Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Ayman Harb, a father of three, held on with his family in the Shujayea neighborhood of Gaza City through more than a month of war, even as Israeli bombs and tanks destroyed the largest center urban area of the besieged enclave.
Last week, just before a four-day humanitarian pause came into effect, he decided the family needed to flee. One of his sons has cerebral palsy and needs an oxygen tank, and Israeli soldiers threatened to shoot Harb if he did not throw away the oxygen.
Today, in central Gaza, Harb has only one dream: that the truce turns into a real ceasefire that would allow him and his family to return home.
On Monday evening, as the four-day truce drew to a close, Qatar, which played a central role in the negotiations that led to the pause in fighting, announced that the halt to the war had been extended for two more days .
For families in Gaza, this brief respite also serves to highlight the suffering and humiliation of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents, attacked since October 7. Palestinians are calling for a permanent ceasefire, stressing that their priority is to return home. even though they were destroyed during the intense bombings of the last month and a half.
The truce, which began Friday, allowed the release of Israeli civilians detained by Hamas in exchange for the release of Palestinian women and children imprisoned by Israel.
This quieted the skies over the Gaza Strip from the incessant noise of Israeli drones and warplanes. But this has done little to alleviate the collective trauma of the people of Gaza. According to the United Nations, 1.6 million people have been displaced from their homes, many of whom have been forced to flee to the southern Gaza Strip. Some families who attempted to return to the north during the truce came under fire from Israeli snipers.
Others have been forced to live in what they describe as “shame.”
“I have been living here for a week in a tent on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, right next to the ambulances,” said Harb, 41. “There are about 20 of us in a tent, but I had to send my wife and two other children to a relative’s house after the rain soaked our tent this morning. »
“Yes, the bombing has stopped, but we need a truce that will bring us home,” he added. “Otherwise, there’s no point. I would rather go home and die there than stay here in a tent, living in shame and having to depend on people for the basic necessities of life.
Harb said his family has had to beg before in their lives. Now they desperately need medicine, food and water.
“We don’t want war. We just want to live in our homes with our dignity intact,” said his cousin Badr, 20.
Imm Shadi al-Taher, 63, a mother of 10, was displaced from her home in Tall az-Zaatar, Gaza City, three weeks ago.
She also lives with 25 family members in a tent on the hospital grounds.
“We had our pride and our dignity, but look at the state we are in now, this misery and the fact that no one is trying to help us or thinking about us,” she said.
She acknowledged her “tremendous relief” at not hearing the noise of drones, warplanes or artillery bombardments, noting that her grandchildren are more relaxed, but that she can’t stand being away from her house, which was destroyed.
“I am ready to live in a tent, but on the ruins of my house, where I do not need to ask anyone for help,” she said. “I want to go back to bury my brothers and sisters who are still under the rubble of their own destroyed homes. »
According to the Gaza government media office, at least 6,800 people are missing and presumed dead under the rubble. This is in addition to the 14,854 Palestinians killed since October 7, the majority of them women and children.
For Noor Saadeh, a 23-year-old mother of two who was displaced from her home in Gaza City a month ago, the truce is not enough.
“What’s the point of a truce if we can’t go home?” she asked. “My son keeps telling me that he misses his friends at preschool. We want our old life back.
She worries about winter coming because she and her family fled while it was still warm and have no way to return home.
“I had to at least ask people for appropriate clothing for the children,” she said. “We didn’t think we would stay here this long. »