Ahmad Matar

A 32-year-old from Beit Hanoun, Ahmad described loss and displacement during the war and returning to Beit Hanoun, where he found his home gone

My family and I lived in the al-Bura area of Beit Hanoun, near the Erez Checkpoint. We left our home on the second day of the war, 8 October 2023, because there were heavy bombings in our area and the army declared it a combat zone and ordered everyone to evacuate.

I left home with my parents and my aunt on my father’s side, Rihab Matar, 64, who uses a wheelchair. My brothers and sisters are already married and were not living with us. At first we moved to the home of my brother Akram, 40, in the al-Falujah area of Jabalya Refugee Camp. That evening, our home and nearby homes in Beit Hanoun were bombed, so we had nowhere to return to.

But there were also heavy bombings near Akram’s home. and we had to move again, this time to his wife’s parents’ home on al-Jalaa Street in western Gaza City. We stayed there until the first ceasefire and then went back to Akram’s house. His house was damaged in a bombing and we found two bodies of people we didn’t know in it. Their blood was still on the walls. We tried to clean and tidy up as much as we could.

About a week after the ceasefire ended, the Israeli army started heavily bombing the area again. We were displaced again. This time we went to the home of friends in the a-Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in western Gaza City. We stayed with them for a long time. When the army withdrew from Jabalya RC, we went back to Akram’s house in al-Falujah and later moved to the home of my uncle on my mother’s side in the center of Jabalya RC, near al-Yaman al-Saeed Hospital.

My brother Ayman, who is also married, lived in the al-Saftawi neighborhood in western Jabalya RC until the war. When the war broke out, he went with his family to his in-laws near the UNRWA clinic in the center of the camp. There were about 60 displaced people in that house. One day, the Israeli army fired tear gas grenades into it. Ayman’s baby daughter Sidra, 1, was apparently affected by the gas and developed pneumonia. She had difficulty breathing and a high fever for three weeks and was put on oxygen in the hospital. She passed away on 6 January 2024, when the electricity was cut off.

My father was very attached to Sidra and losing her was extremely painful for him. He couldn’t stop crying over her. We didn’t hear him laugh any more. He didn’t want to sit with us and withdrew. His heart was broken. I had never seen him so sad.

After some time, my father started getting bad stomach aches and his eyes turned yellow. He went to several doctors. At first they thought he had viral hepatitis, which spread in the Gaza Strip during the war, but his condition got worse. He had an ultrasound at al-Ma’amadani Hospital, and it turned out he had cancer throughout his body. He passed away a week later, on 21 May 2024. I believe what killed him was the grief over losing Sidra.

At that time, the second invasion of Jabalya RC began. We moved again to the al-Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and stayed there until the Israeli military operation ended. Then we went back to my uncle on my mother’s side, near al-Yaman al-Saeed Hospital. By then, life was a bit more bearable. There was no longer real hunger. We could get some food supplies and there was also drinking water.

We stayed there until the third invasion of the camp, on 6 October 2024. That day, a quadcopter announced we had to leave the camp. We went to Beit Lahiya, to the house my aunt Rihab had left when she fled with us at the start of the war. The days we spent there were among the hardest we went through. Bombings everywhere, rings of fire and terrifying sounds. We had no electricity, water or food.

Then the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of the Beit Lahiya area, as well. Our whole family headed toward the army checkpoint east of Jabalya RC —me, my brother Akram, his wife and children, my sister and her children, my mother and our aunt on my father’s side in her wheelchair. We reached the checkpoint exhausted, and then they separated the women from the men. My mother, aunt and sister passed through and went to a-Shati Refugee Camp, west of Gaza City. My brother and I were held at the checkpoint because the Israeli army wanted to scan our faces. Then they let us through, and we followed them to a-Shati RC. We stayed there, at a friend’s house, until we heard a ceasefire agreement had been signed.

