Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip: Even before a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas was finalized on Sunday, Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip began returning to the remnants of homes they vacated during the 15-month war.
Majda Abu Jarad hastily packed up the contents of her family’s tent in the town of Mawasi, just north of the Strip’s southern border with Egypt.
At the start of the war, they were forced to flee their home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, where they would gather around the kitchen table or on the terrace on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine.
Home is gone from those fond memories, and for the past year, Abu Jarad, her husband and their six daughters have traveled the length of the Gaza Strip following one evacuation order after another by the Israeli military.
Seven times they ran away, he said, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them as they crowded a school classroom with strangers to sleep, searched for water in a sprawling tent camp or found a road. But sleep.
Now the family is preparing to start the trek home.
“As soon as they said the cease-fire would start on Sunday, we started packing our bags and deciding what we would take, not caring if we were going to take it,” Abu Jarad said. will still live in tents.”
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping nearly 250 others. About 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to have died.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which did not say how many were fighters. It said more than 110,000 Palestinians were injured. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants without providing evidence.
Israeli military bombardment has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced 1.9 million of its 2.3 million inhabitants.
Even before the ceasefire was officially enforced – and tank shelling continued throughout the night and into the morning – many Palestinians began walking through the rubble, some on foot and others on donkey carts, to reach their homes. They were carrying their belongings.
“They are coming back to get their loved ones buried under the rubble,” said Mohammed Mehdi, a displaced Palestinian and father of two. He was forced to leave his three-story home in the southeastern Zeyton neighborhood of Gaza City a few months ago.
Mahdi managed to walk through the rubble from western Gaza to his home on Sunday morning. On the road, he said he saw a Hamas-run police force deployed on the streets of Gaza City, helping people return to their homes.
Despite the widespread destruction and uncertain prospects for reconstruction, “people were celebrating,” he said. “They are happy. They have started cleaning the streets and removing debris from houses. This is the moment they have been waiting for for 15 months.
Umm Saber, a 48-year-old widow and mother of six, returned to her hometown of Beit Lahiya. She asked to be identified only by her honorific, “Sabir’s mother,” due to security concerns.
Speaking by phone, he said his family found bodies in the street as they traveled home, some of which appeared to have been lying in the open for weeks.
He said that when he arrived in Beth Lahia, he found his house and most of the surrounding area a pile of rubble. Some families immediately began digging through the rubble in search of missing loved ones. Others began trying to clear areas where they could set up tents.
Umm Saber said she also found the area’s Kamal Adwan Hospital “completely destroyed”.
He said that it is no longer a hospital. “They destroyed everything.”
The hospital has been hit several times over the past three months by Israeli forces in an offensive against Hamas fighters in largely isolated northern Gaza, which has since regrouped.
The military has claimed that Hamas militants operate inside Kamal Adwan, a claim denied by hospital officials.
In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, residents returned to see widespread destruction across the city that was once a hub for displaced families fleeing Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territories. Some people found human remains among the rubble of houses and streets.
“It’s an indescribable scene. It’s like you’re watching a Hollywood horror movie,” Rafah resident Mohammad Abu Taha told The Associated Press as he and his brother sat in their home in the city’s Salam neighborhood. The family was inspecting the house. “Flat houses, human remains, skulls and other body parts, streets and debris.”
He shared footage of piles of rubble in what he said was his family’s home. “I want to know how they destroyed our house.”
The withdrawal comes amid growing uncertainty over whether a ceasefire agreement will temporarily halt fighting, who will govern the enclave and how it will be rebuilt.
Not all families will be able to return home immediately. Under the terms of the agreement, returning displaced persons will only be able to cross the Netzarim Corridor from south to north starting seven days after the cease-fire.
And returnees may face long waits to rebuild their homes.
The United Nations has said that if Gaza remains under Israeli blockade, reconstruction could take more than 350 years. Using satellite data, the United Nations estimated last month that 69 percent of structures in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed, including more than 245,000 homes. With more than 100 trucks working full-time, it will take more than 15 years to remove the debris alone.
But for many families, the immediate relief put an end to future concerns.
“We will stay in the tent, but the difference is that the bleeding will stop, the fear will stop, and we will sleep peacefully,” Abu Jarad said.
