Al-Rashid Avenue, Gaza Metropolis, Palestine – There are various tales among the many tens of 1000’s of individuals strolling alongside Gaza’s al-Rashid Avenue, heading for the north.
Within the crowds is a person with a white beard strolling with dedication alongside his household. In a single hand, he carries a blanket and some meagre possessions. Within the different, he holds onto his grownup son, who has Down Syndrome.
Rifaat Jouda doesn’t faux that he isn’t drained. He began his journey within the morning in southern Gaza, in Khan Younis’s al-Mawasi, the place his household had been displaced for 15 months throughout Israel’s conflict on Gaza.
The intention was to succeed in Gaza Metropolis, a journey lastly attainable since Israel allowed Palestinians within the southern Gaza Strip to journey north on Monday, after a ceasefire started on January 19.
But it surely’s a protracted stroll – some 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) alongside a coastal highway – and Rifaat’s household have been compelled to cease to relaxation each hour.
“The journey has been exhausting and really tough,” Rifaat tells Al Jazeera, after lastly reaching Gaza Metropolis. “Regardless of that, we have been decided to return.”
Rifaat just isn’t certain of his plan now that he has returned residence. His bodily residence, in northern Gaza Metropolis, not exists – he explains that it was destroyed in an Israeli assault in October.
“They [Rifaat’s contacts in Gaza City] say the state of affairs may be very tough, with no water, no providers, and widespread destruction,” Rifaat says. “However what distinction does it make? We’re shifting from a tough state of affairs to a fair more durable one. We’ll rebuild what we will. However [making the journey to return] again has lifted our spirits and renewed our hope.”
Regretting displacement
Earlier than the conflict started 15 months in the past, nearly all of Gaza’s inhabitants lived within the north, centred across the enclave’s greatest city space, Gaza Metropolis. However that can be the place Israel has targeted its assaults, and issued compelled evacuation orders early on within the conflict, telling individuals to flee to “protected zones” in central and southern Gaza.
That led to nearly all of Gaza’s roughly 2.3 million inhabitants displaced in these central and southern areas, beneath a hall carved out of central Gaza that Israel known as Netzarim.
Whereas the destruction was overwhelming within the north – roughly 74 % of Gaza Metropolis’s buildings have been broken or destroyed within the conflict – the supposed protected zones weren’t spared, and the areas individuals had fled to have been additionally devastated – 50 % of buildings in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah have been broken or destroyed, whereas in southern Gaza, it was 55 % of buildings in Khan Younis and 48 % of buildings in Rafah.
The fixed Israeli assaults – which killed at the least 47,300 all through the conflict – compelled Palestinians to flee from place to put and made many really feel that they need to by no means have left Gaza Metropolis and the north within the first place.
“The times of displacement have been the toughest and most exhausting,” Rifaat says. “We can not think about persevering with our lives as displaced individuals away from our properties.”
“Anybody who sees these crowds understands effectively that no plans for compelled displacement will succeed, it doesn’t matter what occurs,” he provides, earlier than suggesting that he might even be capable to return to Ashdod – a metropolis simply north of Gaza however now in Israel – from which his household have been forcibly displaced in 1948 throughout what Palestinians name the Nakba, or “disaster”, with the creation of Israel.
Displacement is a central motif for Palestinians – owing to the 1948 Nakba when at the least 750,000 Palestinians have been compelled from their properties. Many individuals in Gaza itself are refugees, their households initially from cities and villages now a part of Israel. And so, notably after the expertise throughout the present Gaza conflict, many remorse ever having left their properties within the north.
Sami al-Dabbagh, a 39-year-old heading again to Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza, explains that he was displaced to a number of completely different areas earlier than settling in central Gaza. The daddy-of-four, having walked on foot for hours, says he won’t ever make the identical mistake once more.
“We’ll by no means repeat the expertise of displacement, it doesn’t matter what occurs,” al-Dabbagh says.
It’s a sentiment shared by one other man travelling as much as northern Gaza, Radwan al-Ajoul.
“Displacement has taught us by no means to depart our properties once more,” he says, as he carries his belongings on his shoulder.
The 45-year-old father of eight has been residing in Deir el-Balah, however like al-Dabbagh, he’s additionally from Sheikh Radwan.
“The sensation of returning is indescribable, particularly because the circumstances aren’t any completely different between the north and the south,” he says.
Returning with out relations
Conversations on al-Rashid Avenue are fleeting – the individuals strolling right here have been shifting for hours, attempting to maintain observe of their relations, serving to these weaker than them, and carrying the few belongings they’ve been capable of hold a maintain of after greater than a 12 months of conflict and displacement.
However the particulars shared reveal the loss that Palestinians in Gaza have needed to endure.
Khaled Ibrahim, 52, got here from Khan Younis and is headed to Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza Metropolis.
His household – he has 4 kids – don’t have any residence to return to. He plans to arrange a tent as a substitute.
However greater than a house, he has misplaced these closest to him; Ibrahim’s spouse, granddaughter, and two of his brothers have been killed in a bombing close to their tent in Khan Younis final June.
“Our lives are laborious. We now have misplaced the whole lot in each manner,” Ibrahim says.
One other returnee, Nada Jahjouh, has additionally misplaced household. One among her sons was killed throughout Gaza’s Nice March of Return – in 2018, earlier than the conflict. One other was killed in Could throughout an Israeli assault. She now has one son and a grandson left – whom she carries as she walks.
“We’re exhausted, bodily and mentally,” Jahjouh says. “I really feel very unhappy returning with out my sons. My pleasure is incomplete.”
