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GAZA CITY’S ICONIC SHUJA’IYYA NEIGHBORHOOD NO LONGER EXISTS  
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Tareq S. Hajjaj
August 11, 2025
Mondoweiss
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_ The neighborhood of Shuja'iyya was once home to 120,000 people. It
has now been erased. _

, Photo: Doaa el-Baz/APA Images

 

On Saturday, August 2, the Israeli army withdrew from the western
parts of the al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood. One of the largest
neighborhoods in Gaza City, al-Shuja’iyya had an estimated
population of 120,000 people. The last evacuation order for the area
was in April 2025, marking the seventh invasion of the neighborhood
since the war began.

As the Israeli army withdrew, people started returning to their old
streets in Shuja’iyya to check on what might remain of their homes.
When they arrived, nothing was there. I started to frantically look
online for photos of my old neighborhood, hoping that I might
recognize my home and make sure that the part of it that remained
standing before the ceasefire broke is still there. The photos I saw
first were from Israeli accounts, gleefully posting the images of mass
destruction that their army had created in Gaza.

Then the photos started to come in from my neighbors and friends.
Everything was piles of rubble.

I started calling my family members in Gaza, asking who was going back
to check on our home, but they told me it was still too dangerous, and
that the Israeli army is targeting people with quadcopter drones that
fly over the neighborhood. I called some neighbors and friends, hoping
that I would find anyone who was already there and could send me a
photo to calm my nerves. As I waited, I felt like a father whose son
had been lost to him. 

On Monday, one of my neighbors told me he was going anyway — I
couldn’t ask him to go just for me, because I would have asked him
to risk going to his death. My nephew told me that Muhammad Talb, 33,
had gone there, and he asked me to call him if I wanted something
specific from the area. 

I did and talked to him for a minute over the phone. He said that he
was on his way, and I asked him to get a photo of my home. He’s been
my neighbor for 33 years, from the day I was born. 

One hour later, I called again, but his phone was unavailable. I
considered a hundred scenarios in my head, thinking maybe he
couldn’t bring himself to tell me that my home was gone. Or maybe
he’s weeping over the ruins of his own home and needs to be alone.
For some reason, I didn’t think that he might have been killed, even
though it was the most logical thing to assume. 

Hours later, my nephew told me that an Israeli drone had bombed him
while he was checking on his home. 

After that, I couldn’t ask anyone anything.

NOTHING LEFT STANDING

The next day, more videos from neighbors on social media showed up on
my social media feed, but all I could see was flattened blocks and
more piles of rubble. I couldn’t find a single house that remained
standing. And it wasn’t just the homes — the streets were
completely dug up, the trees were burned, and even empty tracts of
land were bulldozed.

Ameer Shaiah, one of my neighbors, posted
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few  videos of our neighborhood, but nothing was recognizable. It was
just rubble everywhere, from every direction. I spoke to him.

“Did you see my home?” 

“It’s a pile of rubble, Tareq. Not a single home was left
standing.”

I did not believe him. “Did you see my home closely?” He said he
had not crossed to the side street where my home was located, but
assured me that all the homes were flattened. 

Another neighbor posted a video on social media. I hurried to call
him, because if he reached his home, he would pass by mine and would
be able to tell me about it. 

“How is my home?” I asked without even greeting him. 

“Put your hope for reward in God,” he said. I would not believe it
until I saw it with my own eyes. I asked whether he had a photo or a
video. He sent me a video saying that my house was in a part of it.

I watched it while my hands shook. The door of my home was still
standing. Everything behind it was rubble. 

The scene damaged parts of my soul that I had pushed back into memory.
I wondered why the door was still standing and gave myself a few
answers. _It was still waiting for its residents to come back_. It had
to stay standing so that it could bear witness to all of our
memories. 

The same door that I hurried through every time I gave my family good
news — my graduation from school, my excitement when I got a decent
job, my happiness when I started a family. The same door that
witnessed my evacuation in October 2023.

The door had been covered with a jasmine tree planted by my late
parents. Inside that home, I had listened to hundreds of stories from
my father about how he struggled to build it and how my mother helped
move the stones and sand from the ground floor to the second, so that
the workers could finish their job faster. My family lived on the sand
for years until my father could finish building it. 

In a blink, Israel destroyed a 55-year-old home, almost more than half
of its age as a state, leaving me with memories that a lifetime would
not be enough to make me forget.

Like the cities of Rafah and Beit Hanoun, al-Shuja’iyya no longer
exists. The Israeli army is systematically leveling every part of
Gaza, seeking to wipe out its very memory.

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Tareq S. Hajjaj is the Gaza Correspondent for Mondoweiss and a member
of the Palestinian Writers Union. Follow him on Twitter/X
at @Tareqshajjaj [[link removed]].

* Gaza City; Shuja'iyya; Gaza Genocide; Israel;
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