Adham Bartawi hoped for the best when after more than a year he went back to the family home in the north of Gaza – but he was shocked by what he found.
“Half our house is gone,” said the 31-year-old BBC from Ruševine, where he lived in the northern city of al-Zahra.
“Looks like a bulldozed – the living room is gone, there is no longer the kitchen. Most of them are gone. The only thing left is two rooms and one bathroom … If I leave now, it may be robbed,” he said.
Adham is one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who returned to the north because Israel allowed the displaced inhabitants to be returned on Monday.
The return is the result of an agreement on the termination of fire between Hamas and Israel, which is aimed at ending the end of the war that began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
The United Nations official told the BBC that we are “huge, huge effort to ensure that key services are provided to those who return to the north.
One man who returned to his home in Jabalia said the BBC that “it could not be described” destruction around him.
“You talk to me as I clean the space to set up a tent … We try to manage ourselves and find a way to live here,” said the 48-year-old Imad Al-Zain phone.
“I was happy and sang on the way back, but when I got to my home I was disappointed because of a catastrophic scene in front of me. I loved I would never come.”
The UN estimates that about 70% of the gauze buildings have been damaged or destroyed since October 2023, with a large part of the worst destruction in the north.
Rose Sam, a head of the UN director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, told the BBC that the population in northern Gazi is likely to “double in the next few days”.
“What they are coming back, many of them are scenes of complete destruction. They know before traveling that their homes are likely to be destroyed or severely damaged, but they want to go home anyway,” he said.
“Since the interruption of the fire came into force a week ago, basic supplies are coming in, so we are able to provide food, some water, basic stock of shelter, some supervision of particularly vulnerable cases. But this is a huge, huge effort in front of us us. “
Many more people prepare for traveling from the south to the north in the coming days, on foot or vehicle.
Ihab Qraqeh, a telecommunication worker who has been displaced since mid -October 2023, said he waited to see how the first day of his return was going before he was maintained.
“We sent some of our family members yesterday and now we are planning to go. We are waiting for a car to come to get started packing and going,” he said.
The man with whom the BBC spoke on Monday, who was preparing to travel with his strong pregnant wife, he said they were going, but turned back.
“It was too hard for us. I was afraid to suffer complications. It’s a pregnant eight months. So we came back [to wait at a relative’s home in central Gaza]”Khalil Shabeer said, 32.
“Even using a car, the road feels infinite – the car line is endless when you look at it.”
Additional reporting Muath al-Khatiba
