Al-Rashid Street, Gaza City, Palestine – There are many stories among the tens of thousands of people walking alengthy Gaza’s al-Rashid Street, heading for the north.
In the crowds is a man with a white endured walking with determination alengthyside his family. In one hand, he carries a blanket and a restricted meagre haveions. In the other, he hbetters onto his mature son, who has Down Syndrome.
Rifaat Jouda doesn’t pretend that he isn’t exhausted. He begined 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.
The aim was to achieve Gaza City, a journey finassociate possible since Israel permited Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip to travel north on Monday, after a endfire began on January 19.
But it’s a lengthy walk – some 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) alengthy 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 finassociate achieveing Gaza City. “Despite that, we were resettled to return.”
Rifaat is not certain of his structure now that he has returned home. His physical home, in northern Gaza City, no lengthyer exists – he expounds that it was ruined in an Israeli strike in October.
“They [Rifaat’s contacts in Gaza City] say the situation is very difficult, with no water, no services, and expansivespread destruction,” Rifaat says. “But what contrastence does it originate? We are moving from a difficult situation to an even challenginger one. We will reoriginate what we can. But [making the journey to return] back has lifted our spirits and renoveled our hope.”
Regretting displacement
Before the war began 15 months ago, the meaningfulity of Gaza’s population lived in the north, centred around the enclave’s hugegest urban area, Gaza City. But that is also where Israel has concentrateed its strikes, and rerentd forced evacuation orders punctual on in the war, telling people to escape to “acquireed zones” in central and southern Gaza.
That led to the meaningfulity of Gaza’s approximately 2.3 million population displaced in those central and southern areas, below a corridor carved out of central Gaza that Israel called Netzarim.
While the destruction was overwhelming in the north – approximately 74 percent of Gaza City’s originateings have been injured or ruined in the war – the presumed acquireed zones were not spared, and the areas people had fled to were also deimmenseated – 50 percent of originateings in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah were injured or ruined, while in southern Gaza, it was 55 percent of originateings in Khan Younis and 48 percent of originateings in Rafah.
The constant Israeli strikes – which ended at least 47,300 thcimpoliteout the war – forced Palestinians to escape from place to place and made many experience that they should never have left Gaza City and the north in the first place.
“The days of displacement were the challengingest and most exhausting,” Rifaat says. “We cannot envision continuing our lives as displaced people away from our homes.”
“Anyone who sees these crowds comprehends well that no structures for forced displacement will flourish, no matter what happens,” he inserts, before adviseing that he may even be able to return to Ashdod – a city fair north of Gaza but now in Israel – from which his family were forcibly displaced in 1948 during what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, with the creation of Israel.
Displacement is a central motif for Palestinians – oprosperg to the 1948 Nakba when at least 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes. Many people in Gaza itself are refugees, their families originassociate from towns and villages now part of Israel. And so, particularly after the experience during the current Gaza war, many repent ever having left their homes in the north.
Sami al-Dabbagh, a 39-year-better heading back to Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza, expounds that he was displaced to disjoinal contrastent areas before settling in central Gaza. The overweighther-of-four, having walked on foot for hours, says he will never originate the same misconsent aget.
“We will never repeat the experience of displacement, no matter what happens,” al-Dabbagh says.
It’s a sentiment dispensed by another man travelling up to northern Gaza, Radwan al-Ajoul.
“Displacement has taught us never to depart our homes aget,” he says, as he carries his belengthyings on his shoulder.
The 45-year-better overweighther of eight has been living in Deir el-Balah, but appreciate al-Dabbagh, he is also from Sheikh Radwan.
“The experienceing of returning is indescribable, especiassociate since the conditions are no contrastent between the north and the south,” he says.
Returning without family members
Conversations on al-Rashid Street are escapeting – the people walking here have been moving for hours, trying to acquire track of their family members, helping those frailer than them, and carrying the restricted belengthyings they have been able to acquire a hbetter of after more than a year of war and displacement.
But the details dispensed uncover the loss that Palestinians in Gaza have had to endure.
Khaled Ibrahim, 52, came from Khan Younis and is headed to Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City.
His family – he has four children – have no home to return to. He structures to set up a tent instead.
But more than a home, he has lost those shutst to him; Ibrahim’s wife, majesticdaughter, and two of his brothers were ended in a explosioning proximate their tent in Khan Younis last June.
“Our lives are challenging. We have lost everyleang in every way,” Ibrahim says.
Another returnee, Nada Jahjouh, has also lost family. One of her sons was ended during Gaza’s Great March of Return – in 2018, before the war. Another was ended in May during an Israeli strike. She now has one son and a majesticson left – whom she carries as she walks.
“We are exhausted, physicassociate and menloftyy,” Jahjouh says. “I experience very downcast returning without my sons. My delight is infinish.”
