A 29-year-old from Deir al-Balah, was renovating an apartment in his parents’ building in preparation for his marriage, when a nearby building was bombed, damaging his apartment and three other apartments belonging to his family
Our family has two buildings – an old building where I live and another building where my parents and siblings moved and where I was renovating an apartment ahead of my wedding. On Friday, 12 May 2023, the fourth day of the Israeli attack on Gaza, I was resting in my family’s old building, and at around 6:30 P.M., neighbors at the new building told us the Israeli army was about to bomb the building where Yihya Abu ‘Ubeid lived, which was 200 meters away from us. The whole family came to the old house, and all of us sat together and followed the news. At around 8:30 P.M., we heard t a heavy aerial bombardment. The house shook, even though the house we were in shook, despite the distance.
The next day, I went to see the condition of our building, and I was in shock. It looked like it had been damaged in an earthquake. The whole southern part of the building, which faces the building that was bombed, was damaged. In my brother and his wife’s apartment on the ground floor, doors and windows were broken, and there was damage to the bedroom and all of the furniture. My apartment, which was above theirs, was also damaged. There was rubble and rocks everywhere. The front door was totally broken, and all of the interior doors and windows were dislodged. I had bought new furniture for the bedroom just a month before, and it was all covered in dust.
I’ve been working on getting this apartment ready to live in for seven years. I was supposed to get married on 15 June 2023 and then move in. I have been working for 15 years in bakeries, making 1,200 NIS [~330 USD] a month. In all those years, I’ve never taken time off, not even on holidays, in order to save money. Every shekel I earned, I put into this apartment. I don’t buy things for myself, and I’m not interested in clothes or trips like other young guys. All I wanted was for the apartment to be ready to live in after the wedding. I’ve had to take out loans from family members and acquaintances for these renovations. I finished painting the apartment just a few days before the bombing. Everything was almost ready: the doors, the windows, the kitchen, the shower, and the bathroom, except the bedroom furniture. I was going to buy a few more pieces of furniture.
It’s been two weeks since the bombing, and I still can’t bring myself to clean it. I haven’t received any compensation, and I still owe a total of 13,000 NIS [~3,600 USD] for the renovation. I don’t know how I’ll get the money. My father suggested that we move into their apartment after the wedding, which suffered less damage, and that they would move into the family’s old house.
In the meantime, we postponed the wedding until 20 July 2023.
* Testimony given to B'Tselem Field Researcher Khaled al-‘Azayzeh on 29 May 2023.
Read more testimonies of residents of the Gaza Strip whose homes were damaged in Israeli strikes in August 2022 or May 2023:
