Exhausted Palestinians arrive in Gaza City to no homes, killed family

Al-Rashid Street, Gaza City, Palestine – There are many stories among the tens of thousands of people walking along Gaza’s al-Rashid Street, heading for the north.

A white man walks with tenacity alongside his family in the crowds. In one hand, he carries a blanket and a few meagre possessions. In the other, he holds onto his adult son, who has Down Syndrome.

Rifaat Jouda doesn’t pretend that he isn’t tired. He started his journey in the morning in southern Gaza, in Khan Younis’s al-Mawasi, where his family had been displaced for 15 months during Israel’s war on Gaza.

After a ceasefire broke out on January 19, Israel finally allowed Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip to travel north on Monday, making the goal of reaching Gaza City.

But it’s a long walk – some 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) along a coastal road – and Rifaat’s family were forced to stop to rest every hour.

“The journey has been exhausting and very difficult”, Rifaat tells Al Jazeera, after finally reaching Gaza City. “Despite that, we were determined to return”.

Now that he has returned home, Rifaat is unsure of his strategy. He claims that his physical home in northern Gaza City, which was attacked by Israelis in October, was destroyed.

“They]Rifaat’s contacts in Gaza City] say the situation is very difficult, with no water, no services, and widespread destruction”, Rifaat says. What difference, however, does it make? We are transforming from a challenging to a more difficult situation. What we have available will be rebuilt. But]making the journey to return] back has lifted our spirits and renewed our hope”.

Regretting displacement

Before the war began 15 months ago, the majority of Gaza’s population lived in the north, centred around the enclave’s biggest urban area, Gaza City. Israel has focused its attacks on that area, and it issued forced evacuation orders to people flee to “safe zones” in central and southern Gaza early in the conflict.

The majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were displaced there, below a Netzarim corridor that Israel called the center of Gaza.

Although the destruction was sizable in the north, where 74 percent of Gaza City’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed during the war, the supposed safe havens were spared, and the areas people had fled were also devastated: Deir el-Balah’s Deir el-Balah’s buildings in Deir el-Balah’s buildings were damaged or destroyed in southern Gaza, where 55% of buildings were destroyed, and 48% of those

Palestinians were forced to flee from their homes by constant Israeli attacks, which resulted in at least 47,300 casualties throughout the conflict. Many people felt they should never have left Gaza City and the north in the first place.

“The days of displacement were the hardest and most exhausting”, Rifaat says. We have no way of seeing ourselves moving away from our homes and continuing our lives.

Anyone who sees these crowds is aware that no plans for forced displacement, regardless of what happens, will succeed, he adds, before suggesting that his family may be able to move back to Ashdod, a city north of Gaza but now in Israel, from where they were forcibly displaced in 1948 during the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” with the establishment of Israel.

Due to the Nakba in 1948, when at least 750 000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes, displacement is a central theme for Palestinians. Many of the people who live in Gaza are refugees, and many of them have families in Israeli-occupied towns and villages. Many people regret ever leaving their homes in the north, especially after the events of the current Gaza war.

Sami al-Dabbagh, a 39-year-old returning to Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza, claims he was relocated to various locations before making his home in central Gaza. The father-of-four, having walked on foot for hours, says he will never make the same mistake again.

“We will never repeat the experience of displacement, no matter what happens”, al-Dabbagh says.

It’s a sentiment shared by another man travelling up to northern Gaza, Radwan al-Ajoul.

“Displacement has taught us never to leave our homes again”, he says, as he carries his belongings on his shoulder.

The 45-year-old father of eight has been living in Deir el-Balah, but like al-Dabbagh, he is also from Sheikh Radwan.

“The feeling of returning is indescribable, especially since the conditions are no different between the north and the south”, he says.

Returning without family members

After more than a year of fighting and displacement, the people walking on al-Rashid Street have been moving for hours, attempting to track down their loved ones, assisting those who are less fortunate, and carrying the few things they have managed to keep track of.

However, the details shared reveal how devastated Palestinians in Gaza have been.

Khaled Ibrahim, 52, came from Khan Younis and is headed to Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City.

His four children, who he has, are without homes to return to. He plans to set up a tent instead.

But more than a home, he has lost those closest to him, Ibrahim’s wife, granddaughter, and two of his brothers were killed in a bombing near their tent in Khan Younis last June.

“Our lives are hard. We have lost everything in every way”, Ibrahim says.

Another returnee, Nada Jahjouh, has also lost family. Before the war, one of her sons was killed in the Great March of Return in Gaza in 2018. Another victim was killed in a May Israeli attack. She now carries a grandson and one son with her wherever she goes.

“We are exhausted, physically and mentally”, Jahjouh says. “Returning without my sons makes me feel very sad. My joy is incomplete”.

Source: Aljazeera