KHAN YUNIS: With children and pets in their arms and their belongings loaded onto donkey carts or car roofs, thousands of displaced Gazans headed home on Friday as a four-day truce began.

The din of unrest was replaced by the horns of traffic jams and sirens of ambulances making their way through crowds emerging from hospitals and schools where they had taken refuge.

For nearly seven weeks, Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip had been relentless.

But on Friday morning, no more shots were heard in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Palestinian territory.

Hayat al-Muammar was among those hurrying to take advantage of the truce deal. “I’m going home,” said the 50-year-old, who had been sheltering in a school. “We fled the death, destruction and everything,” she said.

Israeli warplanes drop leaflets warning people against return to the north

“I still don’t understand what happened to us — why did they do this to us?” she asked.

“I am now very happy, I feel at ease,” said Ahmad Wael, trudging along with a large mattress on his head.

“I am going back to my home, our hearts are rested, especially that there is a four-day official ceasefire, better than returning to live in tents. I am very tired from sitting there, without any food or water. There (at home) we can live, we drink tea, make bread using fire, and the oven.”

Large parts of Gaza have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory faces shortages of food, water and fuel.

Warning people

A multitude of men, women and children travelled on foot, carts or tuk-tuks with the few belongings they had taken with them when the war started.

One woman carried her cat in her arms through the streets.

Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets warning people in the south not to head back to the north, which it has previously told Palestinians to leave for their safety.

“The war is not over yet,” they read. “Returning to the north is forbidden and very dangerous!!!” Even so, Ghadi Salamat was considering going back from the south.

“We’re fed up of being here. It’s no life. We hope that we can return to Gaza City, even if it’s to set up a tent in the rubble,” he said.

Abu Qussai, however, had no intention of returning. “It’s a ghost town. When we left, there was already nothing but rubble,” he said.

“Why would I go there? To see my destroyed house? To see the bodies of my dead cousins? To be cold outside?” he asked.

Khaled al-Halabi said he would like to see his home in northern Gaza but did not plan to risk the journey back.

At least with the truce “we will finally breathe after 48 days”, he said, welcoming the arrival of aid trucks from neighbouring Egypt.

Raed Saqer, who took refuge in Rafah, said he hoped the promises of increased aid would come true. “We needed this truce to treat the wounded, so that people could recover a little, because people displaced from the north are experiencing an unspeakable tragedy,” he said.

“We hope it’s the first step towards a definitive ceasefire,” he added.

Alaa Al Moubachar, sitting outside a Khan Yunis medical centre with her children, said the neighbourhood where she lived in Gaza City had been destroyed.

“I see people coming and going, coming and going, and I swear my soul is crying, my heart is crying,” she said. “I just want to go back, even if just for an hour to see my house and the neighbourhood, to see Gaza (City) and what happened to it.” “We went out with nothing, we only took some summer clothes,” she said.

“We are (housed) in schools, it is cold, windy and rainy and we don’t have any winter things or anything. We are mentally exhausted. We stand in queues for the bathroom, we stand in queues for the bakery. Our lives have become very, very hard.”

Some Palestinians in Khan Younis say they will wait until the end of the crisis before returning home.

“Even if I went back home, I fear I (would) go and there would be another attack on the area and I (would) die. I will only go back there once the war is over,” said Ahmad Kabalan, 80, whose home is east of Khan Yunis.

“I don’t trust what Israel promises, I don’t have faith in them, not even for an hour. What if there would be artillery shelling? I don’t believe in this ceasefire. God knows what will happen, whether we will live or die.”

Header image: Displaced Palestinians ride on an animal-drawn cart near houses destroyed in an Israeli strike, as they return to their homes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 24. — Reuters

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2023