After months of displacement and chaos, thousands of Palestinians are finally returning to norther Gaza. The pictures surfaced online show happy faces of the citizens returning to their homes after several months. As a part of Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Israel opened the north for the first time. These people were displaced and sheltered in squalid tent camps and former schools during the war.
Over 200,000 people moved on Monday
The United Nations said over 200,000 people were observed moving north in Gaza on Monday morning. Palestinians who have been sheltering in squalid tent camps and former schools were fearing that Israel would not let them return to their homes. However, the present condition of war-hit northern Gaza is quite the opposite from what it was before the war, but people are happy to go back to their roots.
As per the photos shared from the spot, joyous crowds of Palestinians, some holding babies or pushing wheelchairs, walked along a seaside road all day and into the night, carrying bedrolls, bottles of water and other belongings.
Yasmin Abu Amshah, a mother of three, said she walked 6 km to reach her damaged but habitable Gaza City home. She saw her younger sister for the first time in over a year. “It was a long trip, but a happy one,” she said.
Ismail Abu Matter, a father of four who waited for days near the crossing point for northern Gaza, described scenes of jubilation, with people singing, praying and crying. “It's the joy of return,” said Abu Matter, whose relatives were among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. “We had thought we wouldn't return, like our ancestors.”
Israel-Hamas ceasefire
Israel's military campaign was launched in response to the Hamas militant group's Oct 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas. Militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct 7 assault and abducted another 250.
Israel responded with an air and ground war that has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence. In all, around 90 per cent of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced.
(With AP Inputs)