On Tuesday, President Donald Trump told reporters that the U.S. would take over Gaza and permanently relocate its Palestinian residents to neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man responsible for Gaza’s devastation, sat beside him and grinned as Trump answered a reporter about whether Palestinians would be allowed to return: “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”
But after 15 months of displacement, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already made their long-awaited return to their homes in northern Gaza. Most of them had only rubble to go back to, but they insisted on making the long trek on foot, many of them vowing never to leave again. Residents arriving in the north told Mondoweiss they were fully aware that barely any structure remained intact in northern Gaza and expected to enter into a new chapter of suffering. They also said that they would not trade what remained of their homes for anything Trump had to offer.
“The clear goal of this war is to make as many Palestinians as possible in Gaza homeless, because this destruction is deliberate and planned,” Alaa Subaih, a resident of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, told Mondoweiss. “The aim is to make us suffer from lack of shelter so that we leave our country and move.”
In direct response to Trump’s statements Subaih said, “Even if his land is hell, it is my land. I do not want to live elsewhere,” he said. “I returned to revive and rebuild it.”
“If the American president wants to help Israel, the best solution for him is to take all the Israelis to his country, America, not to transfer the owners of the land. We are attached to our land and will not go to any other country. Our country, Palestine, is the most beautiful country on earth,” Subaih added.
“They Returned Us to Gaza, But They Did Not Return Gaza to Us”
In al-Shuja’iyya, residents are cut off from any electricity, water, sewage, or internet lines. Most families have to walk over half a kilometer carrying empty plastic gallons so that they can fill them up at the nearest water supply point, as water trucks cannot reach most areas that have not been cleared of rubble.
According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, which previously announced that the Gaza Strip was classified as a disaster area, the Israeli occupation is delaying the implementation of the agreed-upon stipulations of the ceasefire that would see the influx of aid and humanitarian relief to Gaza as part of the ongoing first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
The statement also provided an overview of the scale of the destruction Israel caused in Gaza over the past 15 months, stating that 450,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed — 170,000 of them were “completely destroyed,” 80,000 were “severely damaged,” and 200,000 were “partially damaged.”
“This is not a livable city,” Subaih said after spending nearly a week camped out beside the destroyed remains of his house. “It’s just heaps upon heaps of rubble. We can’t get any basic necessities; there is no water, no housing, it’s as if the war only ended to open a new one.”
But this doesn’t mean he wants to leave it.
“When a city is destroyed, its people return to it to rebuild it; they do not leave it,” Subaih said, in response to the U.S. president’s vision for forcing Palestinians to resettle outside of Gaza. “If Trump wants to give me a castle in Egypt or Jordan, or even in America, I would not replace it with the rubble of my home,” he added.
Despite the ubiquitous destruction, signs of life are beginning to return to the area. Near Subaih’s residence in al-Shuja’iyya is Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, once a large bustling market in Gaza City adjacent to several historic sites, including the Zawiya Market, the Great Omari Mosque, and the Qaysariya Market. All of them were bombed during the war, but people have now revived these areas and cleared them of debris as best they could. The markets offer a variety of foods, such as vegetables, fruits, dairy, canned foods, and clothes. Prices are still high compared to their prewar levels, but they have begun to go down.
Residents have also organized themselves into groups of volunteers and worked on different sections of neighborhoods to manually clear roads of the rubble. Any serious rehabilitation of Gaza’s urban spaces must await the entry of construction materials and equipment, including cement, iron, bulldozers, trucks, and fuel needed to operate them.
Subaih said that the difficulties Gazans continue to endure deprive them of the joy of returning to their homes. Pointing to the side of the street where his home used to be and where thirty of his relatives and neighbors were killed, he said, “They returned us to Gaza, but they did not return Gaza to us.”
“We Will Remain Here Above the Rubble Until We Rebuild It”
In Jabalia refugee camp, the most devastated area in the Gaza Strip as a result of the relentless Israeli campaign of bombardment and demolition in northern Gaza between last October and the ceasefire, residents returned to neighborhoods that were leveled entirely. Like in Gaza City, families in Jabalia have already begun to remove the rubble and set up camp beside their destroyed homes.
Sanaa Mousa, 29, returned to her home in Jabalia after being displaced to Gaza City during the implementation of what was known as the “Generals’ Plan,” the failed effort to empty north Gaza of its people during the four months before the ceasefire took effect. The residential block she lived in was completely blown up.
“This massive destruction is meant to force us to leave our country,” Mousa told Mondoweiss. “But we will overcome. We’ll recover and rebuild our homes and celebrate our survival. We’re staying here on our land.”
Mousa and her family tried to find a place to shelter in upon their return, but there was no standing structure in their area under which they could take cover. This prompted the family to make a room out of nylon tarps, which has become a common sight in Gaza as people erect tents beside their destroyed homes.
“Life is difficult,” Mousa explained. “We cannot get the minimum requirements for survival and safety. There are no hospitals. Some food is available in the market, but we do not know where and how to cook it, there is nothing here, we cannot get water, and there is no sewage drainage. It is a difficult life, but we will get through it.”
In response to Trump’s comments Mousa said that she endured all manner of suffering just to be able to return to her home. “It was the happiest moment of my life, even if my home was destroyed,” she said, adding that she wanted to embrace every grain of sand in Jabalia. She added that Trump wasn’t the first Westerner with no connection to the land to try to decide its people’s fate. “It’s like the Balfour Declaration,” she explains. “Trump wants to uproot us for the sake of an occupier.”
But Mousa believes that no such plan will succeed. “We will remain here above the rubble until we rebuild it,” she says. “Nothing worse can happen than the war of extermination we have already experienced, and even it did not succeed in removing us from our land.”
“If they offered me an entire city instead of the rubble of my home, I would not accept it,” Mousa added emphatically. “Homelands cannot be replaced. Homelands are like your blood and soul… Palestine is our land and our country, and we will not leave it under any pressure or plans.”
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