Palestinians trek across rubble to remains of homes as ceasefire takes hold

Even before the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was fully in place, Palestinians in the war-battered Gaza Strip began to return to the remains of the homes they had evacuated during the 15-month war.

Majida Abu Jarad made quick work of packing the contents of her family’s tent in the sprawling tent city of Muwasi, just north of the strip’s southern border with Egypt.

Flee

At the start of the war, they were forced to flee their house in Gaza’s northern town of Beit Hanoun, where they used to gather around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine.

The house from those fond memories is gone, and for the past year, Ms Abu Jarad, her husband and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, following one evacuation order after another by the Israeli military.

Seven times they fled, she said, and each time their lives became more unrecognisable to them as they crowded with strangers to sleep in a school classroom, searched for water in a vast tent camp, or slept on the street.

Now the family is preparing to begin the trek home – or to whatever remains of it – and to reunite with relatives who remained in the north.

“As soon as they said that the truce would start on Sunday, we started packing our bags and deciding what we would take, not caring that we would still be living in tents,” Ms Abu Jarad said.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. More than 110,000 Palestinians have been wounded, it said.

Evidence

The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence, but its bombardment has flattened large swaths of Gaza and displaced 1.9 million of its 2.3 million residents.

Even as tank shelling continued overnight and into Sunday morning, many Palestinians began trekking through the wreckage to reach their homes, some on foot and others hauling their belongings on donkey carts.

“They’re returning to retrieve their loved ones under the rubble,” said Mohamed Mahdi, a displaced Palestinian and father-of-two.

He was forced to leave his three-storey home in Gaza City’s south-eastern Zaytoun neighbourhood a few months ago.

He Mahdi managed to reach his home on Sunday morning, walking amid the rubble from western Gaza. On the road he said he saw the Hamas-run police force being deployed to the streets in Gaza City, helping people returning to their homes.

Despite the vast scale of the destruction and uncertain prospects for rebuilding, “people were celebrating”, he said. “They are happy. They started clearing the streets and removing the rubble of their homes. It’s a moment they’ve waited for 15 months.”

Um 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, meaning “mother of Saber”, out of safety concerns.

Speaking by phone, she said her family had found bodies in the street as they trekked home, some of whom appeared to have been lying in the open for weeks.

When they reached Beit Lahiya, they found their home and much of the surrounding area reduced to rubble, she said.

Some families immediately began digging through the debris in search of missing loved ones. Others began trying to clear areas where they could set up tents.

Hospital

Um Saber said she also found the area’s Kamal Adwan hospital “completely destroyed”.

She added: “It’s no longer a hospital at all. They destroyed everything.”

The hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli forces waging an offensive in largely isolated northern Gaza against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped.

The military has claimed that Hamas militants operate inside Kamal Adwan, which hospital officials have denied.

The return of the families comes amid looming uncertainty regarding whether the ceasefire deal will bring more than a temporary halt to the fighting, who will govern the enclave and how it will be rebuilt.

The United Nations has said reconstruction could take more than 350 years if Gaza remains under an Israeli blockade.

Using satellite data, the UN estimated last month that 69% of the structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, including more than 245,000 homes.

With more than 100 trucks working full-time, it would take more than 15 years just to clear the rubble, it said.

But for many families, the immediate relief overrode fears about the future.

“We will remain in a tent, but the difference is that the bleeding will stop, the fear will stop, and we will sleep reassured,” Abu Jarad said.