BEIRUT, Lebanon — Amid the rubble of Gaza, the Salem family, once vibrant and sprawling, now counts its few survivors. Youssef Salem, a distant witness to the destruction from Istanbul, keeps a grim ledger, a record of deaths that climbs as the months stretch on. This personal tragedy mirrors the broader devastation wrought upon numerous families throughout the region, marking a stark legacy of loss and displacement.
Last December, in a swift series of airstrikes, 173 members of Salem’s extended family perished. By spring, the toll had climbed to 270—a staggering number that encapsulates the broader humanitarian crisis. Salem’s archive of photographs and spreadsheets serves as a painful testament to the severing of generational ties that once knitted the community together.
“This war has swallowed whole families,” Salem shared, his voice burdened with grief. Over the past two decades, sporadic conflicts had chipped away at his family tree, but none as drastically as the recent escalations. Blond curls of a young cousin, peeking through the bricks of obliterated homes, and shrouded bodies lined for burial, are haunting reminders of the war’s toll on domestic life in Gaza.
The devastation extends beyond Salem’s family. An investigation identified at least 60 Palestinian families that lost 25 or more members during recent bombings. The Mughrabi family lost over 70 people to a single strike, and the large Doghmush clan saw 44 members vanish under the ruins of a targeted mosque.
Documentation efforts are fraught with challenges as remaining family members scramble to preserve any evidence of their lineage. “The numbers are shocking,” lamented Hussam Abu al-Qumssay, another survivor who now resides in Libya, documenting his own family’s losses from afar.
A deeper layer of this tragedy involves nearly 1,900 Palestinian families that experienced multiple deaths during the deadliest period of the war, as reported by Gaza’s health ministry. Previous conflicts pale in comparison to the scale of current losses, indicating a severe escalation in the conflict’s ferocity and its toll on civilian populations.
The impact of such extensive loss is profound, permanently altering the social fabric of Gaza. Families are central units of economic and social support, often sprawling across multiple generations and residences. The decimation of families not only disrupts immediate emotional bonds but also annihilates the social infrastructure necessary for communal resilience and recovery.
Survivors, like Salem, are left navigating the agonizing aftermath, attempting to piece together fragments of the past while mourning the unimaginable. As airstrikes continue to level family compounds and obliterate historical neighborhoods, the communal memory of these regions is also endangered, turning once vibrant communities into ghostly remnants of their former selves.
Israel maintains that its military operations target Hamas and other militant factions, asserting that such groups deliberately operate within civilian areas, thus complicating efforts to minimize collateral damage. However, international scrutiny and cries for investigations into potential war crimes suggest the need for a more discerning approach to military engagement in civilian-populated areas.
In Istanbul, Salem continues updating his list, each entry a somber testament to the unyielding grief the war has inflicted upon his family. With a resignation touched with despair, he notes, “We are documenting the dead now, not living,” capturing the essence of a conflict that continues to extract a heavy toll on the innocent. As international efforts seek to address the humanitarian catastrophe, the stories of families like Salem’s provide a poignant reminder of the enduring human cost of conflict.