Palestinians returning home in Gaza torn between joy, loss and uncertainty amid ceasefire

"I returned [...] and stayed next to the rubble of the house," one teen said.

Video byLilia Geho
January 23, 2025, 3:46 PM

LONDON -- Thousands of Palestinians are returning home with hope, as the ceasefire and hostage agreement between Israel and Hamas enters its fifth day. But for those in Gaza, the joy of returning is tempered with feelings of being "lost" and "not knowing where to go," some shared with ABC News upon discovering their homes were completely destroyed.

According to the United Nations, about 1.9 million of Gaza's 2.2 million residents were displaced during the conflict over the past 15 months, the nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch reported in November 2024. Hamas launched an unprecedented terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, in southern Israel.

More than 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they have killed more than 15,000 combatants throughout the course of the war.

Palestinians sit in a ruined neighbourhood of Gaza's southern city of Rafah, on Jan. 22, 2025, as residents return following a ceasefire deal days earlier between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group.
Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images

In over a year of war between Israel and Hamas, more than 47,000 people have been killed in Gaza and almost 111,000 injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. That figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 14,000 children and 8,000 women have been killed, according to the health ministry.

"I returned yesterday and stayed next to the rubble of the house, not knowing where to go," 19-year-old Mohamed Abu Ghaly told ABC News on Tuesday.

Mohamed said he remained there overnight, making a fire and spending the night beside the wreckage of what was once his home. An IT student at Al-Aqsa University, Mohamed has been unable to continue his studies due to the destruction of the university during the war.

Sixty-nine percent of buildings in north Gaza and 48% in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip have been either damaged or destroyed as of Jan. 11, according to an analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data conducted by Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University.

PHOTO: Displaced Palestinians travel in a truck as they return to their house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Jan 22, 2025.
Displaced Palestinians travel in a truck as they return to their house, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Jan. 22, 2025.
Mohammed Salem/Reuters

The challenges Palestinians now face in returning home range from basic needs -- such as access to water, food, electricity, gas and the internet -- to larger-scale systems such as sanitation, health care and education.

Gaza's infrastructure has suffered "extensive damage," according to a December 2024 World Bank report. An earlier report from April 2024, just six months into the conflict, estimated physical damages would total $18.5 billion by the end of January.

Aid and commercial trucks began crossing the Rafah border after an eight-month closure. More than 1,500 trucks with humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip in the first two days of the ceasefire, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. That included more than 630 trucks on Sunday and 915 trucks on Monday, according to OCHA. Of the ones that crossed into Gaza on Sunday, OCHA said at least 300 trucks went to the north, which the U.N. has warned is facing imminent famine.

The influx of aid has helped ease skyrocketing food prices, with the price of chicken dropping from $20 to $6 per kilogram, or about 2.2 pounds, on the first day of the ceasefire's implementation, residents said.

Men erect tents in Al-Shujiyya neighbourhood in Gaza City, on Jan. 22, 2025, as displaced Palestinians return to the city, on the fourth day of a ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
AFP via Getty Images

Standing beside Mohamed, his brother Alaa Aby Ghaly shared his hopes for the future despite the challenges.

"We plan to get a tent and set it up where our house used to be. Until God provides a solution," he said.

Both brothers expressed their preference for living in a tent in their neighborhood, even though it had been reduced to rubble.

"For me, Al-Shaboura is still better than anywhere else, in every way," Alaa said.

Their father, Eyad Aby Ghaly, 53, a psychologist, lost his job when the war began. He said he worries about whether the ceasefire and hostage agreement will hold, as the future of his sons and the Palestinian youth hinges on it. Standing with his sons, Eyad explained that neither his family nor their neighbors have been involved with resistance groups.

"None of us belong to the resistance. We don’t know why they [the Israelis] targeted the neighborhood. I look at young people and wonder: Where will they go? There's no future for them," he said. "We don’t know anything -- whether the truce is still holding or not. Everyone feels anxious and uneasy."

ABC News' Samy Zyara, Jordana Miller and Nasser Atta contributed to this story.

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