How the loss of entire families is ravaging the social fabric of Gaza

Iman Awad was a protective mother. Before the war in Gaza, the 31-year-old would not allow her children to play in the street unsupervised. “She always feared for her children,” said Iman’s sister-in-law, Sondos.

Now the family has faced devastation beyond their worst fears. Iman, her husband, their eldest daughter and baby son were all killed in an Israeli air strike last month.

Iman’s youngest daughter, nine-year-old Iyyam Agha, survived. But she lies beneath a bundle of hospital blankets, paralysed by a brain injury from the bombing.

The extended Agha family’s losses stretch still further. About 80 members of the family have died since October 7th in the bombardment, said relatives and the family’s website. As Israel’s bombs pound Gaza, they are among hundreds of families to suffer deaths at this scale.

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One of Iyyam’s aunts, Hafsa, strokes her injured niece’s head, freshly shaved for surgery. It was once covered with long, black hair, Hafsa said, showing photos on her phone. “She was like a butterfly. Iyyam loved life very much.”

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Like many others in Gaza, Iyyam lived with her extended family in one house, a three-storey building split into six flats. Five uncles and aunts on her father’s side, along with their children, all lived under the same roof.

The tradition of extended families living together in multistorey buildings, compounded by relatives moving in together for safety in wartime, has meant that hundreds of multigenerational families have suffered the same fate as the Aghas, all but wiped out in single or multiple strikes.

About 1,550 families have lost multiple members, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory. At least 312 families had each lost more than 10 people by November 23rd, the officials said. Aid agencies speak of the all too common use of the acronym “WCNSF” – short for “wounded child, no surviving family”.

Before the war, Iyyam’s immediate family had believed their prospects were improving.

Her father, Mohammed Agha (36), had a degree in business administration but after struggling to find work in that area he began working as an electrician, and this year opened a repair workshop for electrical equipment. “He was very happy. He was very pleased with this,” said Iyyam’s grandfather Fouad (60).

Iyyam and her sister Mira were doing well in school. Sondos describes them as sweet girls, “like birds”. Before she died, their mother, an education graduate, was looking forward to buying a new sofa and winter clothes for them, Sondos said. “But the war got there first.”

It was a visit to Iyyam’s maternal aunt and uncle’s house, in an area known as the Emirati neighbourhood in northwestern Khan Younis, that cost most of the immediate family their lives on November 3rd.

Iyyam and her younger brother Fouad, three, survived the Israeli air strike, but her 12-year-old sister, Mira, her 18-month-old brother, Adam, and her mother and father were killed.

Fouad, Iyyam’s grandfather, rushed to the scene. “The house had been crushed,” he said. “There was a big crater and masonry thrown around.”

In the hours of horror that followed, the family describe scrambling to find survivors and discovering their body parts among the rubble.

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Learning that Iyyam was at the hospital injured, but alive, and that her brother Fouad had survived brought some comfort. “When I saw him I felt that part of my soul had returned,” said the grandfather.

Muhammad Abu Sultan (24) – a keen footballer who played as goalkeeper and had dreams of getting married – was another Palestinian killed in Gaza alongside many of his family.

Using data from Airwars, a UK-based not-for-profit organisation that documents casualties of air strikes, the Financial Times identified surviving friends of Muhammad and family members who were killed.

He died with eight other family members in a strike on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp on October 31st. At least 126 civilians, including 69 children, were killed in the attack.

“He loved Real Madrid,” a childhood friend recalled of Muhammad, whose family had lived in the Jabalia camp for 30 years.

Muhammad died alongside his father, Omar, a carpenter, his mother, Sahar, who worked in the sweets industry, his three brothers, Ahmed (30), Mahmoud (27) and Abdullah (13), his sister, Shahd, whose age could not be confirmed, and Ahmed’s wife and daughter.

“There are no relatives or loved ones left. They are all gone,” Facebook friend and former Gaza resident Suhil Yahya posted with reference to their deaths.

The loss of large family groups such as the Aghas and Abu Sultans is tearing holes in Gaza’s social fabric.

“Such loss results in the erasure of shared memories and identities for those who survive,” said Dina Matar, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. “It’s going to have a traumatic impact.”

The war, triggered by Hamas’s bloody assault on southern Israel on October 7th – in which militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israel, and took more than 200 hostages – has been catastrophic for Gaza’s civilians. Whole neighbourhoods have been levelled; families tell of being hit by strikes more than once.

Israel says its aim is to “root out” Hamas by targeting its fighters, bases and infrastructure. Yet many families affected said they were not harbouring Hamas militants.

Gaza’s authorities say more than two-thirds of the 18,000-plus reported deaths have been of women and children, although the data does not distinguish civilians from combatants. Israeli officials have said a third of deaths were of fighters and accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

About 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, with nearly all now living in southern Gaza.

Campaign group Amnesty International documented in detail five cases of air strikes wiping out entire families, saying the attacks should be investigated as potential war crimes. In response, Israel’s foreign ministry claimed Amnesty was “an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli organisation”.

The Agha family website, once a place to celebrate marriages and academic achievements, now documents seemingly relentless losses.

Further strikes hit members of the wider family following the attack that killed Iyyam’s parents on November 3rd. No generation has been left untouched.

Just before Iyyam’s grandfather visited her in hospital, he learned of a strike on a mosque beside his home, which injured another of his sons. “We’ve been facing one catastrophe after another,” said Iyyam’s aunt, Hafsa.

Medical experts warn that such widespread loss will have a long-term psychological impact. A teenager now living in Gaza has survived five periods of major bombardment: in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and now 2023.

Dr Ayesha Kadir, a paediatrician and senior health adviser for Save the Children, said Gaza’s youth faced multiple levels of trauma. Children were witnessing death first-hand, while adults, the very people to whom children turn for protection, were lost in despair. “[Adults] can’t create that sense of safety and security that’s a fundamental need for healthy, normal child development.”

No child in the enclave is in school and more than 50 per cent of schools have been bombed, according to the UN, leaving children without their educational support networks.

Matar said the loss of families also had social and historical implications. “The death of whole families means records of these people and their social lives have gone.”

This results in “gaps” in the recording of ordinary people’s existence. “Remembering matters. These are important elements when you want to put together histories and stories of ordinary lives.”

While Iyyam awaits permission to travel for possible further treatment in Turkey, her relatives are trying to keep her family’s memory alive by looking at photos and remembering their lives together.

The wider Agha family also continues to rally, supporting each other where they can. Maha Nassar, an expert in modern Middle Eastern history at the Arizona university, said social media tributes to those lost, from friends, family and the wider Palestinian diaspora, testified to the community’s resilience.

Gazans were “holding fast to their Palestinian identity”, she said. “As Palestinians around the world read and share these commemorations, their shared sense of loss will, I think, forge deep social bonds in Gaza and beyond.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023

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