The China Mail - Displaced Gazans awaiting truce so they can go home

Most of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the Israel-Hamas war to other parts of the territory.

With a long-awaited truce deal due to take effect on Sunday, they may finally be able to return to their neighbourhoods.

Umm Khalil Bakr has been living with her family in the Nuseirat camp, where displaced Palestinians have tried their hardest despite the war to lead a semblance of normal life.

There, they bake flatbread on clay ovens, play cards to pass the time when there are no bombings, and sweep the streets as an act of dignity.

If the ceasefire takes hold, people will start moving back to their neighbourhoods, though they are under no illusions as to what they might find.

"I will take my tent, remove the rubble from the house and place my tent on the rubble, where I will live with my 10 children," Umm Khalil told AFP.

"We know the weather will be cold, and we won't have blankets for the bedding, but what matters is that we return to our homeland."

Around her, young children gathered to watch their mother speak, bouncing idly on the tent sides.

Her determination to rebuild her life despite the utter devastation from 15 months of war was shared by her fellow camp residents.

Whatever the state of their homes, the hardships of life in the camp were far worse, said Umm Mohamad al-Tawil.

"We will return, and whatever hardships we might face, we will return," she said.

"This is not life, and it is not our life."

- 'Live in the tent' -

A few kilometres (miles) to the south, in Deir el-Balah, the Moqat family were packing their few belongings into cardboard boxes, ready to go back to Beit Lahia in the north of the Gaza Strip.

The family were looking for a truck to take them home, said Fatima Moqat.

"We will take the tent with us... and live in it just as we stayed here inside the tent," she said.

"There we will live in the tent until they find us a solution for reconstruction."

With the truce not yet in effect, there has been no let-up in the violence.

On Friday, Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 113 people had been killed by Israeli bombardment of the territory since Qatar and the United States announced the deal.

The scale of the destruction in Gaza wrought by month after month of air strikes, shelling and street-to-street fighting means reconstruction could last well into the next decade, international agencies have said.

The World Health Organization said rebuilding the territory's health system alone would cost $10 billion and take five to seven years.

According to the UN, United Nations, by December 1, nearly 69 percent of buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed or damaged, with the UN Development Programme estimating last year that it could take until 2040 to rebuild all destroyed homes.

- 'Kiss my land' -

The Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas staged the deadliest attack in Israeli history.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has left 46,876 people dead, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the UN has described as reliable.

To Moqat, it was the grief over lives lost in the war that would be the hardest to overcome.

"Gaza was destroyed and rebuilt a hundred times before... Houses can be replaced, but people cannot be replaced," she said.

Back in Nuseirat, reclining on the floor inside his carpet-lined tent, Nasr al-Gharabli could not wait to return to his home.

"I am waiting for Sunday morning when they will announce the ceasefire... I will go to kiss my land," he said.

"If I die on my land it would be better than being here as a displaced person."

V.Fan--ThChM