They marched for hours in flip-flops and sandals, bags of clothes dangling from the crooks of their elbows. They trudged for kilometres with toddlers in their arms, mattresses slung from their shoulders. Old men hobbled on crutches, children pushed wheelchairs and one young boy dragged his earthly possessions on a sled.
For nearly 16 months, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip have lived in tents, barred by Israel from returning to their homes after being forced to flee south at the start of its military offensive against Hamas.
On Monday, shortly after sunrise, many thousands of them began the painful trek back. After disagreements between Israel and Hamas delayed their return over the weekend, the Israeli military finally withdrew from Gaza’s coastal road by 7am, allowing displaced people to move north on foot. Car owners were later allowed to drive north along an inland road, subject to inspections.
The pedestrians soon formed a human column that stretched as far as the eye could see – kilometres in length and some 20 people abreast. Rarely has such an uncomfortable journey felt like such relief.
“We’re so overjoyed,” said Malak al-Haj Ahmed (17), a secondary school student who was taking selfies with her family beside the coastal road. “There’s no moment more joyful than returning home.”
To mark the moment, some people distributed sweets. Some flashed victory signs at passing photographers. A group of small boys led a celebratory chant. “Right or left, north is best,” they sang. “To the north we go!”
For Palestinians, it was a moment steeped in symbolism. Since the foundation of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in what is known in Arabic as the Nakba, Palestinians have been defined by repeated displacement and exile.
Most Gaza residents are descendants of refugees forced to flee in 1948 and many had regarded their displacement from northern Gaza in 2023 as a second Nakba. That fear has been reinforced by repeated Israeli calls to settle northern Gaza with Israeli civilians, as well as US president Donald Trump’s suggestion over the weekend that Palestinians in Gaza should move to other parts of the Arab world.
To walk back home against that backdrop, through land from which Israeli soldiers had just retreated, felt to some Palestinians like a dare against their own history.
[ Joyful but anxious, Gazans crowd the road northOpens in new window ]
“We flipped the table on its head,” said Ahmed Shehada (34), a textile manufacturer who trekked roughly 25km in six hours to Gaza City. Unlike many who returned Monday, he found his home still standing.
“They wanted to expel us from Gaza,” Shehada said by phone. Instead, he added, “I’m sitting on the couch in my home, and I can’t believe it.”
In the central city of Deir al-Balah, a hub for displaced Gaza residents, there were so many people trying to head north that it became hard to walk through the city centre. Family after family was taking down tents and packing belongings into plastic bags. Some people heaved gas tanks on to their backs. One man fixed wheels to a plastic box, turning it into a makeshift stroller for his baby.
As they walked, they envisaged the jubilation of being reunited with relatives who had ignored the Israeli evacuation orders and stayed north at the start of the war.
“The first thing I’ll do is hug my mother at her shelter,” said Anwar Abu Hindi (41), a housewife heading north with several children. “Our emotions are all over the place.”
As people reached the Netzarim corridor – a chunk of land that Israeli troops had occupied until only a few hours earlier, firing on Palestinians who tried to cross it – there were tear-drenched reunions between those trekking north and relatives who had headed south to meet them.
But amid the euphoria, there were frequent notes of caution, frustration and sometimes horror. The roads were lined with ruins. Israeli drones still buzzed overhead for much of the day. Critics of Hamas were disheartened to find that the group’s officers were still policing the pedestrian route.
Along the inland route for cars, drivers encountered long traffic jams. Foreign security contractors were authorised by Israel to screen northbound vehicles for weapons, slowing cars to a crawl.
The contractors included Egyptians who work, officials say, for private companies. Their presence offered a vision for Gaza’s future in which outsiders continue to decide the fate of its residents. Israeli leaders see the contractors as a trial balloon for a larger international force that would oversee the enclave instead of a Palestinian leadership.
After passing the checkpoint, Palestinians finally witnessed with their own eyes the devastation that they had only seen in videos from social media.
Northern Gaza has become a wasteland, following intense Israeli air strikes and the military’s demolition of scores of buildings, many of which had been rigged with traps and explosives by Hamas. In recent months, fierce fighting between Israel and Hamas, which continued until the start of the ceasefire, caused particularly widespread damage north of Gaza City.
“The destruction that we walked through was worse than the apocalypse,” Shehada said. “I was afraid I was walking over corpses buried beneath the rubble.”
After reaching his house in Gaza City, Shehada was amazed to find that it had suffered only minor damage.
But others returned to ruins, and to neighbourhoods they no longer recognised.
Where was the local petrol station? The neighbour’s house? The nearby roundabout?
In many cases, these local landmarks had simply vanished.
“Thank God we survived this war,” said Shorouq al-Qur (27), a law graduate who returned to Gaza City. But, she said, “no matter where we find shelter, whether here or there, it’s still a life in tents, surrounded by destruction and sadness”. − This article originally appeared in The New York Times
