After 15 months of war, Gazans long to return home

It’s almost over, the end is so close that they can feel the keys they’ve kept all these months slipping into the locks of their old home, the doorknobs turning in their hands, the beds they’ll sink into for their first night in peace. Over 15 months – own beds. There are still a few days left.

There were two nights left for the first phase of the cease-fire in Gaza announcedLayan al-Mohtaseb, 15, longed to return to his bedroom in Gaza City and clean it before his family fled during the war.

“This time we’re really going home,” he said.

This may only be true for those whose homes are still standing after months of destruction. There is always the chance of renewed fighting if permanent talks fail after an initial six-week ceasefire. But in Gaza, people dreamed of the first moments of peace, of embracing each other as soon as a ceasefire was reached. graves they would visit. They already knew that they were going to shed tears, they hardly knew whether to attribute their tears to joy or sadness.

If Wednesday night was to celebrate the news of the ceasefire agreement, the following days were to prepare. As Israel’s security cabinet met on Friday to vote on a cease-fire and hostage-release deal, Palestinians were calling around for trucks, vans and even donkey carts they could rent to take their belongings back to northern Gaza; they were packing their tents, thinking about where they would live if they had a house not anymore there.

Fedaa al-Rayyes, 40, was already buying ingredients to make small holiday sweets to welcome the end of the war. But when the bombs and drones stopped, the first thing he planned was to look for relatives he hadn’t seen in months, find out who was alive and mourn those who didn’t see this day.

“This mixture of relief and sadness is indescribable,” she said. “I am happy that we survived and I am grateful to the kind people who helped us. And yet, I grieve—for the relatives and friends we’ve lost, and for the neighborhood we’ll be leaving without them.

There were also practical issues to consider. He would remind his children to “stay away from anything that could still be dangerous or explosive” – ​​from all the unexploded ordnance littering Gaza, to the war’s toll, one random explosion at a time, months or years to come

Most of Gaza’s more than two million people were forced to leave gather in tents and schools and other people’s housing for much of the war, governed by Israeli airstrikes and evacuation orders from their homes or shelters where they had previously worked. Now they could think of nothing but going home. Even if those houses are damaged. Even if they are now nothing but rubble and ashes.

Manal Silmi, 34, a psychologist at an international aid group, initially planned to hug her mother and sisters and “cry out all the pain we’ve endured for 15 months.”

Then the journey home can begin. According to the agreement, people will be moved from the north of Gaza to the south is allowed It will return on the seventh day after the ceasefire came into force on Sunday. His family was already looking for a large van to drive all their tents and bedding north. His friends and the few relatives he left behind in Gaza City had already called and planned to meet them at the crossing that separates north and south Gaza.

“We will hug, cry and thank God over and over again for surviving this war,” he said.

Al-Hassan al-Harazin, a 23-year-old computer science major in college, said he knew his family’s home in eastern Gaza City was in ruins. But as soon as the truce began, he would still head straight there.

She fantasized that she would spray paint her family’s name on any brick that was still in one piece, imagining herself sitting on the rubble for a while, “to embrace those broken stones and bricks as a piece of me. “

Then he would visit the grave where his grandfather was buried at the beginning of the war and recite the opening verses of the Qur’an to him.

Even as mediators announced Wednesday’s deal, Israel was still shelling Gaza heavily. Two of Jamal Mortaja’s employees from the solar panel business he owned before the war were killed the day before. Mr. Mortaja, 65, said they will be in his thoughts when he returns to Gaza City to visit the rest of his home before checking out his shops in the Al-Ansar neighborhood.

Even though his house was destroyed, Raed al-Gharabli wanted to return to Gaza City only to say goodbye before the debris was removed. He wanted to walk around his neighborhood and greet the neighbors who came to Shujaiyya took out all these long months. He would take his temporary tent from the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, where he fled with his family, and set it up next to the ruins of his home.

“I can’t wait to see this moment come true,” said Mr. al-Gharabli, a 48-year-old tailor. “If I could, I would fly straight north and land on the ruins of my house.”

To speed things up, he said he would leave some of his family’s belongings with his neighbors in Deir al-Balah, where they and other displaced people rely on complete strangers at the start of the war.

There was even a part of them that already longed for him, the camaraderie that had formed between them and their temporary neighbors.

After his home in South Khan Yunis was destroyed, Ismail al-Sheikh, 39, a university lecturer, moved to a nearby tent, where he met two men in nearby tents. The new friends spent their evening reminiscing about life before the war began on October 7, 2023, and imagining aloud what would happen after the nightmare ended. What would they do? Where would they go?

For Mr. al-Sheikh, who teaches at Al-Aqsa University, dreams were not madness. He just wanted to go back to his normal life, teaching his classes, meeting his friends at night at the Titanic restaurant in Khan Younis. He heard that the Titanic was in ruins.

Now, as the war drew to a close, his new friends were preparing to return to the city of Gaza from which they had come.

“I will miss these gatherings very much,” said Mr. al-Sheikh. “It’s really a mix of emotions – happiness for their return, sadness for the goodbyes and hope for what’s to come.”