Palestinians Trek Across Rubble To Return Home As Gaza Ceasefire Begins

Even before the ceasefire began — and as tank shelling continued — Palestinians traveled to what remains of the homes they left during the 15-month war.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Even before the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was fully in place Sunday, Palestinians in the war-battered Gaza Strip began to return to the remains of the homes they had evacuated during the 15-month war.

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, 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 unrecognizable to them as they crowded with strangers to sleep in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street.