My aunt on my father’s side, Suhaila, 67, and her son Ahmad al-Halabi, 37, who is divorced and the father of a 7-year-old child with a mental disability, were also staying at a-Shati. About a month ago, Ahmad disappeared. Since then, we haven’t been able to find him. His son and my aunt Suhaila cry for him all the time. We don’t know what happened to him—maybe he was killed, or maybe he was arrested by the Israeli army. Shortly afterwards, another disaster struck my aunt Suhaila. She also lost her granddaughter, Hadil Isma’il al-Hashim, 14, who was shot dead by the army a few hours before the ceasefire began on 19 January 2025, when people thought it was already in effect and started trying to go back home. My aunt Suhaila is in a very bad mental state and is looking for her son all the time.

On the day the ceasefire was announced, I couldn’t feel joy because I was too afraid the war would resume. That morning, we got up early and had breakfast, and then I went with my brother Akram, his children and some friends to check on the situation in Jabalya RC and at Akram’s house.

When we left our friends’ house, we saw a sea of people flowing towards Jabalya RC. When we reached a-Saftawi Street, we saw massive, inconceivable destruction. There were almost no buildings left standing. The roads were full of stones, rubble and iron. A few buildings were still standing, but none of the residential towers. They were all on the ground.

We reached Abu Shrekh Junction and the al-Falujah area. The place was lifeless. No trees, no buildings, no roads, no sidewalks. We walked on the rubble of homes in demolished streets. There was dust and sand everywhere. The place looked like there’d been an earthquake.

In the end, we reached Akram’s house in the al-Falujah area. It was hard to recognize the place because it was so badly destroyed. We asked a young man where we were, because we couldn’t identify the area. The houses were bulldozed by the army. Akram arrived a few minutes before me at the spot where his house once stood, and I found him looking at the ruins in sorrow. He searched through the rubble, trying to find clothes or blankets for his children.

After that, I went to the center of Jabalya RC to check on my maternal uncle’s house. Everything was in ruins there, too. The area of Six Martyrs Square was simply wiped out. Completely leveled.

I reached al-Yaman al-Saeed Hospital and found it burned and destroyed. I saw some people cleaning it up so they could stay there. All the houses around the hospital were demolished, including my uncle’s house where we stayed earlier in the war. Everything was destroyed. Nothing is left of the life that was there. Desperate people were wandering the streets, talking to themselves. On the way, I passed a group of women crying helplessly in the face of the massive destruction.

I saw schools that the Israeli army burned and demolished. People were cleaning them up to stay there, too, even though there weren’t proper living conditions.

Camp residents were sitting by the sides of roads, looking sad and desperate. People had a hard time recognizing their own homes and when they found the ruins, they only tried to get some clothes or blankets out of the rubble.

I thought about going home to Beit Hanoun, but I couldn’t. I was shocked and devastated by the scale of destruction in Jabalya RC. I went to my brother Ayman’s house in the a-Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.

The next day, I got up and went to Beit Hanoun. I’d missed it so much, and when I got to the entrance to the city after a year and a half, I was happy. At first, I saw a few houses still standing, but the deeper I went into the city, the more I was shocked by what I found. I was stunned by the extent of destruction. There wasn’t a single house left standing. It was a scene of devastation. I couldn’t recognize the homes of relatives, friends and neighbors.

In the end, I found our home. It was completely leveled, like the houses around it. I never imagined the sight would be so horrific. I kept hoping to find something in our home I could take with me, but there was nothing left. I felt a terrible sense of injustice and unbearable pain. At the same time, I was happy I made it back.

We lost everything, like everyone else in Beit Hanoun. The army destroyed the northern Gaza Strip—Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Jabalya RC. There’s no infrastructure for life: no houses, no roads, no streets, no water. Even so, some people have started clearing away the rubble to put up tents and live where their houses once stood.

Now I’m looking for an apartment to rent, so we at least have some kind of roof over our heads. We can’t live in a tent with my elderly mother and my aunt in a wheelchair.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 22 January 2025