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Deir El Balah, Gaza Strip – Inshirah Darabeh has only one thought in his mind as he prepares to leave his father-in-law near Deir El-Balah and travel to his home in Gaza: to find her daughter Maram's body and bury her with dignity.
“I will not return to find my home, all I want is to find her grave and put her name on a tombstone,” she says. The 55-year-old inch will walk more than 10 kilometers (6 miles) through rubble and bomb craters to get home. She thinks it will take at least three hours.
Inchir is overwhelmed by mixed feelings of horror, pain and relief, she says when she finally leaves where she has sheltered in the past year of Israel's brutal war against Gaza, left more than 46,000 Palestinians and many thousand others Unknown for and accepted as dead under the ruins. Most of the killed are women and children.
In accordance with the terms of the fire termination agreement between Israel and Hamas, which came into force last Sunday, of day seventh At the end of the fire – Saturday this week – the internally displaced Palestinians will be allowed to return without checking by Israeli soldiers to their homes in the north, which is under a deadly military siege since October 2024.
In November 2023, when the Israeli Land Forces entered the besieged strip after the first month of air bombing, Gaza was divided into two. This military division – known as the Corridor Netsim – extends through Gaza from east to west, cutting off the city of Gaza and the cities of Jabalia, Bate Hanun and Bate Lahia in northern Gaza by Khan Einnis and Rafah to the south.
Cut off completely
After the ground invasion, no one was able to move back north. According to UNRWA, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, it is estimated that between 65,000 and 75,000 people remained in the province of North Gaza-less than 20 percent of the pre-war population there-before the intensification of military operations and the siege.
People will be allowed to return through Al-Rashid Street, a coastal street west of Gaza, which connects southern Gaza to the North. However, the passage of vehicles is subject to dispute. According to a report from the US website Axios, Hamas refused to agree to the placement of Israeli checkpoints along the Netsim corridor, a key road south of Gaza.
The compromise, the report said, is the US private security contractors to work in Gaza as part of a multinational consortium created under the fire termination agreement with the support of its American, Egyptian and Qatarica firmed, “to observe, manage and provide” control ” -Said vehicle for Salah Al-Din Main Street.
After 15 months of almost continuous Israeli bombing, which left 90 percent of the Gaza population internally displaced and more than 80 percent of the buildings in ruins surviving in inching are not ready to surrender.
She remembers the fatal Sunday in late October 2023 when he received a call at 4 in the morning, as if it were yesterday.
“My husband and I were forced to leave our home north in the first few weeks of the war,” Inchor told Al Jazeera. “We took my biggest granddaughter with us, but my three daughters and their husbands remained.”
On October 27, communications were completely interrupted for more than 36 hours.
“I didn't know that Maram was killed as a martyr until the next day my eldest daughter called me as soon as communication was restored.”
Maram was 35. Her four -month -old daughter was first killed by the same Israeli air attack on Gaza in late October, which took Maram's life shortly thereafter.
“All I want is to stretch my tent over my home's ruins”
The history of Inshirah is similar to that of thousands of women who have experienced the indescribable pain of the loss of children, spouses, fathers and brothers as they carry the burden of taking care of those who have survived.
25-year-old Olfat Abdrabbo had three children. Now she has only two: daughter, Alma, 6 years old, and a young child, Mohammed, 18 months.
“Salah, my four-year-old child, died in my hands in Deir El-Balah, where we were displaced a year ago,” Olfat told Al Jazeera. Olfat's father had taken him to Friday prayer when Israel attacked the mosque on October 27, 2023, “My father lost his feet,” she says.
She took her son with her home from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, but he had internal bleeding and died the next day.
Olfat's husband had originally stayed at their home in Bate Lahia, north of Jabalia in Northern Gaza, so she made the difficult decision to send his body back to his uncles so that her husband could bury him near their home. Now she can finally go there herself and plan to travel on Sunday.
“I have not seen the grave of my own child,” she says. “My heart is divided into two: one half is with my martyrdom and the remains of my home, and the other half is with my two children who have been deprived of their father for months.
“Everything I want to do,” says Olfat, “is to stretch my tent over the ruins of my home and to reunite my family.”
“Torture to live in a tent”
Although not all of them mourn for a dead child or are separated by long distances by spouses, women like Zulfa Abushanab feel trapped and anxious.
The 28-year-old mother of two daughters, Salma, 5, and Sarah, 10, was displaced at the end of October 2023 from the area of Gaza At-Tavav The central part of Gaza, where she stayed in a friend's apartment with other refugees. There are scarcely furnished bedrooms only with mattresses on the floor – one room is for men and the other for women and children.
“My two daughters and I share a small room with two other women and their four children,” Zulf told Al Jazeera, “while my husband is in a separate room. We were close, but far apart for more than a year; We can't sit or eat together.
Although she has heard from people who are still in the north that her home was fired by an Israeli tank, she says she counts hours while her small family can return to her destroyed home and live again as a normal family S
The wrinkles on the face of Hayam Halaf release the trauma from the many displacements she has suffered.
Together with her four children-Ahmed, 12, Dima, 8, Saad, 6 and at least, strength, 5-Hayam, 33, was forced to move seven times through Gaza-to Khan Enis, Rafah, Nusherat and finally Now in a tent in Deir El Balah – since the beginning of the war in October 2023.
Her aging person is proof of anxiety to live uncertain in makeshift tents for more than a year, struggling with the elements and trying to feed her family.
“I cannot describe the torture of living in a tent full of sand, insects and diseases,” says Hayam, who is preparing to return to her parents' home in Tal Al-Hawa, south of Gaza. They were able to evacuate early so that her mother suffered from cancer, to seek emergency medical help in Egypt.
“I'll sleep on the cold, hard tiles, if I have to, and I won't take anything back to remind me of this damn tent,” she says.
“I will bury your son with his own hands'
For Jamalate Wadi-known as Mohammed's mind, a 62-year-old mother of eight children, the marks of this war will never disappear, no matter where she travels.
Initially, from the Jabalia refugee camp to the north, UM Mohammed was evicted in Deir-El-Balah in October 2023 with her husband and seven daughters. Her only son, Mohammed, 25, chose to stay in Jabalia to protect their home.
“He came to see us during the temporary cessation of fire from November 24 to 30, 2023, but then insisted that he return north despite warnings that he was rising his life,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera.
She now believes that her son is dead and has been waiting every day at the martyr hospital in Al-Aksa, hoping that his body will be returned there.
“A few days after he left, a friend of his, a released prisoner who returned through the Netsim checkpoint, told me that Mohammed and four other young men had been shot at the checkpoint and that his body was left on the road . “
It's been a whole year since then, says Mohammed Mad – a year of work to find out what's left of her son. She is confident that he will be able to identify his body if he finds it.
“I'll find it,” she says. “Part of his leg was amputated when he was wounded at the beginning of the war. I will return the same path; I will find him and bury him with his own hands.
“For me, return to North Gaza means only finding Mohammed's body.”
This article has been published in collaboration with EGAB
