‘We are still suffering’: A Gaza family’s harrowing year of displacement and survival

Israel's campaign has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than 41,600 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Ne’man Abu Jarad sat on a tarp on the ground. Around him, canvas sheets hung from cords, forming the walls of his tent. For the past year, Ne’man; his wife, Majida; and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, trying to survive as Israeli forces wreaked destruction around them.

It’s a far cry from their house in northern Gaza — a place of comforting routine, of love, affection and safety. A place where loved ones gathered around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine flowers.

“Your house is your homeland. Everything good in our life was the home,” Ne’man said. “Everything in it, whether physical or intangible — family, neighbors, my siblings who were all around me.

“We are missing all that.”

The Abu Jarad family lost that stability when Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

They did exactly as the Israelis ordered in the devastating weeks and months of war that followed. They obeyed evacuation calls. They moved where the military told them to move. Seven times they fled, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them, crowding with strangers in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street.

The Associated Press traced the family’s journey as they were driven from their home. Israel’s campaign has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza — 1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians — and killed more than 41,600 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Like the Abu Jarads, most families have been uprooted multiple times.

For this family, the journey has taken them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.