‘God willing, we will return’: Gazan longs for home following three years of displacement

Sitting beside a small fire outside a tent in Gaza City, 62-year-old Fatima Abdel-Majid Abu Ouda looks at a photograph of the home she fled nearly three years ago in Beit Hanoun, a town in northern Gaza now largely reduced to rubble.

“This is our home, my son, and these are our memories,” she says, holding up a tablet displaying the image. “We are ready to return to its ruins, just so we don’t stay outside like this and we return to Beit Hanoun,” Abu Ouda who fled from the area with her family on October 7, 2023 added. 

Wednesday marks three years since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a military assault that destroyed much of Gaza, where conditions remain dire despite a year-old ceasefire that is meant to halt the war for good.

Beit Hanoun, a farming town in northern Gaza near the Israeli border, was among the first areas Israeli forces raided after Hamas’ October 7 attack. It became the focus of repeated military operations during the war, leaving much of it in ruins and most of its residents displaced.

Three years on, the town lies inside an Israeli military-controlled zone, and most former residents are still unable to return.

Now living in a tent within the premises of the Islamic University, Abu Ouda worries about deteriorating living conditions as winter approaches. 

“We were living in hell throughout summer, and in the cold, we are living in what feels like a freezer,” she said. “Our tents are worn out. Rats, mice, rodents, insects … We don’t sleep at night.”

Nearly a year after a ceasefire in Gaza that was meant to start a process of reconstruction under a technocratic government along with a political process that would lead to an eventual full Israeli withdrawal, little has changed.

Israeli forces still hold more than 60% of the territory and conduct almost daily airstrikes, while most Palestinians live in temporary shelters with what aid agencies call inadequate aid supplies and no prospect of reconstruction soon.