Minutes after the fighting in Gaza stopped on Sunday, Islam Dahliz and his father and brother walked toward the neighborhood where they lived until Israeli forces ordered them to leave. They were looking for a family home, but the landscape around them disturbed their senses. Famous landmarks, streets, neighbors’ houses — everything was in ruins.

That’s when Mr. Dahliz recognized the local wedding hall, he said, or what was left of it. It meant that their home stood – stood – behind them, in a place they had already passed through. They just didn’t recognize it, this house that Mr. Dahliz’s father built more than 50 years ago.

“It took us a few minutes to accept that this pile of rubble was our home,” said Mr Dahliz, 34, who works with local aid groups. They stood there, speechless.

His 74-year-old father, Abed Dahliz, felt the wind knock him out of his head, he said. His sons had to help him back to his tent to rest.

“I was shocked to see my whole life – everything I worked for – razed to the ground,” said Abed Dahliz, a farmer all his life, his voice soft and trembling. “The home I spent so many years building, investing my savings, is gone.”

This was not the moment they had hoped for and imagined all these months, as they were forced to move from tent to tent, pack up and start over a total of four times. They imagined a return. Continuation of their lives.

They huddled in their last makeshift tent in a park in western Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Sunday morning, when cease-fire should have taken effect, glued to the radio. Islam Dahliz was on his phone, refreshing his social media accounts for the latest news. The whole family tensed when they heard that the truce could fail because of a last minute setback: Hamas, Israel said, has not handed over the promised list of Israeli hostages to be released from Gaza.

Then at 11:15 the radio announced that the truce was in effect. The father and brothers, they say, got into the car and headed home.

The home was a spacious two-story house on al-Imam Ali Street in Rafah, built in 1971 and, like many homes in Gaza, shared by three generations of the same family. The parents lived in one apartment, and Mr. Dahliz, his wife and their children had another. He invested his savings in a new kitchen, furniture and bedding when he returned to Gaza from Hungary, where he studied agriculture, he recalled.

His brothers Mohammed and Anas also lived there with their families, with another brother half a mile away. It was large enough that during the first seven months of the war, the Dahlizis were able to host about 10 other families who had evacuated from other places in Gaza.

Next door was their farm, started by their father and cared for by Mohammed, 40. Olive trees and date palms stood side by side with greenhouses where they grew parsley, lettuce and arugula. They had rabbits, chickens and 40 sheep, which Muhammad took every morning to the fields for grazing.

Mohammed Dahliz remembers his father planting palm trees when he was a small boy, he said. He remembered his young children before the war, he said, chasing the chickens around and laughing as he collected their eggs for breakfast.

The Israeli military said it attacked residential areas because Hamas fighters had taken up residence in civilian buildings, although New York Times investigation found that Israel also weakened protections for civilians to make it easier to bomb Gaza during the war.

When Israeli forces invaded Rafah in May i ordered everyone in eastern Rafah should leave, Islam Dahliz said, the vegetables have just started to sprout. The families that took refuge with the Dahlize’s have split up. The Dahlizes packed some clothes, a tarp and other materials for a makeshift tent and chose a place for it as close to home as possible.

But they hadn’t seen him in months, despite being only a few miles away.

Their relatives managed to sneak into the neighborhood from time to time, bringing news. Their home is still standing, they reported. Then they said that it was standing, but some of its doors and windows had been blown out.

In the fall, the Dahlizes searched for satellite images circulating on social media: still intact. Then they checked again on December 8, Islam Dahliz recalled. All they saw where the house was was a gray shadow.

Now their palm and olive trees are felled, trunks scattered on the ground. Israeli tanks have left traces all over their country. Little stood straight on his property except for a few concrete posts with rebar sticking out.

“I feel lost, completely lost,” said Mohammed Dahliz. Then, getting angry, he said: “This was an agricultural area, a place of peace. He posed no threat to anyone, no danger to the soldiers. We had nothing to do with politics, and no reason to be caught up in this violence.”

Islam Dahliza’s daughter Juan, 9, screamed when he showed her pictures of the destruction, he said. “Remember, Dad, when you threw me a birthday party in the great hall?” she asked, sobbing.

On Monday morning, the brothers and their father drove a second time to their neighborhood, down the road stuck with other families, each vehicle crowded with passengers and accumulated belongings. Everyone was there to save whatever they could. All over Rafah, people were filling battered flour sacks and patched sacks with scraps of metal they might sell or reuse and wood they might burn.

Mohammed Dahliz was just hoping to find some of his 14-year-old daughter Jane’s old toys, the ones he brought her on her birthday or every time she reached a milestone at school. She begged him to look for them, he said.

“I just want to find a piece of her childhood,” he said. “I’ve been looking since morning, hoping to find something that belonged to her.”

Digging through the gray, Islam Dahliz came across his old school certificates, a discovery that made him smile. But otherwise, they didn’t find much. Firewood, a few pillows, an empty tank they hoped to fix.

He stuck to plans, no matter how fragile they were.

If — if — the two sides negotiate a permanent end to the war, as they should try during the initial phase of the truce, the Dahlizes would hire a bulldozer to clear the rubble, first from the farm and then from the house. They would install some pipes, build a basic toilet and install a water tank, he said.

“It won’t end the suffering,” he said, “but at least it will be closer to home where we made so many memories.”

But for now dusk was falling. They would have to go back to their tent. What remained of the Dahlize’s old lives barely filled the back of a small car.