With the struggles that have arrived, Gazans are facing a new trauma: searching for their dead

After 15 months of the war, Hani al-Dibs, a high school teacher, thought that his greatest desire was to see how Gaza’s bombing was approaching. But a long -awaited truce brought only bitterness and fear.

Mr. Al-Dibs is one of the countless gazans burdened with painful duties: an attempt to recover the remains of loved ones trapped under the ruins left by the war of Israel against Hamas.

Some families have returned home to find the corpses of loved ones so broken down, they cannot separate them. Others cannot even get into the wreck to dig, so strong is the stench of human decay. And some searched and searched, just not to find anything.

While preparing to return to their hometown, Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, two surviving children of Mr. Al-Dibs kept asking him if their mother and little brothers could somehow survive the explosion that had captured their bodies three months below the ruin family house.

“They would ask: What if they still slept after the explosion and later climbed? What if the Israelis later heard them screaming and took them out?” He said in an interview. “Their questions are bothering me.”

Gazan health owners were 48,000 among the dead, without distinguishing civilians and fighters.

Behind that is an untold tribute: those whose bodies are yet to be found.

Families reported 9,000 people as missing and assumed dead under the ruins. Most of them have not yet been detected by Gaza ruins, health officials said. Several thousand of them still do not count among the dead, because the authorities explore the arrears of the request.

In mid-October, in the midst of heavy conflicts with Hamas, Mr. Al-Dibs said that the Israeli forces had scattered a building that housed three generations of the Dibs family.

He desperately seeking medical attention for family members excavated from the ruins, Mr. Al-Dibs was forced into a terrible choice: he had to leave his wife behind him, his two youngest children, his mother, sisters and nephew-14 loved ones in everything-under the ruins. While the survivors of the Dibs family fled south to safely, he promised to return to their bodies. It was a promise that took a few months to fulfill.

On weeks after he escaped, Mr. Al-Dibs submitted to Israel repeated demands to reach the place, using the UN-set process to try to coordinate with Israel to allow Gazan rescuers to access the explosion sites. Israel has denied all the demands of the Dibs family, the UN said.

Cogat, an Israeli military body dealing with coordination with humanitarian organizations in Gaza, did not respond to a written request for comment.

Almost three months later, as the tribute began, Mr. Al-Dibs and his children finally headed home on foot, crossing the crowd of ruins and debris.

What they found was worse than they imagined. The bombers straightened up the buildings, scattering the bunch of rocks at the top of his family of a demolished house.

Cousins ​​arrived, eager to help. But with the Israeli punishment of the siege, he still blocks new equipment from joining the enclave, no one had exercises or other electric tools that would break through the ruins.

“We used what we could find: shovels, guys and bare hands,” he said.

After the hours of digging, they finally reached the flattened floor in which his family lived.

Mr. Al-Dibs found parts of skeletons that he believed belonged to his son Hasibu, who was 8 years old but could not find anything from his wife and 6-year-old Habiba-Samo several carbon bone fragments that were falling apart as he collapsed as he tried to understand them between his fingers.

AL JAZEEER television segment of recording effort to find in a neighborhood caught camera The understanding of Mr. al-Dib that they will never find their bodies. By trembling with anger, he wiped some white plastic body bags.

“I brought big lining! And a little wrap! So I could put their bodies inside! But I found their bodies reduced to ashes! “He screamed.

Then, while his 12-year-old daughter Fatima, in a bright yellow jacket, ran to the ruins, shouting and calling for his younger brothers, Mr. Al-Dibs gently dragged: “Oh habib! Oh Hasib! Oh my God, Oh my God , Oh my God! “

“They were deprived of the last goodbye,” Mr. Al-Dibs said.

Since then, the family has buried Hasib’s remains, and now his daughter has new questions.

“He keeps asking, why can’t we have graves for mother and habib? Where will she go sit and trust his mother, without a grave?”

Those who find the bodies of their loved ones face other psychological torment.

Ahmad Shbat, 25, found some bodies of his relatives in the northern town of Beit Hanoun completely intact, leaving him painful about the question of whether they died, not from the bombing, but from a long suffering while waiting for the rescue they never came.

“A sense of helplessness,” he said, “it’s irresistible.”

From the interruption of fire, medical workers are invited to find dozens of unidentified bodies, said Saleh al-Hams, Deputy Director of the European Hospital in Southern City of Khan Younis.

They write a location and any identification details about the body bags and put in all the things they find, he said, then take them to the nearest deadline of the hospital and publish descriptions of their findings on social media.

The ambulance services in Gaza, a civilian defense, prayed with the inhabitants not to try to search on their own, warning of the potential for bombs or unexploded commands under the wreck. He says he cannot perform great efforts to excavate while heavy equipment, like a digger, does not allow in Gaza – and which Israel he says It won’t allow it.

But few gazans, like Ramy Nasra, Jabaliya traders, have any intention to wait for anyone for help.

Mr. Nasr, whose family tragedy has been recovered report He returned to the New York Times last October last October, which overthrew the building where his siblings and their families took refuge.

He paid $ 500 to construction workers to drill the tunnel into the building to take over them. The bodies they found were so broken down, he said, it was difficult to separate them.

He eventually managed to sort them in two piles.

The remains of what he believed was that his brother Ammar Adel Nasr, his wife, Imtiyaz, and their two daughters entered one grave. His brother Aref and sister Ola entered the other.

Like so many cemeteries in Gaza, he said, the cemetery of his family is now so lined with new bodies, it has become difficult to secure the plots.

“Before the war, every person was put in their grave,” he said. “There are not enough space these days – or time.”

Nader Ibrahim contribute to reporting.