Gaza families dig through rubble searching for loved ones' remains

Geoff Bennett:

Today, Israeli authorities took an unprecedented step and began to bulldoze the United Nations' main office for Palestinian refugees.

Israel had banned it from the country, accusing it of being complicit in Hamas' terrorism and governance in Gaza. President Trump today said the Board of Peace that is designed to run Gaza might replace the U.N., though he said the U.N. needed to continue its work.

But if the U.S. is hoping to give Palestinians a better future, in Gaza, it feels a long way off.

Nick Schifrin and our Gaza producer Shams Odeh have this look at one man's desperate search for his deceased family.

And a warning:

Images in this story are disturbing.

Nick Schifrin:

Today in Gaza, Palestinians often don't go home to live. They go home to find the dead, not with cranes or bulldozers, which aren't available, just shovels and bare hands and an unbearable weight of grief.

Mahmoud Hammad walks down to where he used to live, where he lost everything. He survived what he says was the Israeli strike that destroyed his house and stole his world.

Mahmoud Hammad, Lost Entire Family (through interpreter):

I am standing outside of this house to say that what happened to me has happened to every Gazan. My house, like the whole area, was targeted by a huge fire belt.

Nick Schifrin:

He moves slowly, digging debris carefully, because he is looking for all of his children, his wife, Samar, and the unborn baby he will never meet.

Mahmoud Hammad (through interpreter):

She was pregnant. When we were in school, she was in her seventh or eighth month of pregnancy. I graduated with her from the university and she graduated top of the class with distinction. We promised to complete a master's degree and doctorate and stay together, but she passed away. May God honor her.

Nick Schifrin:

His screen cracked, but his memory crystal clear, his kids, Mohamed, Ghaith, Jannah, Judy, Ismail. And so goes the story of Gaza, once one of the most densely populated parts of the planet, today, much of it a moonscape, with thousands buried underneath.

Palestinian health officials say more than 70,000 were killed, including more than 450 even after the October cease-fire. Today, 3-month-old Shaza Abu Jara died of hypothermia, the ninth child this winter who Palestinian health officials say was killed by severe cold.

And the U.N. says more than 80 percent of Gaza's buildings are destroyed in the war launched after Hamas' October 7 terrorist attacks, the deadliest single day in Israeli history. Israel blames the damage on Hamas' use of civilian infrastructure. Since the cease-fire, half of Gaza has no Israeli troops, but also no reconstruction.

Gazans like Hamada Sleem walk freely. He too is looking for his buried family by hand. All he finds, children's blankets and clothes.

Hamada Sleem, Lost Family (through interpreter):

We try and try, hoping that God will help me get any of them out, so they can be buried. I don't know how to describe the feeling of having my whole family under the house and being unable to get them out. I have appealed to the whole world, hoping that this new Board of Peace will stand with us and look after us.

President Donald Trump:

We just created the Board of Peace, which I think is going to be amazing. I wish the United Nations could do more.

Nick Schifrin:

The Security Council-endorsed Board of Peace will be chaired indefinitely by Donald Trump and is designed to oversee Gaza's future and make decisions that will lead to reconstruction and new governance.

But, today, that better life is just a promise. There is first trying to provide dignity in death. Mahmoud Hammad sifts through the sand. It turns out there are no bodies to find, only human bones among the rocks. He will keep going, but he knows he's found the remains of his pregnant wife.

Mahmoud Hammad (through interpreter):

How did I know that she was my wife? The first thing was the room, and the second were the bones of the baby. The baby was fully formed and was in the same place.

Nick Schifrin:

In this place today, there was no dignity recovered and peace is still something imagined.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Nick Schifrin.