The Electronic Intifada 4 March 2025
Palestinians return to widespread destruction in Beit Lahiya, nothern Gaza Strip, on 29 January.
ActiveStillsAfter 15 months of forced displacement, Mutasim Zahed and his family were able to return to their home in Jabaliya in northern Gaza.
The family of six had endured more than a year of relentless Israeli attacks. But the ceasefire that allowed for the family’s return to their badly damaged home did not mean that their struggle for survival was over.
The widespread destruction wrought by Israel – and the lack of essential infrastructure and insufficient humanitarian assistance – has left Palestinians in Gaza like Mutasim and his family feeling they are now enduring a different kind of war.
When Mutasim, 53, returned to his home, he found that the walls had collapsed and the ceiling was cracked. It was no longer suitable for him and his family.
After they could not find a tent or a shelter center to receive them, Mutasim said that their only option was to try to repair part of their dilapidated home using wood and nylon sheeting.
“We sleep in fear that the ceiling will collapse on our heads at any moment, but it is still better than staying in the street,” Mutasim told The Electronic Intifada.
At night, the family remains alert for any noises that might indicate structural failure.
“We no longer know which is more dangerous: staying under this cracked ceiling or going out into the open without shelter,” Mutasim said.
With basic infrastructure in the area destroyed, Mutasim is forced to walk for hours in search of any working water well. He often returns with a small bucket that is not enough to meet the family’s needs for one day.
“We live on drops of water, and we wash our faces with an amount that is not enough for a child,” he said.
“Time bomb”
Alaa Zahed, Mutasim’s wife, pointed to Israel’s deliberate manufacturing of the catastrophic conditions their family is being subjected to.
“We feel like we are living inside a time bomb that could collapse on us at any moment,” she said, referring to the family’s severely damaged home.
“Why does Israel not allow the entry of caravans and tents into the Strip as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement?” she wondered aloud.
According to a comprehensive assessment based on satellite imagery published by the UN in December, nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s structures were damaged or destroyed – more than 245,000 buildings.
Hamas, which oversees Gaza’s internal affairs, said after the ceasefire was declared that 200,000 tents and 60,000 mobile housing units were urgently needed to shelter those displaced as a result of the destruction.
In early February, however, truck drivers told the Reuters news agency that trucks carrying tents, heavy equipment to clear rubble and humanitarian aid were being held up at Egypt’s border with Gaza.
Mutasim Zahed and his family, who live on the first floor, worry that their building could collapse on them.
Abdul Latif al-Qanou, a spokesperson for Hamas, told The Electronic Intifada that Israel was waging a “new war” by preventing the entry of humanitarian aid and tightening the blockade on Gaza.
In early February, Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the armed wing of Hamas, said that Israel’s blocking of desperately needed aid, among other violations of the ceasefire agreement, would force the group to “indefinitely” postpone the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza.
Hamas told mediators on 11 February that some 53,000 tents had been allowed into Gaza and no mobile housing units were permitted to enter since the ceasefire was implemented.
That same day, Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, told The Electronic Intifada that only a few hundred tents were being allowed into Gaza on a daily basis.
The warning by Hamas that the chokehold on aid would jeopardize the next exchange of captives was followed by a surge of shipments into Gaza.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that more than 800 trucks had entered the territory on 12 February.
By 25 February, according to OCHA, more than 100,000 tents had been distributed in Gaza since the beginning of the ceasefire. Only a very limited number of mobile homes, also known as caravans, have been allowed in, and those are for the use of international organizations or for field hospitals, according to officials in Gaza.
Israeli media reported last month that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed the entry of mobile homes and heavy machinery into Gaza.
“Genocidal act”
On Sunday, Netanyahu announced that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza” on the pretext that “Hamas steals the supplies and prevents the people of Gaza from getting them.”
But as noted by Al Mezan, a human rights group based in Gaza, Netanyahu’s order to close all of Gaza’s crossings “coincides with the conclusion of the first phase of the ceasefire.”
The group said that the deliberate suspension of aid into Gaza is “a genocidal act” that violates orders handed down by the International Court of Justice.
Al Mezan added that the move is “a continuation of the war crime of starvation, for which the International Criminal Court has previously issued an arrest warrant against … Netanyahu.”
The consequences of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis for Palestinians in Gaza were already tragically dire before Netanyahu’s announcement.
Some families are sheltering in “old and worn out” tents, the Palestinian NGO Network’s Shawa told The Electronic Intifada in early February. “They are tents made of plastic and cloth and cannot withstand the rain and wind.”
Lian Suleiman, 3, after her fall in her family’s damaged home. (Image courtesy of the family)
This has cost the lives of some of Gaza’s most vulnerable.
Dr. Saeed Salah, a director at Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital, stated on 25 February that at least six newborn babies had died in Gaza due to cold exposure in recent days.
Meanwhile, the winter weather makes badly damaged homes all the more liable to collapse on their inhabitants.
On 8 February, Salama Maroof, the head of the government media office in Gaza, said that two girls were killed and a boy from the same family was injured when a concrete wall collapsed while the children were playing near a damaged building in Gaza City.
Parents are aware of the risks of living in damaged homes. But for many Palestinians, like journalist Muhammad Suleiman, there is no better alternative.
Suleiman and his family of five have been living in their badly damaged home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. They have attempted renovations but it is still not safe for his children.
Around a month ago, his 4-year-old daughter Siwar fell from a hole inside the home to the floor below, causing internal bleeding. Then his other daughter, 3-year-old Lian, fell in similar circumstances. Her injury required 20 stitches on her head.
No alternative to displacement
Some families who returned to the north after the ceasefire ended up back in southern Gaza and to the makeshift shelters they had stayed in during the war.
Iyad al-Attar, from Beit Lahiya in the north, told The Electronic Intifada that “we were very happy to return from the south to the north, to where we grew up.”
The journey back to the north for the family of severn was arduous. They walked at least 13 kilometers while carrying their possessions – clothes, food, blankets and mattresses – on their backs.
Al-Attar and his family thought they were returning to the lives they had left behind. But they found the area had been rendered unrecognizable.
“I did not see a single house standing,” the 49-year-old said. “I could not even identify our street that was once teeming with life.”
Staying in Beit Lahiya was impossible, al-Attar concluded. The family had no choice but to go back to the school where they had been sheltering.
There, they share a classroom with another family, with a total of 15 people living in the 28-square-meter space.
“There is no privacy or comfort – just thin mattresses that we stack during the day and lay out at night,” al-Attar said.
They rely on water from nearby desalination stations and wait in long lines to use the shared bathrooms.
More than 60 families were living in the school before the ceasefire. Now around half that number are sheltering in the facility.
Instead of returning to the comfort of home, the al-Attar family are suspended in a state of displacement and uncertainty – only this time without Israeli warfare waged through firepower.
Abdullah Younis is a journalist in the Gaza Strip.
