A sea of beleaguered men, women, children, and elderly walked along a dusty path, with heavy bags slung over their shoulders.
It was Monday January 27 and I used to be amongst an estimated 400,000 Palestinians returning to our homes after a long-awaited ceasefire got here into effect.
The mood of the group was mixed, with some blaring jubilant music and waving Palestinian flags, while others stopped to catch their breath, exhausted after hours of tireless walking.
I used to be with my two adult sons, Waseem and Muhammad, in addition to some colleagues at Islamic Relief – a charity working to supply relief on the bottom in Gaza.
We were on our way home to Tal el-Hawa in northern Gaza, but what we were confronted with once we finally arrived was a city in rubble. It was completely unrecognisable from when my family and I left our home 477 days ago.
Tal el-Hawa was a really busy area filled with people, bustling markets, shops and restaurants, in addition to plenty of public services like schools and universities nearby. In 2012, we bought our flat and my family – including my wife and five children – lived there happily for over a decade.
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I’ll always remember going to the nearby beach on the weekends and the local market to do our weekly shop.
Or the smell of my wife’s cooking floating through the flat, including our favourite dishes like fatteh dajaj (a combination of chicken, crumbled toasted pita bread, yoghurt and bits of leftovers) and maqloobeh (layers of spiced rice, meat and vegetables, cooked together after which turned the other way up to serve).
Unfortunately, all of this became a distant memory on October 7, 2023, when our home became a conflict zone overnight, which was terrifying.
By October 13, Israel announced that everybody within the north of Gaza had to go away our homes.
So with a heavy heart, we moved our whole family and all of the belongings we could carry to my cousin’s house in Deir al Balah in central Gaza. We stayed there for 3 months. It was very crowded, with 15 of us sharing only one bed and one toilet. For this reason we decided to try to move to somewhere with barely more room.
In January 2024, I discovered an old home nearby in Zuwayda, which we could rent. A few of our in-laws also moved in and together we were about 12 people. We stayed there until the ceasefire last month.
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It was a really difficult time for everybody. We had no gas to cook on, so we relied on tinned food the entire time – like beans and sometimes sliced chicken. There was no electricity but I managed to purchase a small battery, which I took to the office day-after-day to charge after which take home.
I worked each day. There was a lot to do and Islamic Relief was distributing things like hot meals and water. We worked with the UN World Food Programme to deliver dietary supplements for infant children and pregnant women.
We did this day-after-day, we didn’t stop for weekends or holidays. Unfortunately, there have been no vehicles so I needed to walk for about an hour each technique to get to work.
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After I got paid into my checking account, there have been no money machines available, so I needed to pay commission to someone who could get money. Liquidity was an enormous challenge throughout Gaza.
I used to be in a position to get just a few thin mattresses but not enough of them, so we needed to sleep with two people per mattress and share a canopy. There was no water supply so we bought two plastic 20-litre jerry cans, which we filled day-after-day – one for drinking and cooking and one for cleansing, however the water was dirty.
All and sundry showered about once every two weeks, but shampoo and soap were limited. On top of that, winter was especially difficult as we didn’t have our warm clothes with us.
We lived in constant fear. The bombing never looked as if it would stop. You may be walking with a friend at some point after which the subsequent day they’d be dead or badly injured.
Initially, it was unimaginable to sleep at night since the planes, drones and bombing were so loud they usually intensified at night. It didn’t get any quieter, we just got used to it.
So when news of the ceasefire earlier this yr first broke, it felt like we were finally in a position to take a deep breath. My family couldn’t stop thanking Allah that we’d made it through the war.
After deciding to go to our flat with two of my sons and my colleagues, our plan was to examine on the house and if it was in good condition, we’d return with the entire family. But as soon as we got into the neighbourhood, I used to be astonished by the horror and severity of the destruction.
There wasn’t a single house that was not at the very least partially destroyed and many of the homes were uninhabitable. It was all bricks and rubble.
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Once we got to our constructing, I began climbing the steps to get to our flat. After I finally got to what was our front door, I used to be shocked – every thing was only a mass of rubble.
There was nothing left. The one thing now we have is the important thing, but that’s useless now.
We don’t yet know once we’ll have the opportunity or allowed to begin rebuilding. The ceasefire is just temporary and there are still restrictions on what aid can come into Gaza, so in the intervening time it’s far-fetched to speak about rebuilding.
I’m trying to seek out somewhere for us to rent, however it feels unimaginable – nowhere has water or electricity and the demand is so high. Most individuals are still staying in tents or in makeshift caravans.
Thankfully, a friend has kindly allow us to sleep in his office space for the subsequent few weeks while we try to seek out somewhere.
I hope that my children can finish their education but there isn’t a probability of that anytime soon. So many colleges are destroyed.
Because it’s not a everlasting ceasefire, we still don’t feel protected since it could collapse at any moment. So we’d like the international community to make sure it becomes everlasting.
Until then, there continues to be no stability and we will’t begin to rebuild our lives. We just don’t know what the longer term will likely be and what it is going to appear like.
I’ve lived and worked through five wars but I’ve never seen anything like this. The whole lot is destroyed – all the fundamentals are needed, like water, food, medicine, electricity, sanitation, web.
Wherever you go there may be rubble. There’s loads that needs doing to guard people, like removing dangers reminiscent of unexploded missiles that children can find within the rubble.
People here don’t need to must depend upon aid, we just need to have the opportunity to work and rebuild and live in safety.
Gaza has been torn apart. There are such a lot of orphans, widows, and wounded children with disabilities. If the international community doesn’t support them to rebuild, the longer term will look even worse.
As told to James Besanvalle
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