Inside Gaza’s Warscape: The Skeik Building and its Residents
In western Gaza City, the Skeik building stands as a stark symbol of a city torn apart by war. A once-familiar street scene beside Omar al-Mukhtar Street—often called Lovers’ Street for its romantic past—now bears the brutal marks of conflict: rubble, shrapnel, and the quiet echo of displaced lives. The eight of ten apartments now host families who fled danger elsewhere, turning a once-vibrant residence block into a temporary home for those with nowhere else to turn.
Two years into Gaza’s most recent upheaval, this single building offers a microcosm of how war erodes home, kinship, and the sense of community that anchors people through everyday life. The Skeik family stories reveal how displacement fragments social networks and stretches resources to the limit.
A Day-to-Day Reality of Displacement
Hadeel Daban, 26, shares a fourth-floor apartment with her husband and three children. They moved in two months ago, paying 1,000 shekels a month to shelter among walls marked by shrapnel and windows blocked by torn sheets. “Shrapnel hits the walls here, but it’s still better than a tent,” she says, her voice steady despite the tremor of the surrounding explosions.
The Daban family arrived after their home in al-Tuffah neighbourhood was damaged. They returned for a time, only to be forced to flee again when a strike nearby killed a relative and trapped Hadeel’s husband, Izz el-Din, beneath rubble. He survived but required ongoing medical care, a reminder of the medical and logistical challenges Gaza’s displaced communities face when long-term care becomes a moving target.
“We’ve moved twelve times,” Hadeel explains. “A home is not just shelter; it’s memory, routine, and belonging. When you’re displaced, neighbours become strangers, and the street you once knew feels unfamiliar.”
Stories of Loss, Survival, and Compounded Grief
On the fifth floor, Muna Amin Shabet, 59, shelters with her husband, children, and grandchildren among bullet holes that still veil the apartment. Their al-Tuffah home lay in ruins weeks into the war, and the family has yet to reconstruct a sense of safety or place. “We are starting life again, spoon by spoon, plate by plate,” she says, a phrase that captures the painstaking rebuilding required when housing, routines, and social structures collapse.
Neighbors recount a broader dispersion: some moved south, others remain scattered with relatives or in shelters that shift with the day. The UN estimates that up to 90% of Gaza’s housing has been damaged or destroyed in many districts, transforming neighborhoods into memorials of what once was, even as life presses forward for those who stay.
Shawkat al-Ansari, from Beit Lahia, describes a coping mechanism born of continual upheaval: family members in different places, waiting for moments of stability that rarely arrive. “We were living OK before,” he notes, yet a brother’s disappearance after a flour run underscored how the war fragments even the closest ties.
Home as a Moving Target
The Skeik building has become a transit hub for people who would prefer to stay put but must adapt to new dangers daily. A large hole in a back wall and caution signs of Israeli activity—like graffiti and reported observation posts—underscore how the landscape of Gaza City has shifted from everyday life to a continuous state of urgency.
In late moments, even as families like Hadeel’s prepare for another move to safety in the south, the question remains: what rebuilding can occur when a city’s core fabric—its homes, schools, and familiar paths—has been erased? The images of children drawing in a room peppered with bullet holes speak to a harsh reality: the future is being shaped by displacement as much as by war in the here and now.
What Recovery Could Look Like
For Gaza’s displaced families living in blocks like the Skeik building, recovery is not a single project but a series of long-term processes: safe housing, reliable medical care, stable schooling for children, and a sense of home that is not contingent on moving from door to door. Peace negotiations and reconstruction would offer more than bricks and mortar; they could restore social networks and the continuity of life that small communities rely on every day.
As the sounds of conflict echo in the distance, the residents of the Skeik building hold to a fragile hope: that one day, they can return to a life where the Lovers’ Street they once knew is once again a place of memory rather than fear.
