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After 15 months of war, Hani al-Dibs, a high school teacher, thought that his greatest wish was to see the bombing of Gaza ends. But the long-awaited ceasefire has only brought bitterness and dread.
Mr. Al-Dibs is one of the countless gasians responsible for a scary duty: trying to recover the remains of dear beings taken up under the expanses of the rubble left by the War of Israel against Hamas.
Some families have returned home to find corpses of dear bes so decomposed, they cannot distinguish them. Others cannot even go into the wreck to dig, so strong is the stench of human decomposition. And some have searched and searched, only to find nothing at all.
While they were preparing to return to their hometown, Jabaliya, in the north of Gaza, the two surviving children of Mr. al-Dibs did not stop asking him if their mother and their little brothers could have survived some Looks the explosion that had trapped their bodies for three months under the rubble of the family home.
“They would ask: And if they were still sleeping after the explosion and came out later?” What if, later, the Israelis heard them screaming and getting them out? he said in an interview. “Their questions torment me.”
Gazan health authorities counted nearly 48,000 among the dead, without distinguishing civilians and combatants.
Beyond that, an unworthy toll: those whose bodies have not yet been found.
Families reported that 9,000 people were missing. Most are still bodies to find ruins of Gaza, have said health officials. Several thousand of them are still not counted among the dead, while the authorities investigate the backwards of requests.
In mid-October, in the midst of the strong clashes with Hamas, Mr. Al-Dibs said that Israeli forces had exploded the building which housed three generations of the Dibs family.
Desperate to request medical aid for family members dug in the rubble, Mr. Al-Dibs was forced to a terrible choice: he had to leave behind, his two youngest children, his mother, his sisters and his nieces – 14 those in all – under the ruins. While the survivors of the Dibs family fled south safely, he swore to come back for their bodies. It was a commitment that took months to fill out.
For weeks after fled, Mr. al-Dibs made repeated requests to Israel to reach the site, using a process that the UN has set up to try to coordinate with Israel to allow Gazan to access Access to explosion sites. Israel has denied all requests from the Dibs family, said the UN.
COGAT, the Israeli military organization which manages coordination with humanitarian organizations in Gaza, has not responded to a written request for comments.
Almost three months later, while the ceasefire began, Mr. Al-Dibs and his children finally left for their homes, making his way on mounds of rubble and debris.
What they found was worse than they had imagined it. The bombings had leveled buildings, dispersing lots of rocks above his family’s house.
Relatives have arrived, eager to help. But with the punishing seat of Israel always preventing new equipment by entering the enclave, no one had exercises or other electrical tools to pierce the rubble.
“We used what we could find: shovels, choices and our bare hands,” he said.
After hours of excavation, they finally reached the flattened ground where his family had lived.
Mr. al-Dibs found parts of a skeleton which, according to him, belonged to his son Hasib, who was 8 years old. But he couldn’t find anything from his wife and 6 -year -old Habib – only a few fragments of charred bone that collapsed as he tried to grasp them between his fingers.
An Al Jazeera television segment rotating recovery efforts in the neighborhood has made camera Mr. Al-Dib realizes that he would never find their bodies. Trembling with fury, he shook white plastic body bags.
“I brought large shrouds!” And small shrouds! So that I can put their bodies inside! But I found their body reduced in ashes! He shouted.
Then, while her 12-year-old daughter, Fatima, in a bright yellow jacket, ran towards the ruins, sobbing and calling the names of his young brothers, Mr. Al-Dibs slowly removed it: “Oh Habib!” Oh Hasib! Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God!
“They were deprived of a last farewell,” said Al-Dibs.
The family has since buried the remains of Hasib, and now their daughter has new questions.
“She continues to ask why we cannot have graves for her mother and Habib?” Where will she sit down and confide in her mother, without grave?
Those who find the body of their loved ones face other psychological torments.
Ahmad Shbat, 25 came.
“The feeling of helplessness,” he said, “is overwhelming.”
Since the ceasefire, medical workers have been called upon to recover dozens of unidentified bodies, said Saleh al-Homs, deputy director of the European hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
They write the location and all the identification details on the body bags and place inside all the personal effects they find, he said, then take them to the morgue of the hospital The closest and publish descriptions of their conclusions on social networks.
Gaza’s emergency rescue services, Civil Defense, begged residents not to try to recover for themselves, warning the potential of bombs or unploded ammunition under the wreckage. He indicates that he cannot lead major excavation efforts until heavy equipment, such as Diggers, is not allowed to enter Gaza – and to which Israel said It will not allow it.
But few Gazans, like Ramy Nasr, a Jabaliya trader, intend to expect help.
Mr. Nasr, whose family tragedy was told in a report by the New York Times last year, returned to the explosion website last October which dropped the building where its brothers and sisters and their families ‘were sheltered.
He paid $ 500 to construction workers to unravel a tunnel in the building to recover them. The bodies he found were so decomposed, he said, it was difficult to distinguish them.
Finally, he was able to sort them in two batteries.
The remains of what he thought was his brother Ammar Adel Nasr, his wife, Imtiyaz, and their two daughters entered a grave. His brother Aref and his sister Ola entered another.
Like so many cemeteries in Gaza, he said, the cemetery of his family is now so full of new bodies, it has become difficult to obtain plots.
“Before the war, each person was put in their own grave,” he said. “These days, there is not enough room – or time.”
Nader Ibrahim Contributed reports.
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