When he surveyed the remains of his northern Gaza neighborhood on the morning of February, he was full of tears full of tears. He was resting on a chair that somehow survived the war, all around him had grandchildren and debris, his hope for the future and the ruins of his past.
In 1948, his family lost a house, when he fled the Zakim Pigeon village inside Israel, to escape the shelling and reports of Israeli forces atrocities.
“We closed our house, took the key, and headed towards Gaza, believing that we would come back within a few days,” Saleem said, who was five years old at the time. Waiting at the end of the fatigue track was a new reality of tents and refugee camps and permanent exile north of the Gaza Strip.
“When the fact became clear, we had abandoned our homes and others took them, we wished a thousand times that we would face death instead. Sadly, we never left us.” The creation of the creation was one of the 700,000 Palestinians forced from their homes during the 1948 war, or destruction.
So in October 2023, when Israeli troops left Gaza, seven decades later, Saleem and his family refused to evacuate civilians in the south of the strip. “We swore not to make a mistake again,” he said.
He stayed in northern Gaza during the war, about 400 400,000 others, even blockade within the blockade meant that the north received less aid from the south. A global watchdog warned about having a famine there last year.
“We endured famine, thirst, bombings, fear, everything. We were eating food, between the ruins, between the ruins, which was not fit for the animals. But we have never left northern Gaza.” Each time the Israeli army ordered the withdrawal before the ground attack, I only went to the nearby neighborhood. And as soon as the attack ended, I was the first person to return.
Barely a week after Salem returned, Donald Trump announced that he wanted the United States to resettle Gaza’s “his” and his Palestinian residents somewhere else, and that Enclave as an “unfortunate place” Describe that should be rebuilt as a “Middle East Revira”.
His proposal gave rise to international grief, UN Secretary -General, warning against the ethnic cleansing of Antonio Guterres, and disbelief among the Gaza people, who somehow wrapped in their homes more than 15 months of war.
Saleem lost more than 90 friends and relatives in the early war when airstrikes on his brother’s house killed everyone who took refuge there. He knows the dangers of living in Gaza, especially if he does not hold a ceasefire, but now nothing can be greedy or frightened.
“We will not leave. We will not repeat the novel. We will not give up Gaza because we abandoned Harbia. This time, we live, no cost. “
Israel launched its war against Gaza after Hamas launched a cross -border attack on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
In the 15 months after that, Israeli attacks killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, including more than 13,000 children and more than 111,000 injured.
Nine out of 10 houses were damaged or destroyed, while more than 90 % of Gazans were homeless and permanently hungry. Hospitals were repeatedly attacked while disabling the health care system, and there was little access to clean water and cleaning.
The fun was one of the dead sons of Abu Hindi, when he was killed in an attempt to find food and wood for his family. The second son has been in Israeli custody. His house was included in the buildings that were carried out by Israeli attacks.
Photo: enas tantesh/observer
For now, she shares the schoolroom of the burning school with three daughters, the cloth splashes with empty window frames in an attempt to evacuate the rain and her grandchildren’s grandchildren. Is far This is his tenth shelter since the war began, and in 60, Abu Hindi looks very thin and fragile, so it seems almost impossible that it has survived the deprivation of the war.
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The family ran back in the north for 15 months when the food was reduced as an attempt to avoid Israeli aggression. “We lived like animals. We ate poultry and rabbits, “she says.
Now they get bread and rice from relief groups, but it is not always enough. She wakes up around 5am for prayer, though there are no mosques here nor call for prayer, because they were all destroyed. Children start to get up after an hour, filling school with noise. If they have food, she has breakfast. If not, only tea.
Most of its energy goes under the care of children. “Yesterday I found my six -year -old grandson crying with my father’s grave. Money and wealth can be replaced, but who will compensate for the spirits we have lost? Abu Hindi said.
But like Salem, she will also struggle here instead of lifting the ambiguous offer of Trump’s new house in exile. “I completely reject his idea to displace us. If he wants to rebuild Gaza, let him make it, and we will stay here.
At the beginning of the war, Khalidia Elisanbury had three sisters and a house. Now she lives with a living sister in a black shell in the classroom, when she is limited to a wheelchair when her legs were badly burned in an Israeli attack on another school where she took shelter.
She cooks on a small fire in the classroom, which includes layers of mascara in black walls and roofs through war. There are no windows or doors, and they are worried that even the basic asylum can be taken from them.
“Schools are reopening for students, but if we are forced, we have no left to go anywhere,” he said.
Their home and everything is gone. He put herbs and vegetables in the ruins, hoping that it would give them something to eat, but finding water is a struggle. Long to bring the container over long distances, and he has taken the load and injured his back. The nights are frozen, dark and terrifying. “I don’t sleep,” he said. “I just want life before war. Fear bothers me. What if the war resumes?
Despite the grief, loss and daily fatigue of the name of the demolition of Trump, Al -Shanbari is determined to stay. “Neither he nor anyone else can erase us,” he said. “When people fled the south, we never left northern Gaza, despite our stringent struggle.”
“For two years, we have suffered hunger, bombings and losses, but we are still here. We will endure until this nightmares end.
