By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Thousands of Palestinians began flocking towards north Gaza after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect on Friday, anxious to see what remained of their shattered homes and wary of further hardships that lay ahead.
Almost all of Gaza’s 2.2 million population has been displaced by the war, which erupted in October 2023 after Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Israel’s retaliatory air and ground war killed over 67,000 people, according to local health officials, reduced much of the coastal Gaza Strip to vast tracts of rubble and wrought a humanitarian disaster.
The Israeli military said the truce deal came into effect at 12 p.m. local time (0900 GMT) on Friday. The announcement set off a multitude of Palestinians walking along Gaza’s coastal road toward former homes in the widely devastated north.
CELEBRATIONS TEMPERED BY SPECTRE OF GRIM FUTURE
Despite the widespread celebrations that greeted news of the ceasefire, many Palestinians were keenly aware that little remained of the lives they knew before the war.
“Okay, it is over – then what? There is no home I can go back to,” Balqees, a mother of five from Gaza City who has been sheltering in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, told Reuters on Friday morning.
“They have destroyed everything. Tens of thousands of people are dead, the Gaza Strip is in ruins, and they made a ceasefire. Am I supposed to be happy? No, I am not.”
Her sentiments were echoed by Mustafa Ibrahim, an activist and human rights advocate from Gaza City who also took refuge in Deir al-Balah, one of the few areas in the enclave not overrun and levelled by Israeli forces.
“Laughter has vanished and tears have run dry,” he said. “The people of Gaza are lost, as if they are the walking dead, searching for a distant future.”
Some former Gaza City residents had already started making their way back even before the ceasefire went into effect, some making it as far as the northwest suburb of Sheikh Radwan.
‘SEA OF RUBBLE’
Among them was Ismail Zayda, a 40-year-old father of three, who went to check on his house on Friday morning and was amazed to find it still intact – albeit amid a “sea of rubble”.
“Thank God, my house is still standing,” he told Reuters in a voice note. “But the area is destroyed, my neighbours’ houses are destroyed – entire districts are gone.”
Israeli armoured vehicles and bulldozers started leaving Gaza on Thursday, video footage shared on social media and verified by Reuters showed. Reuters footage also showed a tank being loaded onto a transport truck and driven away.
An Israeli military source told Reuters that Israeli forces had begun redeploying along lines set by the ceasefire. The military said in a statement that troops were “adjusting operational positions” inside Gaza.
For some Gazans, the prospect of returning even to the remnants of their former houses was enough.
“Of course, there are no homes – they’ve been destroyed – but we are happy just to return to where our homes were, even over the rubble,” Mahdi Saqla, 40, said as he stood by a makeshift tent in central Gaza.
“That, too, is a great joy.”
(Writing by Alex Dziadosz; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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