, seeking whatever shelter the damaged building affords.
Samar knows that by now, the best she can hope for will be the eventual discovery of four small sets of skeletal remains.
Back in their home, mother and son are haunted by what lies below in the caved-in basement.
“We will only find scattered bones buried under the sand and rubble of this house,” she said bleakly. “My home has become a cemetery, where my children are buried.”
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The cease-fire, which took effect on the final full day of the Biden administration, is a fragile mechanism. Months in the making, its initial phase rests on a complex set of protocols governing the freeing of dozens of the hostages seized from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Still unresolved are the greatest points of contention: the terms for a permanent halt to the fighting, the governance of Gaza, and how the devastated territory will be rebuilt.
Powerful forces in Middle East and, now, in Washington working against truce lasting beyond its first phase.
However tenuous, the accord has offered the only respite since a short-lived truce in November 2023, scarcely six weeks into the war.
For the time being at least, deadly sniper drones no longer strike without warning. The thunder of explosions has quieted. Desperately needed humanitarian aid is entering the enclave; a key border crossing has opened for medical evacuations. In recent days, hundreds of thousands of people have made their way home to zones that were previously emptied by military order, including the entire north of Gaza.
The remains of the Al-Farra home in Khan Yunis, Gaza, after it was struck in Israeli airstrikes in December 2023. Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel launched the war in Gaza.
Palestinian officials have put the death toll in Gaza at more than 47,000, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants. Across the territory, at least 10,000 bodies are entombed in debris, the Health Ministry estimates.
Now that the fighting is paused, the Al-Farras face a dilemma: Even if they can somehow persuade authorities to bring in heavy equipment to help with their search, it could trigger a collapse of the building, leaving them and their kin homeless, unprotected from the cold.
“If —if — we are lucky enough to get a bulldozer, amid this crisis of fuel shortages and the lack of heavy machinery, it could damage the house,” Samar said. “We have two impossible choices: Retrieve the bones and lose our home, or keep the house as it is, at least for the winter.”
So they have struck a compromise of sorts: picking cautiously at the debris with small tools, and by hand.
Abdullah uses his time off from work at a motorcycle repair shop — Friday, the Muslim day of prayer — to dig. All day, he sifts sand and hauls broken bricks, halting at nightfall: Batteries for LED lights are too scarce and expensive to keep working into the darkness.
With the cease-fire, there is at least a measure of safety in this task. When those living in the area were repeatedly ordered by the Israeli military to evacuate to the beach enclave of Mawasi, about three miles away, people would sneak back to their homes, risking bombs and drones, to try to salvage items, or to search for the missing.
In the spring of 2024, while the family was still displaced, Abdullah was spending three or four hours a day at the house, until a gruesome discovery made the task too difficult to bear.
Finding a jawbone, he recognized the teeth of his 18-year-old sister, Najwa. Sobbing, he returned to the family’s tent.
“There were bones like gravel, pieces of spine,” he said. “For a whole week, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t set foot near our house.”
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Sometimes, Samar and Abdullah remember what life was like in their family home before the war. The lush garden with a traditional clay oven where they baked bread. Big water tanks for washing carpets and bedding. Family celebrations in the shade of palm trees, with the wafting smell of roasting lamb.
The house still stands, but it is its own kind of skeleton: tarps and quilts plugging gaping holes, one corner of the building crumpled, the basement where the siblings died filled with slabs of concrete and collapsed masonry.
“Every time I look at the walls, I remember them,” Abdullah said of his dead siblings. “It breaks me.”
Finding the last of the bodies, and burying them in the family plot at the local graveyard, will bring a fresh burst of sorrow, Samar said — but also a measure of relief.
“I wait for the day I can gather their remains and place them in the cemetery,” she said. “At least then, I will have the small comfort of knowing they are in one place.”
In the Al-Farras’ now-bustling neighborhood, recent days have brought an outpouring of communal grief, mingled with daily tasks. As their search continued, others too were digging for loved ones’ bones. An occasional shout signaled a grim new discovery. People could be seen carefully loading their finds into bags and parcels.
Down the bomb-cratered street, a family returning after the cease-fire ferried belongings into their damaged house. Someone had set up a coffee grinder powered by generator; people queued up with their beans. In the nearby ruins, youngsters played soccer.
Should the cease-fire hold, the cleanup task will be enormous.
A United Nations damage assessment said clearing more than 50 tons of rubble could take two decades. Satellite imagery shows that at least two-thirds of Gaza’s structures have been damaged or destroyed.
But for this one family, or what remains of it, the dead must first be laid to rest.
“One night, Abdullah came to me and said, ‘Mama, I had a dream. I saw my brothers and sisters in shrouds,’” Samar said. “At that moment, I knew it wasn’t just a dream. It was real.”
Special correspondent Shbair reported from Khan Yunis, and staff writer King from Tel Aviv.
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