Dreams of returning home dashed by reality in Gaza City

Tess Ingram, Communications Manager for UNICEF Middle East and North Africa, is in the northern city where she witnessed people moving through the streets on donkeys, in cars, or by bicycle.

“There’s a lot of people with shovels trying to remove rubble, and of course you can see people setting up makeshift shelters or tents on what I’m guessing used to be their homes,” she told UN News. 

Hope and heartache

Ms. Ingram believes that many people were filled with hope and joy as they were finally able to come back to the place they had hoped to return to for more than 15 months.

“But now, as I speak to people, I think that joy is being replaced somewhat by a sense of heaviness as they discover the reality of what has happened here in Gaza City,” she said.

“They were hoping to return to a home that is not there, or to a loved one who has been killed, and I think that that heaviness is really sinking in for people.”

Living conditions also remain very difficult. Ms. Ingram visited a school-turned-shelter which is housing returnees along with people who had been living there throughout the war.  

She met a mother and her five children who desperately need winter clothes and food, but mostly a place to stay because the home where they had hoped to return is gone.

This story is not uncommon. “It is not one person. It is not 100. There are probably thousands of people who are in a similar situation,” she said.

Danger on the way

Ms. Ingram noted that families are making long, treacherous journeys to get back to Gaza City.

On Wednesday she travelled from Al Mawasi, located in the central Gaza Strip, which took 13 hours. However, some families took as long as 36 hours to make the trip.

“And of course the journey itself over those 36 hours is incredibly dangerous,” she said.

“We’ve heard reports of people being killed by unexploded remnants of war on the way, because these very dangerous unexploded ordnance are buried underneath the rubble.”

Support for returnees

UNICEF is supporting returning families with the basics that they need to survive.  The agency is bringing in nutrition supplies, medical supplies, fuel to run bakeries and hospitals, and water pumps so that people have access to clean water.

On Wednesday, UNICEF and other UN agencies brought in 16 trucks of fuel that will be provided to water wells, hospitals and bakeries to get essential services back up and running again.

They are also providing services for mental health and psychosocial support for children to help them deal with the trauma they have experienced over the past 15 months. Nutritional screening and immunization services are forthcoming. 

Keeping families together

Hundreds of children have also reportedly been separated from their families while making the journey to the north, and UNICEF is responding to the situation. 

Staff have been providing children under the age of four with identification bracelets that have their names, their families’ names and phone numbers, on them.

“So, if in the worst case they did get lost in the wash of people there would be some hope of reconnecting them soon with their loved ones,” Ms. Ingram said.

People on the move

Humanitarians report that more displaced families are returning to northern Gaza as the ceasefire continues to hold. 

More than 462,000 people have crossed from the south since the opening of the Salah ad Din and Al Rashid roads on Monday.

The UN and partners are providing water, high-energy biscuits and medical care along the two routes, while the World Food Programme (WFP) plans to set up more distribution points in the north this week.   

Displaced Palestinians are also moving from north to south, though in smaller numbers, with about 1,400 people making the journey as of Thursday. 

Restoring critical services

Across Gaza, extensive efforts are underway to restore critical services, including civilian infrastructure, which the UN and partners are supporting.

Humanitarian partners are coordinating with the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company to repair the damaged power line that feeds the South Gaza desalination plant, which is currently running on fuel.

West Bank violence continues

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli military operations in northern areas have expanded beyond Jenin and Tulkarm to the nearby governorate of Tubas. 

Ten people reportedly were killed on Wednesday when an Israeli air strike hit a group of Palestinians in Tammun, a village in Tubas governorate. 

This brings the death toll from the ongoing Israeli operation in the northern West Bank to 30, including two children.   

Overall, more than 3,200 families have been displaced from Jenin refugee camp in the context of Palestinian Authority and Israeli operations since December, according to local authorities. 

Humanitarian partners continue to deliver aid, including food parcels, kitchen kits, baby supplies, hygiene items, medicines, and other essential supplies.