The Electronic Intifada 13 November 2025
From left to right: Bilal, Osama, Eman and Fuad. The al-Husari children were killed after an Israeli airstrike hit their home on 9 September 2025. (Photos courtesy of the family)
Eman al-Husari, 21, refused to leave her home in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp when the Israeli army dropped evacuation leaflets in early September.
“I would tell her to at least pack our backpacks and be ready [in case of an emergency],” Amal al-Husari, Eman’s mother, told The Electronic Intifada. “Eman would reply that she won’t even leave her room.”
Having failed before in October 2023 and 2024, Israel was preparing yet again to invade and occupy Gaza City, and had ordered all the city’s residents to evacuate south.
Eman’s brothers – Fuad, Osama and Bilal – were also resolute in rejecting the Israeli military’s orders.
“Not one of my children agreed to the idea of evacuating,” Amal, 50, said.
The children’s determination mirrored that of their parents.
Muhammad al-Husari, 55, a taxi driver, and Amal, his wife, were also determined to remain in their home in the camp.
None of them wanted to again experience what Muhammad described as the “suffering of displacement.”
Hot and cold
In early October 2023, when the Israeli army first ordered all of the northern Gaza Strip emptied, the family packed only a small bag and evacuated to Rafah in the south.
That winter, water leaked into the tent, and the family felt constantly cold.
By contrast, the scorching heat in summer, Muhammad said, would force them to spend most of the day out of the tent.
“We evacuated only with our summer clothes,” Amal said. “We thought it would be a week or so before we could return.”
But the family’s displacement stretched into a year and four months before they could return following the two-month January ceasefire this year.
“Living in a tent was like death,” Muhammad told The Electronic Intifada. “You are away from your home, neighborhood and the people you know.”
When the evacuation orders came again in early September, the family was adamant not to repeat that experience.
The family planned to move to nearby neighborhoods like al-Sahaba or al-Talateeni should the army advance into their camp, Muhammad said.
They would remain in these surrounding areas, he said, until the army withdrew, at which point they could return.
But to stay meant also to live knowing that their lives were on the line.
False hope
On 8 September, around 8 pm, Muhammad and Amal were waiting for their children to come home.
The children had spent the day at their uncle Abu Abdullah’s house, helping him clean and repair damage caused by a nearby attack.
“I was going to let them sleep at their uncle’s house,” Muhammad said. “They told me they had to come back in the morning anyway to continue helping.”
But when he saw how exhausted they were, Muhammad decided to leave them at home so they could rest.
“We prepared dinner, ate together and enjoyed the evening. Then the children said they wanted to sleep so they could wake up early,” he said, his voice trembling.
Muhammad went to check on his mother who also lived with them.
“I kissed my mother’s hands and head as I always do before bed,” he said.
He then prayed and lay down to sleep.
Around 2:30 am on 9 September, Muhammad was jolted awake to the sound of a very loud explosion.
It took a minute for him to realise he was under rubble, and for a moment he thought it was “judgement day,” he said.
There was fire, the heat was scorching and the room filled with smoke.
“I couldn’t see anyone,” Muhammad told The Electronic Intifada. “I screamed for ‘Amal!’ She replied, ‘I’m under your legs.’”
“Yamma,” he shouted, calling on his mother. There was no answer.
“I called out for Fuad…” he said, then fell silent for six seconds.
“I told Amal that I thought the children were martyred. Alhamdulilah.”
Rescue
The civilian defense team came a short while later to look for survivors.
Muhammad cried out for them while pounding on the concrete around him, he said.
“Every minute – every second – you remain under the rubble feels like dying a million times,” Muhammad said. “There is no air, no oxygen, and you just want to die.”
Muhammad was rescued with injuries to his legs and back while Amal was pulled out unharmed.
The two were taken to Al Ahli Arab Hospital.
Hours later at the hospital, a relative told Muhammad that some neighbors heard voices, and that Eman and Osama were alive but that rescue workers were still not able to pull them out.
“I prayed that at least one of my children survived,” he said, by now crying freely.
A few hours later, another relative called and told Muhammad that his mother had been pulled out alive.
“Eman’s bed and my mother’s were less than 50 cm apart,” he said. “Hope was restored in me and my wife that Eman will be alive and rescued.”
Muhammad and Amal waited for hours until, in the afternoon, a cousin called Muhammad and told him they had pulled Eman from under the rubble, but that she hadn’t survived.
It was pitch black when the bombing happened, and civil defense crews lacked the equipment needed to search or dig through the debris. They could not continue and had to return in the morning.
By the time they came back, Amal said, if the children had still been alive, they would have already passed away.
Ten other people from the wider al-Husari family were killed that day – Muhammad’s brothers and cousins.
Futures denied
Osama, 16, was sociable, Muhammad said, and could easily communicate with people, whether children or adults.
During the genocide, he ran a basta – a simple wooden stall – where he sold canned goods.
This got Osama into trade, and he wanted to learn more about this field once the genocide ended, Muhammad said.
He would follow his siblings around the house, always eager to help.
Bilal, 17, was due to take his matriculation exams next year and wanted to become a software engineer.
“I always urged him to study if he wanted to be an engineer,” Muhammad said.
Eman, 21, was about to graduate from the Islamic University of Gaza’s nursing department.
During the genocide, her father had asked her what she would do if she found a wounded enemy who had killed one of her relatives.
“She told me that it was her religious and moral duty to treat any human,” Muhammad said.
Fuad, 23, the eldest, was a software development graduate from the Islamic University of Gaza.
“He dreamed of working to let me rest,” Muhammad said.
He also hoped to pursue master’s and doctorate studies.
But he grew frustrated with feeling helpless during the genocide. When the famine struck Gaza, Fuad would plead with his father to go to aid trucks coming from the Zikim crossing, the entry point for aid trucks in northern Gaza.
But his father said it was too dangerous.
“He was suffering psychologically, unhappy about the living conditions we were in,” Muhammad said.
“They were all kind and good children,” Amal said. “Every time they walked by me, they would either hug or kiss me.”
When the Israeli forces ordered civilians to flee south in early September, Fuad, like his siblings, told his mother that this time he would not leave home again.
He didn’t – he is still lying beneath the rubble of their house, beside his two younger brothers. It has still not been possible to retrieve the three bodies.
Ahmad Sbaih is a writer based in Gaza.
