‘My heart is split in two’: The women returning to homes in northern Gaza

Inshirah Darabeh, a resident of the Gaza Strip, is contemplating leaving her in-laws’ home in the city of Deir el-Balah to head home to Gaza City, where she will find her daughter’s body and arrange for her daughter to receive a dignified burial.

“I am not going back to find my home, all I want is to find her grave and put her name on a tombstone”, she says. Inshirah, 55, will walk more than 10km (6 miles) through rubble and bomb craters to reach her home. She anticipates at least three hours of work.

As she finally departs from the brutal war in Gaza that has resulted in more than 46, 000 Palestinian deaths and thousands more unaccounted for and assumed dead under the rubble, Inshirah says she is overwhelmed with unsettling feelings of dread, pain, and relief. The majority of the victims were children and women.

Internally displaced Palestinians were permitted to return to their homes in the north, which has been under a deadly military siege since October 2024, in accordance with the terms of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which came into force last Sunday. On day seven of the ceasefire, which will be held on Saturday this week, were allowed to do so without being inspected by Israeli soldiers.

Following Hamas and Israel’s second prisoner exchange on Saturday, however, this was temporarily questioned. Israel stated that it would not allow the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza until an issue involving Arbel Yehoud’s release is resolved.

Meanwhile, those who have been moved to the south of Gaza are still waiting for news.

Gaza split in two in November 2023 when Israeli ground forces first landed in the besieged Strip. The Netzarim Corridor, a military division that separates Gaza City from Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, extends from east to west and separates the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon, and Beit Lahiya in north Gaza.

Cut off completely

Since the ground invasion, no one has been able to cross back to the north. Between 65, 000 and 75, 000 people are alleged to have remained in North Gaza governorate before the intensification of military operations and the siege, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

The waterfront street west of Gaza City, which connects the south of the city to the north, will allow people to return on foot. The passage of vehicles, however, has been a point of contention. A report from the US website Axios claimed Hamas had resisted allowing Israeli checkpoints to be set up along the Netzarim Corridor, a crucial road south of Gaza City.

According to the report, the deal was made between US private security contractors and a multinational consortium formed under the ceasefire agreement to “oversee, manage, and secure” a vehicle checkpoint along Salah al-Din Street.

Survivors like Inshirah are unprepared to give up after 15 months of almost constant Israeli bombing that has resulted in 90 percent of Gaza’s population being internally displaced and over 80 percent of buildings being destroyed.

She recalls the fateful Sunday, late in October 2023, as if it were yesterday when she received a call at 4am.

Inshirah tells Al Jazeera, “My husband and I were forced to leave our home in the north during the first few weeks of the war.” My three daughters and their husbands stayed with us, even though my eldest granddaughter was with us.

Communications were completely offline for more than 36 hours on October 27.

“I didn’t realize Maram was martyred until the following day when my eldest daughter called me as soon as communications were restored.”

Maram was 35. The same Israeli airstrike in Gaza City that soon followed the death of Maram’s four-month-old daughter was the first to kill her.

“My only desire is to pitch my tent over the rubble of my home,” the statement read.

Inshirah’s story is comparable to that of thousands of women who have gone through the agonizing pain of losing their children, husbands, fathers, and brothers while taking care of the ones who have survived.

Olfat Abdrabboh, 25, used to have three children. Now she only has two: a daughter, Alma, 6, and a toddler, Mohammed, 18 months old.

“Salah, my four-year-old, died in my arms in Deir el-Balah where we were displaced a year ago”, Olfat tells Al Jazeera. When Israel air-raped the mosque on October 27, 2023, Olfat’s father had taken him to Friday prayers. “My father lost his legs”, she says.

She brought her son from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital with her, but he died the following day due to internal bleeding.

Olfat’s wife had initially decided to move away from their home in Beit Lahiya, north of Jabalia, in northern Gaza, so she made the difficult decision to bring his body back with her uncles so that her husband could bury him close to their home. Now, at last, she can go there herself – and plans to travel on Sunday.

“I haven’t seen my own child’s grave”, she says. My heart is divided into two parts: one for my livid child and my home’s remains, and the other for my two children, who have been deprived of their father for months.

” All I want to do, “says Olfat”, is pitch my tent over the rubble of my home and reunite my family. “

The torture of a tent dweller’s tent

While not all are grieving a dead child or separated by long distances from husbands, women like Zulfa Abushanab feel trapped and anxious, nonetheless.

The 28-year-old mother of two daughters, Salma, 5, and Sara, 10, was displaced in late October 2023 from Gaza’s at-Twam area, northwest of Gaza City, to Nuseirat and then to Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, where she is staying at a friend’s apartment along with other refugees. There are only two bedrooms with mattresses on the floor, one for the men and the other for the women and children.

My husband is in a separate room, while my two daughters and I share a small room with two other women and their four children, Zelfa reports to Al Jazeera. We have been near yet far from each other for over a year, we can’t sit or eat together. “

She claims she is counting the hours until her tiny family can reclaim their destroyed home and live as a regular family despite what residents of the north have told her that residents still living in the north have learned that an Israeli tank shelled her home.

Hayam Khalaf’s face’s lines reflect the trauma of her numerous resurgences.

Along with her four children – Ahmed, 12, Dima, 8, Saad, 6, and the youngest, Sila, 5 – Hayam, 33, has been forced to move seven times across Gaza – to Khan Younis, Rafah, Nuseirat, and finally now to a tent in Deir el-Balah – since the start of the war in October 2023.

Her aging face is a sign of the stress of having to deal with the elements and feed her family for more than a year.

” I can’t describe the torture of living in a tent, full of sand, insects and disease, “says Hayam, who is preparing to return to her parents ‘ home in Tal al-Hawa, south of Gaza City. They were able to evacuate early on so her mother, a cancer patient, could seek urgent medical treatment in Egypt.

She says, “I’ll sleep on the cold, hard tiles if I must, and I’ll take nothing back that will make me feel like this cursed tent.”

“I will take my son’s grave with my own hands.”

No matter where she travels, Jamalat Wadi, 62, is a mother of eight who is known as Um Mohammed.

Originally from Jabalia refugee camp in the north, Um Mohammed was displaced to Deir-el-Balah in October 2023 with her husband and seven daughters. Her only son, Mohammed, 25, chose to stay back in Jabalia to protect their home.

He visited us during the temporary ceasefire from November 24 to November 30 to 2023, but despite being warned that he was putting his life at risk, Umm Mohammed tells Al Jazeera, and then he insisted on returning to the north.

She now believes her son is dead, and she has been anticipating his return to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital every day.

A friend of his, a freed prisoner who had returned through the Netzarim checkpoint, informed me that Mohammed and four other young men had been shot at the checkpoint and that his body had been left on the road a few days after he left.

Um Mohammed claims that it has been a year since then, and that it has been a year of trying to determine what had left of her son. If she discovers his body, she is certain that she will be able to identify it.

” I will find him, “she says”. When he became ill at the start of the war, he had to have a portion of his leg amputated. I’ll follow his path, find him, and lay his to rest with my own hands.

“For me, returning to North Gaza only means finding Mohammed’s body”.

Source: Aljazeera