In the early hours of the ceasefire coming into force in the Gaza Strip, many displaced people chose to “fold their tents”, where they had found refuge, to return to their home.
“Those who have money take a car, and those who do not have money go on foot or take their belongings in a cart pulled by a donkey,” explains a resident of Khan Younes to the Israeli newspaper Ha’Aretz.
And committing to a “journey of pain and hope”, as the pan-Arab media writes Al-Jazeera, looking for their homes or their missing loved ones. But, on the spot, this very slim hope is quickly dashed.
“Celebrations largely gave way to shock and sadness, as the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip began to grasp the scale of the devastation” caused during these last fifteen months of war by Israeli bombings and fighting with Hamas, explains The Guardian.
-“Unfit for life”
When they return to the neighborhoods they fled, they discover “vast areas of rubble”, as explained The New York Times.
Montasser Bahja is an English teacher in Gaza who returned to his home in Jabaliya, in the north of the Palestinian enclave,
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