By Sarah El Deeb | The Associated Press BEIRUT—He is among the very last survivors of his Gaza family, a clan so close they knew without thinking how blood and marriage bound them across generations and city blocks.
BEIRUT—He is among the very last survivors of his Gaza family, a clan so close they knew without thinking how blood and marriage bound them across generations and city blocks.
To a degree never seen before, Israel is killing entire Palestinian families, a loss even more devastating than the physical destruction and the massive displacement. An Associated Press investigation identified at least 60 Palestinian families where at least 25 people were killed—sometimes four generations from the same bloodline—in bombings between October and December, the deadliest and most destructive period of the war.
In the last two decades, 10 members of his family were killed in Israeli strikes. “Nothing like this war,” he said. In the 51-day war of 2014, the number of families that lost three or more members was less than 150. In this one, nearly 1,900 families have suffered multiple deaths by January, including more than 300 that lost over 10 members in the first month of the war alone, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Getting detailed images and documentation is difficult even for Palestinians. Power is limited to hospitals and Israel cuts communication networks frequently. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, dividing families and severing contacts between parts of the small territory. Homes that normally would shelter a nuclear family fill with multiple generations of displaced relatives.
Back in 2021, Khamis al-Agha, an employee at a Hamas-linked charity, received a phone call from an Israeli soldier alluding to his ties to the militant group and warning him to evacuate his house in Khan Younis to avoid an impending airstrike nearby. Al-Agha recorded the call and posted it online. He didn’t evacuate and no one was killed.
Israel estimates 15,000 Hamas militants had been killed by June, but has not given evidence or explanation. It is not clear whether the count includes men like al-Agha, who worked in one of the hundreds of Hamas-linked organizations or officials in the government that administered life in Gaza for over 16 years.
By the spring, AP documented nearly 100 members of the al-Agha family were killed in Israeli strikes. Jaser al-Agha has buried almost more relatives than he can count, including three cousins he considered brothers.Ramzy Abu al-Qumssan’s family lived in the Jabaliya refugee camp since his family was displaced in 1948 from Deir Sneid, a village north of Gaza in what is now Israel.
Airwars identified 112 civilians killed in Jabaliya that day, including 69 children and 22 women. In all, 37 members of Abu al-Qumssan’s family were killed in the shack and two nearby buildings, including four of his cousins, his aunt, her daughter and granddaughter, whose bodies were locked in an embrace.
In all, 55 members of his family perished in Jabaliya in two Israeli bombings two weeks apart. By the spring, the family managed to document at least 82 killed, most in Jabaliya. The line between military necessity and disproportionate civilian casualties is “based on the good faith judgment of the commander making the decision” said Geoffery Corn, a former Judge Advocate General officer and director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University. “That line is incredibly amorphous.”
After October 7, he took advantage of the safety of exile to coordinate for relatives in Gaza as they chased shelter and food. He connected them to one another and kept them updated with the news. Survivors deny any fighters were in the compound. Videos showed men clawing through crushed concrete to remove the bodies of men, women and children. A donkey cart waited at the top of the street to transport the bodies.
Munir, his uncle, snapped a reassuring photo of the men playing cards, a family tradition. They even secured coal for their water pipes. Shortly after midnight, Mohamed Salem, standing on a building across the street from their villa, counted four direct hits from airstrikes. The villa collapsed, and bodies were flung outside.
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