Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – Ayman Harb, a father of three youngsters, caught it out along with his household within the Gaza Metropolis neighbourhood of Shujayea for greater than a month of the battle, at the same time as Israeli bombs and tanks destroyed the besieged enclave’s largest city centre.
Final week, simply earlier than a four-day humanitarian pause got here into impact, he determined the household needed to flee. Considered one of his sons has cerebral palsy and requires an oxygen tank, and the Israeli troopers threatened to shoot Harb if he didn’t throw away the oxygen.
Now in central Gaza, Harb has however one dream — for the truce to show right into a full-fledged ceasefire that enables him and his household to return house.
On Monday night because the four-day truce was coming to an finish, Qatar, which has performed a central function in mediating talks that enabled the pause in combating, introduced that the halt within the battle had been prolonged by one other two days.
For households throughout Gaza, that temporary respite additionally serves to underscore the struggling and humiliation of the enclave’s 2.3 million individuals, who’ve been below assault since October 7. Palestinians are calling for a everlasting ceasefire, stressing that their precedence is to return to their properties even when they had been destroyed within the heavy bombardment over the previous month and a half.
The truce, which started on Friday, has seen the discharge of Israeli civilian captives held by Hamas in trade for the discharge of Palestinian girls and kids imprisoned by Israel.
It has quietened the skies over the Gaza Strip from the incessant sound of Israeli drones and warplanes. However it has completed little to ease the collective trauma of the individuals of Gaza. In line with the United Nations, 1.6 million individuals have been displaced from their properties, many compelled to flee to the south of the strip. Some households who’ve tried to return to the north through the truce have been fired upon by Israeli snipers.
Others have been compelled to reside in what they describe as “shame”.
“I’ve been here staying in a tent on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for a week, right next to the ambulances,” 41-year-old Harb mentioned. “We are about 20 people in one tent, but I had to send my wife and my other two children to stay with a relative after the rain soaked our tent this morning.”
“Yes, the bombings have stopped, but we need a truce that will return us to our homes,” he added. “Otherwise, there is no point in one. I’d rather go back to my home and die there than stay here in a tent living in shame and being forced to rely on people for the basic necessities of life.”
Harb mentioned his household needed to beg earlier than of their lives. Now they’re determined for drugs, meals and water.
“We don’t want war. We just want to live in our homes with our dignity intact,” his 20-year-old cousin Badr mentioned.
Imm Shadi al-Taher, a 63-year-old mom of 10, was displaced from her house in Tall az-Zaatar in Gaza Metropolis three weeks in the past.
She has additionally been staying with 25 members of her household in a single tent on the hospital grounds.
“We had our pride and dignity, but look at the state we are in now, this destitution and the fact that no one is looking to help us or is thinking of us,” she mentioned.
She acknowledged the “huge relief” of not listening to the sound of drones, warplanes or artillery shelling, noting that her grandchildren are extra relaxed, however she can’t bear to keep away from her house, which was destroyed.
“I’m willing to live in a tent but on the ruins of my home, where I don’t need to ask anyone for help,” she mentioned. “I want to go back to bury my siblings who are still under the rubble of their own destroyed homes.”
In line with the Gaza media authorities workplace, not less than 6,800 persons are lacking and presumed useless below the rubble. That is along with the 14,854 Palestinians killed since October 7, the vast majority of them girls and kids.
For Noor Saadeh, a 23-year-old mom of two who was displaced from her house in Gaza Metropolis a month in the past, the truce will not be sufficient.
“What’s the point of a truce if we cannot go back to our homes?” she requested. “My son keeps telling me he misses his friends at nursery school. We want our old life back.”
She is frightened concerning the onset of winter since she and her household fled whereas it was nonetheless heat and don’t have any manner to return to their house.
“I had to ask people for appropriate clothes for the children at the very least,” she mentioned. “We didn’t think we would be here for this long.”