A Second Nakba: Israeli attacks are erasing entire families from Gaza's civil registry

As the brutal Israeli attack against Palestinian civilians continues in Gaza, scores of mass graves are buried there with entire families being wiped out of the civil registry.

The Gaza Strip's health ministry said the death toll from Israel's relentless bombardment has reached 8,525, including 3,542 children and 2,187 women.

Furthermore, the number of children killed in nearly a month of Israeli bombing has now exceeded the number killed annually in all the world's conflict zones since 2019.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a ceasefire and again vowed to crush the Palestinian group Hamas.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, with over 670,000 sheltering in packed UN-run schools-turned-shelters or in hospitals alongside thousands of wounded patients.

“I told my sons that we should not all reside in one house during the attack for fear that Israel would bomb our house and kill us all... I wanted one of us to remain alive, so my sons dispersed to different houses"

“Mahmoud and his family have been killed, all of them have been killed," Majed Mushtaha, the father of Mahmoud, tells The New Arab. "No one who was at home is now alive," the 62-year-old adds. 

Majed's 31-year-old son along with his wife and their child, went to another relative's home for safety, but an Israeli attack killed them all. 

“I told my sons that we should not all reside in one house during the attack for fear that Israel would bomb our house and kill us all," Majed explains. "I wanted one of us to remain alive, so my sons dispersed to different houses. Mahmoud went to his in-laws’ house with his wife and his two-year-old child, Karim."

The Israeli airstrikes bombed the Hasuna family home, where Mahmoud went, in Gaza City's Al-Nafaq neighbourhood on Tuesday, 24 October.

There were around 30 family members in that one house — they were all killed.

“I wish that we had all stayed together at the same house," Majed says. "I wish that I had given Mahmoud a last hug and kissed my grandchildren for the last time. Mahmoud was my last son, a kind-hearted man. How will his mother bear the loss of her youngest child? I have also lost four of my grandchildren — Karim, Sara, Nour, and Assad. They are all just children, what did they ever do to anyone?" 

In Gaza’s central town of Zawaideh, a 22-year-old Palestinian photojournalist buried 32 members of his family who were killed in Israeli air raids on Sunday.

Israel's ongoing attack has resulted in the Ministry of Health losing control of the health situation due to the scale of the disaster and the number of massacres that are occuring.

“We are preparing mass graves for hundreds of people whose entire families have been killed," Ashraf Al-Qudra, the official spokesman for the Ministry of Health, said in a press conference.

Palestinians say this war is robbing them not only of their loved ones but also of the funeral rites. Israeli strikes have killed so many people so quickly that they’ve overwhelmed hospitals and morgues, making the normal rituals of death all but impossible.

The Israeli occupation forces warned Gaza City residents to evacuate their homes and go to the south of the Strip, claiming that their safety would be guaranteed there. However, civilians in Gaza have no place to shelter under the ongoing Israeli attacks.

Nafez's family evacuated from Gaza City to Al-Zawaida in central Gaza, seeking a safe place for his wife and children.

“Israel bombed their home without any warning — there were a lot of children there,” an eyewitness who did not want to be named said.

“Massacres, genocide, there is death everywhere in Gaza," the eyewitness added. 

"The morgue had no room to accommodate the bodies, so they were left on the floor overnight"

On the evening of October 15, Israeli airstrikes committed another massacre. "Eighteen members of my family, all killed," said Mustafa Ghabain, the only survivor. "At least three are still missing beneath the rubble. The morgue had no room to accommodate the bodies, so they were left on the floor overnight."

Mustafa’s family was evacuated to the Nuseirat camp in south Gaza. “We thought we would be safer here," he expressed with sadness. 

The Israeli government is operating the world's largest campaign of population genocide in the Gaza Strip using a systematic destruction campaign to forcibly displace civilians from their homes, said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. 

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza released the names of almost 7,000 Gazans killed so far by Israeli strikes since 7 October, a day after US President Joe Biden tried to cast doubt on the toll figures.

The health ministry says at least 7,028 people were killed in Gaza since Israel's bombing campaign on the besieged strip began two weeks ago.

The released list contains the names of 6,747 victims, including their gender, age and identity card number. It also highlighted that 281 bodies had not yet been identified.

Meanwhile, Gaza's humanitarian crisis continues to worsen, with supplies of food, medicine, water and food running low because of a near-complete Israeli siege.

Mahmoud Mushtaha is a Gaza-based freelance journalist and human rights activist. He works as a media assistant at We Are Not Numbers, a project of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Follow him on Twitter: @MushtahaW