Displaced Palestinians begin returning to the remains of their homes
Palestinians in the war-battered Gaza Strip have begun returning to the remains of the homes they had evacuated during the 15-month war.
Thousands of Gazans carrying tents, clothes and their personal belongings were seen heading back to their homes,
Majida Abu Jarad made quick work of packing the contents of her family’s tent in the sprawling tent city of Muwasi, just north of the strip’s southern border with Egypt.
At the start of the war, they were forced to flee their house in Gaza’s northern town of Beit Hanoun, where they used to gather around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine.
The house from those fond memories is gone, and for the past year, Ms Abu Jarad, her husband and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, following one evacuation order after another by the Israeli military.
Seven times they fled, she said, and each time their lives became more unrecognisable to them as they crowded with strangers to sleep in a school classroom, searched for water in a vast tent camp, or slept on the street.
Now the family is preparing to begin the trek home – or to whatever remains of it – and to reunite with relatives who remained in the north.
“As soon as they said that the truce would start on Sunday, we started packing our bags and deciding what we would take, not caring that we would still be living in tents,” Ms Abu Jarad said.
