Family survives Gaza war, returns to destruction

By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Writer

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip – Mohammed Zayid returned to his northern Gaza neighborhood after the war to find nothing as it was.

Tank blasts had blown the front off the local bakery, bullet holes riddled the hall where his son was married and airstrikes had collapsed into rubble the store where he bought tea and Coca-Cola for guests. His home with its view of the Mediterranean was gone except for a pile of concrete and the reek of a rotting donkey nearby with two bullet holes in its back.

"I lost my head when I saw it," the 55-year-old fisherman recalled. "My whole house was gone. I felt dead right there."

Tens of thousands of Gazans, including the Zayid family, who fled the fighting returned to find their homes damaged and their neighborhood wrecked, marking a painful end to three weeks of war. Like the Zayids, many sought refuge in schools and hospitals, scrounged for food and struggled to shelter their children from death and violence.

Israel launched widespread air strikes across Gaza on Dec. 27, followed by a ground invasion a week later to stop Gaza's Hamas rulers from firing rockets at Israeli towns.

The war came to Mohammed Zayid on Jan. 3, when he awoke in his simple concrete home to the sounds of tank blasts and gunshots.

"If we had known there would be an attack we would have fled but we woke up in the morning and saw the tanks there," said Zayid, a father of six and a grandfather of 20.

He tied a white T-shirt to a stick and waved it over his head as he and 10 others ran from the house, leaving their money, his wife's gold and all their possessions behind, he said. He saw militants in a nearby building firing at the Israeli troops advancing up the sandy road, he said.

They ran to a house shared by his sons Hossam, 30, and Ghassan, 25. There, 34 family members including a dozen children crowded into a windowless back room. A shell soon exploded on the roof and another shattered the front balcony, so the family fled again, carrying the children as they walked to a United Nations school.

About 500 refugees were in the school and the family crowded into one classroom, said 23-year-old Wisal Zayid, Mohammed's daughter-in-law. They had no mattresses and she wrapped the youngest children in their only blanket. The adults stayed awake to watch over them, she said.

The next day, they knocked on doors of nearby homes to ask for food and blankets, Mohammed said, until someone used the mosque loudspeaker to ask neighbors for donations.

The school provided only canned meat, tuna and one pita a day per person, so the refugees pooled resources.

"Those who had money would help the others and those who had food would call the others to eat with them," Mohammed said.

Wisal said all felt safe in the school since it bore a U.N. flag. But on Jan 5. an Israeli missile hit the school, killing three boys, the U.N. said. Wisal said the three, ages 10, 17 and 19 were killed on their way to the bathroom.

"We ran away from death and found it in front of us," Mohammed said.

"Since the three of them were killed, my kids will never feel safe in school again," said Wisal, a mother of a 2-year-old girl and two boys, ages 4 and 6.

The family had no TV or radio, but heard the war all around them.

"We'd hear shooting nearby and airplanes and the kids would scream," Mohammed said. "Then we'd hear an explosion and they'd scream again."

After a tenuous cease-fire brought fighting to a halt on Jan. 17, the Zayids returned to find traces of vicious fighting throughout their neighborhood.

Tank tracks led up the sandy road from the ocean and most buildings along the simple main street bore the scars of tank fire. A number of homes had been reduced to rubble and a soccer field-sized orchard — once full of orange, apple and olive trees — had been bulldozed flat.

The minaret of the mosque where the men prayed had been blown off and the wedding hall where Hossam had danced with his bride the year before had been peppered with bullets.

Some residents said they saw militants firing at the army as they fled and Wisal found all of her home's doors busted open, though she didn't know if by militants or Israeli soldiers. The extended family's three homes were damaged.

Hossam and his brother Ghassan, both fishermen like their father, had been building their house for three years, Hossam said and had moved in after Hossam's wedding. "1000 blessings for the groom" was still written on the front wall in green paint under the busted balcony and softball-sized holes in the walls.

"It was a new house," Hossam said. "We were just putting it together but what can we do now?"

Wisal's house fared better so the whole family now lives there. They have replaced the shattered windows with plastic and cook on wood fires. Most sleep on the floor.

Wisal said her older children, aged 4 and 6, have begun wetting their beds. "We were terrified the whole time," she said. "I still can't be by myself at night."

On Friday, Mohammed woke early and walked to the ocean to fish for the first time since the war started. He and two of his sons had caught only three fish when an Israeli navy gunboat fired on them, they said.

As they reached shore, the boat shot their cart and the donkey they had brought to pull their catch home.

Mohammed doesn't think he'll fish again but knows no other work.

"We have always lived from the ocean and now we have no idea what we'll live from," he said.