Palestinians return to north Gaza

Moments after returning to her home in an upscale neighborhood in northern Gaza, Sabreen Zanoun (44 years old) said she was overwhelmed with a mixture of emotions.

“We are happy to see our family again… [but] “It’s also very sad that makes you cry, the destroyed houses and the rubble,” she told the BBC.

“People used to come here just to walk because of the beautiful landscape. Now most of it has turned into ruins.”

Sabreen was one of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who returned to their homes or to the ruins of their place in northern Gaza on Monday.

The mass return comes a week after the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which aims to permanently end the war that began more than 15 months ago.

Like others in Gaza, she has been displaced several times during the war, but most recently in the central city of Deir al-Balah.

She joined a “flood of people” who traveled on foot along the coastal Rashid Street – a road that opened to displaced people from Gaza early on Monday morning.

A security official in Gaza told Agence France-Presse that more than 200,000 people crossed into the northern Strip on foot within two hours.

The Palestinians spoke to the BBC while on the trip.

“It was very long and tiring,” 24-year-old Israa Shaheen said shortly after her arrival in Gaza City.

“Until halfway, people were happy and singing and things like that, but when it took too long, people got frustrated. Then we got to a sign that said ‘Welcome to Gaza’ and a lot of Palestinian flags and people started to feel happy again,” she said. .

Others made the trip by car via a different route.

“There are thousands of people here. They fill the whole road… We are very happy but I also feel sad because I know that I will reach Gaza City but my house is no longer there,” Wafa Hassouna, 42, said on the phone as she approached the checkpoint.

When people arrived at their destinations, they spoke of their shock at what remained in their communities.

Muhammad Imad al-Din, a barber who had been waiting at the checkpoint, returned to find his home destroyed, and his salon looted and destroyed by a nearby Israeli raid.

Lubna Nassar was waiting with her two daughters and son to be reunited with her husband. But while he was alive, their home had disappeared.

She said: “The warmth of the meeting was overshadowed by the bitter reality. We no longer had a home, so we moved from a tent in the south to a tent in the north.”

Others are still waiting to make flights home or decide on their next steps.

One man said he would have “run north like in a race” if his pregnant wife and young daughter had not been with him. Instead, they hoped the large crowds would pass by, and slowly set off on their journey home. He said they expected to find a large portion of their neighborhood razed to the ground.

He added: “We hope that this war will end and we will rebuild everything that was destroyed.”

Another said that his brother asked him not to come back at the moment. “He called and said…the houses are destroyed and razed to the ground. People are sleeping in the streets and no one is helping them.”

In the upscale Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, Sabreen said she was grateful to be back with her family and in a house that is still standing.

She added: “Most of it is devastation and destruction. Whoever finds his house still standing, or even just a room, should consider himself lucky.”

(Additional reporting by Moaz Al-Khatib)