Hassan Nofal has the keys to two homes in his pocket. One is to the grandparents’ house Hulayqat, what was once a Palestinian village. They were chased away when the state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948 and were never allowed to return home.
The other key on Nofal’s hand is to the house in the Jabaliya camp from which he and his family had to flee when Israel began its bombing last October.
Nofal is determined that the key to the house in the north of the Gaza Strip should not just become a memory, as the key to his grandparents’ house is.
– If the house becomes just a memory, I don’t want to live anymore, he says.
– I have to return to my house, I want to live in Gaza with my children in our house, says Nofal.
Destroyed houses
According to the UN, around 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been internally displaced as a result of the Israeli attacks that began following the Hamas attack on 7 October.
Israel promises that they will one day be allowed to return home, but many of them have nothing to return home to.
60 percent of all homes in Gaza are according to the UN completely or partially destroyed in the attacks, as are around 80 percent of all other buildings.
The water and electricity networks are also destroyed, as is the sewage network. Garbage is piling up, clean-up and reconstruction will take decades.
Every single time Nofal and his family have had to flee, they have ended up in a new and crowded place. Now they live in a makeshift tent made of logs and plastic outside Khan Younis.
The family has only been able to take a few possessions with them, and in each new place they have arrived there has been a daily struggle to find food, clean drinking water, medicine and medical attention.
No safe areas
The latest mass exodus in Gaza occurred from the eastern part of Khan Younis earlier this month. Israel announced a new offensive once morest the city and ordered the residents of the eastern part to leave the area. According to the UN, around 250,000 were forced to flee.
The same thing happened a few days later in Gaza City, and almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip is now crowded together in a 60 square kilometer area along the coast in the south, called Muwasi.
Israel calls the Muwasi area “a humanitarian safe zone”, but has carried out a series of deadly airstrikes there as well. According to Israel, the attacks have been aimed at militant Palestinians, but always claim the most civilian lives.
– There are no longer any safe areas in Gaza, said United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) recently fixed.
According to Palestinian health authorities, over 38,000 have been killed in the war so far and close to 90,000 have been wounded. The majority of victims are children and women.
Over and over
53-year-old Nofal previously worked for the Palestinian Authority in Jabalia.
The camp came under attack early on, and together with his wife and six children he first fled to relatives in the city of Deir al-Balah.
There, too, Israel attacked and the escape went on to Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip. When Israeli forces attacked Rafah in May, more than 1 million Palestinians were once once more forced to flee.
Nofal and his family found their way to Khan Younis 10 kilometers further north, but were not allowed to stay there for long either. Now they live surrounded by stinking sewage in a makeshift tent in the Muwasi area.
– It is difficult to sleep on the ground and be bothered by insects. We get sick because it is so hot during the day and cold at night, says Nofal.
Leaving the home in Jabalia was the most difficult, he says, looking at the bunch of keys in his hand.
The grandparents’ house has long since been razed to the ground, and the village of Hulayqat no longer exists. He does not know whether his own house in Jabalia is still standing.
Security and freedom
Ola Nassar also has a key to the home she had to leave in Beit Lahiya in the north of the Gaza Strip. It symbolizes security, stability and freedom, she says.
– That is my identity, says Nassar.
The family had just moved into the house and redecorated the kitchen when the war broke out. Now everything is burnt, as are clothes and the other belongings the family had to leave behind.
One of her dearest possessions, a dinner service she got from her brother, was smashed in an Israeli airstrike, she says.
Nassar, her husband and their three children have fled a total of seven times since October. Now they live in a makeshift tent in Muwasi.
– Every single time was difficult, because it takes time to adapt. And as soon as we had established ourselves in a new place, we had to flee once more, she says.
Photo album
Nour Mahdi also tells of a dramatic escape where the family with seven children barely got anything, apart from the papers on the house and a photo album. The album was later destroyed by rain and was used to light a bonfire.
– It was very heavy. It was important to me because it contained memories of the children, says Mahdi.
Omar Fayad took a picture of his daughter and one of himself as a ten-year-old with him when he fled. After being driven to flee once more and once more in recent months, he regrets leaving the house in Beit Hanoun.
– I should have just stayed and died there, says the 57-year-old.
Muhammed al-Ashqar has fled six times, the first time together with four daughters, four sons and the grandchildren.
Along the way, the family drifted apart. The son found his way to the Nuseirat camp where his wife came from, but she and four of the children were killed in an Israeli attack. The son lost one leg. Another son is also killed in the war.
The 63-year-old does not miss the possessions he had to leave behind, he says.
– Having to leave everything you own behind is nothing to cry regarding when you see all these dead and all this suffering, says Ashqar.
#Palestinian #refugees #keys
2024-07-16 09:32:39
