Deir El-Balah, Gaza Strip – Inshirah Darabeh has only one thought in her mind as she prepares to leave her in-laws’ house near Deir El-Balah and head to her home in Gaza City: finding her daughter’s body , Maram, and give him a dignified burial.
“I’m not coming back to find my house, all I want to do is find his grave and put his name on a headstone,” she said. Inshirah, 55, will walk more than 10 km (6 miles) through rubble and bomb craters to reach her. She thinks it will take at least three hours.
Inshirah is overcome by mixed feelings of dread, pain and relief, she says, as she finally leaves the place where she sheltered during the last year of Israel’s brutal war against Gaza, which left more than 46,000 Palestinians dead and several thousand more unaccounted for. for and assumed dead under the rubble. Most of those killed were women and children.
Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that took effect last Sunday, on the seventh day of the ceasefire – Saturday this week – internally displaced Palestinians were to be allowed to return without inspection by Israeli soldiers at home in houses at home in houses at home in houses at home in houses in houses at home in houses at home in houses in houses at home in the houses in the houses in the houses North, which has been under deadly military siege since October 2024.
However, this was temporarily thrown into doubt on Saturday after the second prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. Israel said it would not allow Palestinians to return to Northern Gaza until an issue involving the release of a captive, Arbel Yehud, was resolved.
Meanwhile, displaced people in southern Gaza are still waiting for news.
In November 2023, when Israeli ground troops entered the besieged strip after the first month of aerial bombardment, Gaza was divided in two. This military partition – known as the Netzarim Corridor – stretches across Gaza, from east to west, cutting off Gaza City and the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza from Khan Younis and Rafah to south.
Cut completely
Since the invasion of the land, no one has been able to bring back to the north. According to UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, between 65,000 and 75,000 people are believed to have remained in North Gaza governorate – less than 20% of the pre-war population there – before the intensification of military operations and siege.
People will be allowed to return on foot via Al-Rashid Street, a waterfront street in western Gaza City that connects southern Gaza to the north. Vehicle passage, however, has been a point of contention. According to a report by the US website Axios, Hamas had refused to accept the placement of Israeli checkpoints along the Netzarim Corridor, a key route south of Gaza City.
The compromise, the report said, was for private American contractors to operate in Gaza as part of a multinational consortium established under the ceasefire agreement with the support of its American, Egyptian and Qatari brokers. “to supervise, manage and secure” a vehicle checkpoint along the main street of Salah Al-Din.
After 15 months of near-relentless Israeli bombardment that left 90% of Gaza’s population internally displaced and more than 80% of buildings in ruins, survivors like Inshirah are not ready to give up.
She remembers the fateful Sunday in late October 2023, when she received a call at 4 a.m., as if it were yesterday.
“My husband and I were forced to leave our home in the north in the first weeks of the war,” Inshirah told Tel Aviv Tribune. “We took my oldest granddaughter with us, but my three daughters and their husbands stayed.”
On October 27, communications were completely cut off for more than 36 hours.
“I didn’t know Maram was martyred until the next day when my eldest daughter called me as soon as communications were restored.”
Maram was 35 years old. Her four-month-old daughter was killed first by the same Israeli airstrike in Gaza City in late October that took Maram’s life shortly after.
‘All I want is to pitch my tent on the rubble of my house’
Inshirah’s story is similar to that of thousands of women who have felt the indescribable pain of losing children, husbands, fathers and brothers while carrying the burden of caring for those who survived.
Olfat Abdrabboh, 25, had three children. Now she has just two: a daughter, Alma, 6, and a toddler, Mohammed, 18 months.
“Salah, my four-year-old child, died in my arms in Deir El-Balah where we were moved a year ago,” Olfat told Tel Aviv Tribune. Olfat’s father had taken him to Friday prayers when Israel raided the mosque on October 27, 2023. “My father lost his legs,” she said.
She brought her son home with her from Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, but he suffered internal bleeding and died the next day.
Olfat’s husband had initially stayed at their home in Beit Lahiya, north of Jabalia in northern Gaza, so she made the difficult decision to send his body back with his uncles so that her husband could bury him near from their homes. Now, finally, she can go herself – and plans to travel on Sunday.
“I haven’t seen my own child’s grave,” she said. “My heart is divided in two: half is with my martyred child and the remains of my house, and the other half is with my two children who have been deprived of their father for months.
“All I want to do,” Olfat says, “pitch my tent on the rubble of my house and reunite my family.”
‘The torture of living in a tent’
Although not all are grieving a dead child or separated by long distances from husbands, women like Zulfa Abushanab feel trapped and anxious, nonetheless.
The 28-year-old mother of two girls, Salma, 5, and Sara, 10, were moved at the end of October 2023 from the Gaza region to Twam, northwest of Gaza City, to Nuseirat and then to Deir El-Balah in central Gaza, where she is staying in a friend’s apartment with other refugees. It has sparsely furnished rooms with just mattresses on the floor – one room 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,” Zulfa told Tel Aviv Tribune, “while my husband is in a separate room. We have been almost away from each other for over a year; We cannot sit or eat together.
Even though she has heard from people still in the north that her house was bombed by an Israeli tank, she says she is counting the hours until her little family can return to their destroyed home and live once again as a normal family.
The lines on Hayam Khalaf’s face betray the trauma of the multiple displacements she endured.
With her four children – Ahmed, 12, Dima, 8, Saad, 6, and the youngest, Sila, 5 – Hayam, 33 Now in a tent in Deir El-Balah – since the war began in October 2023.
His aging face reflects the anguish of living precariously in makeshift tents for more than a year, battling the elements and struggling to feed his family.
“I can’t describe the torture of living in a tent, full of sand, insects and diseases,” says Hayam, who is preparing to return to his parents in Tal al-Hawa, south of Gaza City. They were able to evacuate early so that his mother, a cancer patient, could seek urgent medical treatment in Egypt.
“I’ll sleep on the cold, hard tiles if I have to, and I won’t take back anything that reminds me of that cursed tent,” she says.
“I will bury my son with my own hands”
For Jamalat Wadi – known as UM Mohammed – a 62-year-old mother of eight, the scars of this war will never disappear, no matter where she travels.
Originally from the Jabalia refugee camp in the north, Um Mohammed was moved to Deir-El-Balah in October 2023 with her husband and seven daughters. His only son, Mohammed, 25, chose to stay in Jabalia to protect their home.
“He came to us during the temporary ceasefire from November 24-30, 2023, but then insisted on returning to the north despite warnings that he was risking his life,” Um Mohammed told Tel Aviv Tribune.
She now believes that her son is dead and until now waits every day at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the hope that his body will be returned there.
“A few days after his departure, one of his friends, a released prisoner who returned through the Netzarim 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, um Mohammed said – a year of figuring out how to find out what’s left of his son. She is confident that she will be able to identify his body if she finds it.
“I will find him,” she said. “Part of his leg was amputated when he was injured early in the war. I will return on the same path; I will find him and bury him with my own hands.
“For me, returning to North Gaza only means finding Mohammed’s body.”
This article was published in collaboration with Egab