How Does It Feel When Your City Is Destroyed?

What can a person do when they have become without a city, without shelter?

Ahmed Abu Artema, Palestine Deep Dive, 27 Nov 25

A video clip shows an elderly woman kissing the door of her home in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City as she bids farewell before fleeing to the south. The woman, weeping, comments on the moment of leaving her home:

“This house is very, very dear to me. I lived in it for twenty years and built it stone by stone. I left my home against my will, and my heart is bleeding for it.”

She leaves without knowing if the house will stand if she ever returns.

Wiping Gaza off the map is an old Israeli dream expressed by the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, when he said: “I wish I could wake up one day and find that Gaza has sunk into the sea.”

Turning these dreams into reality was nothing more than a matter of opportunity and ability. The destructive desire did not suddenly emerge in Israel’s behaviour after October 7th. All that happened was that the opportunity came.

It started within Rafah, a city that housed 1.5 million residents and displaced people. The entire population was forcibly evacuated by Israel in May 2024, and then its entire neighbourhoods and homes were destroyed, turning the city into a huge pile of rubble.

The media covered the story closely in the first days, then it became routine news, and then it was no longer news at all. The destruction of houses and the blowing up of entire residential blocks with explosive robots became a routine, ordinary activity of the Israeli army.

The supporting governments did not take serious steps to hold Israel accountable, which only whetted its appetite for more. So, it went on to destroy most of the city of Khan Younis in the south, as well as the Jabalia refugee camp, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun in the north.

Then it moved on to Gaza City, the centre of the Gaza Strip and the symbol of Palestinian resilience. Despite the fragile ceasefire, Israel wants to destroy this icon because for them, it stands for defiance.

What does it mean for a city to be erased from existence?

I was one of the people who had to flee Rafah.

When I returned to the city on the first day of the January 2025 ceasefire, I could not recognise the city, where I had lived for more than twenty years.

I tried to find streets and intersections to recognise familiar landmarks, but they weren’t there. They had been completely wiped out. I entered my neighbourhood, but it no longer existed. Israeli bulldozers had demolished all the neighbours’ homes and piled the rubble into a single mound.

I got a headache and felt dizzy, so I quickly left, my clothes and hair covered with the dust of the rubble.

Erasing a city from existence is a horrific crime against the soul, being and memory. A city is not merely buildings and streets that can be rebuilt. A city is a person’s sense of rootedness, stability, and standing on solid ground.

The city where we were born and raised, where we met relatives, neighbours, and friends.

Every corner of the city is filled with memories. This was the street I used to walk every morning thirty years ago on my daily way to school. And here was the restaurant where we used to buy our almost daily meal of falafel and hummus.

This corner of the street was also a meeting place for neighbours every evening to talk and share thoughts about politics and society…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Oppressors do not love cities because cities are full of spirit. Everything in a city, its buildings, trees, homes, and neighbourhoods, is full of life. Oppressors are necessarily enemies of life.

Oppressors are always driven by their greed and material calculations, so they don’t care about memories, dreams, hopes, and human suffering. What do they care about ancient trees, historic buildings, and places steeped in the scent of history?

For the Gazan woman who kissed her door and tearfully bade her home farewell, that house holds the memories of a lifetime; every stone of it contains those memories. But for the soldier who will blow it up, it takes nothing more than the push of a button to turn it into rubble, and the mission would be complete……………………………………………

Destroying a city, in the war criminals’ calculations, is nothing more than erasing a blemish from a drawing in a notebook; It is simply a brutal decision, without regard for any human cost or spiritual meaning.

Those who embrace a genocidal ideology want to uproot a people from their roots. This genocidal policy includes the direct killing of people, as well as the erasure of everything that reminds people of their existence on the land and severing all their roots and emotional ties.

What can a person do when they have become without a city, without shelter?

This is a murder that isn’t recorded in statistics, nor covered by the media. After the destruction of our city, we have become strangers. I see the world swaying around me, no solid ground beneath our feet to stand on.

What comes to mind most often these days are the verses of the Iraqi poet Muzaffar al-Nawab:

“I was satisfied that my share of life to be like that of a bird.

But glory to you, even birds have homes that they come back to.

And I’m still flying. “ https://www.palestinedeepdive.com/p/how-does-it-feel-when-your-city-is?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=embedded-post&triedRedirect=true