‘Our personal victory’: Despite the vast ruin, Gazans are celebrating their return to northern Gaza
Palestinians on their way back to the northern Gaza Strip, on 28 January 2025
Sheren Falah Saab reports in Haaretz on 28 January 2025:
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip counted down the minutes on Monday until 7 A.M., after which they would be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza after being displaced for more than a year.
“It’s like a holiday. This return north is our right to the land and to life,” 53-year-old Najat, who is from Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, told Haaretz on Monday. We were uprooted at the beginning of the war to Deir al-Balah and then to Khan Yunis [in the southern Strip]. This is the first time that I’m returning to northern Gaza. There were people who tried to return several months ago but weren’t successful. Now it’s like a dream come true,” she added.
Despite the family’s loss of several buildings during the war and the destruction in Gaza City, Najat emphasized the importance of returning north. “We have no alternative. Even if we pitch a tent near our destroyed house, we wouldn’t leave,” she said.
Other Gazans with whom Haaretz spoke also expressed excitement about returning to the northern Strip. “We slept three whole days in the cold and waited for them to open the Netzarim corridor,” said 29-year-old Ahmed, referring to the strip of land that divides northern Gaza from the rest of the territory. “The destruction around us is severe and there are ruins everywhere I look, but I take solace in the thought that my mother and father are with me, and I’ve managed to help them deal with all the war’s challenges,” he said. According to Ahmed, Palestinian families have joined forces to return to the northern Strip together. “We’re going on foot and are sharing the burden of the things that we’re taking back with us,” he said.
Iman, a 36-year-old resident of Gaza City and mother of three, shared with Haaretz the story of returning home with her children, husband, parents and her brother’s family. “We took two cars from [the southern Gaza city of] Khan Yunis to the Netzarim corridor and from there, we continued on foot,” she said. It cost a lot of money, about $100 per car. We loaded it with our tents, blankets, mattresses, small amount of food and some clothes. My parents struggled walking even for this stretch, but there are people who have no money and who have had to make the entire trip on foot,” she said.
Iman tells of a number of private initiatives to help Gazans return to the northern Strip – which they compare to the Palestinians’ claim to the right of return to homes that their families had in Israel before the 1948 War of Independence. “Everyone wants to help on the trip back. It’s a very important moment and excites everyone,” she adds.
Iman’s comments reflect the feeling of celebration. “Only after actually being in Gaza, after so many months of the sounds of explosions, of fear, of constant concern that one of the children would be harmed and the concern that there isn’t sufficient medicine, food and water for them, one can understand this excitement,” she said. “I’ve imagined the moment in my mind several times; how we return to Gaza City. It’s true that, currently, everything is vague in light of the massive destruction, but at least it can be viewed as our personal victory – that we held on.”
Iman also spoke of the challenges that those returning north face along the way. “The roads aren’t suitable or accessible for going on foot,” she said. “There are holes and debris as a result of tank traffic from Israeli forces. The highway infrastructure is also destroyed. There’s no sign of asphalt. Everything is mud and water. But nevertheless, people are overcoming all of that and want to go back north.”
Palestinians travelling in the Gaza Strip on 28 January 2025
Ibrahim, a 46-year-old father of four from Gaza City, who was displaced with his wife, children and other relatives first to Deir al-Balah and later to Khan Yunis, said that he told his children they might have no home to return to in Gaza City. He emphasized, however, that they had to go back with the determination to rebuild.
“They’re excited about returning. From their standpoint, it’s like a holiday,” Ibrahim said of his children. “Gaza City is my city, where I was born and grew up and got married and we won’t leave. Where would we go?” he wondered. “I’ve followed the news. Every moment is nerve-wracking. Every statement about expulsions from the Strip has caused me concern. Now it’s like arriving at a safe harbor. Our youngsters are going back [to the north] singing and drumming. It’s a very joyous atmosphere,” he said.
A reporter who spoke to Haaretz and asked not to be identified described the trip back as “a flood of people – tens of thousands of them – men, women, the elderly and children.” This vast movement, he said, was in both directions but for the most part to the northern Strip. Residents who had been trapped in the north can now go south and look for relatives whom the war separated them from, he said. Mothers hugging their children, grandfathers and grandmothers meeting with their grandchildren whom they hadn’t seen for many months,” he said, his voice filled with emotion. “The people look tired, but they’re happy to be returning. Some are carrying their belongings on their backs – tents, clothes. Everyone is going on foot,” he said. “They’re walking dozens of kilometers to get to the area of the Netzarim corridor and even sleeping at night in the open to get back with the sunrise.”
The Israeli army, he said, has withdrawn from the main road that people are taking to the north and those going on foot aren’t being subject to inspection. “We understood that the inspections would only be for vehicles traveling on the Salah al-Din Road with the use of metal detectors,” he said, referring to the main highway running through the length of the Strip. “The people who’ll be responsible for the inspections will be from Egypt and Qatar, to prevent arms from being allowed into the northern Strip,” he adds, saying that, so far, “what stands out is that most of those returning are going on foot and not by car.”
From what has been appearing in videos on social media and in Arab news reports, people have been going long distances on foot. “The trip to Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabalya from the Netzarim corridor can be 15 kilometers (9 miles) and even more,” said one reporter. “That’s a long journey for someone coming from the south on foot, and some haven’t yet seen the level of destruction and haven’t been [home] for 15 months,” he added.
According to the reporter, a local nonprofit organization dispatched people in the morning on Monday to receive those who are returning, distributing water and juice and cookies for the children. “These are modest refreshments, but the goal is to encourage the residents after they’ve gone dozens of kilometers,” he said.
The reporter added that civil defense teams “have been working since the morning near the Netzarim corridor to ensure that there are no remnants of IDF bombs or grenades that hadn’t exploded, and they issued warnings to the residents not to approach suspicious objects and to report them to prevent injuries.”
Ahmed says that residents of northern Gaza “had spent months in tents and had been fleeing from place to place for their lives, and there have been those who didn’t even have a proper tent to stay in.” “It’s joy mixed with sadness and maybe disappointment,” he adds, “because most of the homes that they’re returning to are totally destroyed, and they’re facing the unknown.”
“The area in northern Gaza is mostly destroyed – particularly Jabalya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia – following the Israeli army’s operations in the recent months of the war.” According to him, the residents “need every possible help” as they are returning “to a destroyed place that doesn’t even have enough tents to house those returning, and the return will be difficult. They lived in tents in the southern Strip, and here, there isn’t even the feasibility of such a possibility, meaning that they’ll live in tents for a time. They’re returning to nothing – nothing at all,” Ahmed lamented.
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