On November 16, 2023, the Haji family home in the al-Zaitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City lived happily under one roof, none expecting it to be their last day together.The three-storey building was filled with the lives of more than 30 extended family members, ranging from four-years-old to 40, until an Israeli air raid reduced their home to rubble.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listFidaa Haji, 34, and her four children – Raed, Mohammed, Hala and Raghad – who lived in an external room survived, but the rest of the family in the main building – were all killed. They included Fidaa’s husband, Adnan Haji, aged 34.Fidaa and her children headed south for a relatively safer area of Gaza, where they pitched tents on a beach. When a ceasefire was announced in October 2025, they returned to al-Zaitoun and settled temporarily near their former home, but the debris became a daily reminder of their tragic loss weighing down on their hearts.“I can’t imagine that the people I love are still under the rubble… the thought alone breaks me every day,” she told Al Jazeera. “What hurts me more than the loss is that I couldn’t say goodbye or bury them… as if the grief is still suspended.”Later, her brother managed to retrieve Adnan’s body and bury it in the courtyard of al-Shifa Hospital, to put a provisional end to the Fidaa’s …
