Great undulating waves of rubble make it all but impossible
to make out the geography of this once bustling, tightly packed refugee camp. And
yet, as a drone camera flies over the wreckage, it picks out splashes of blue
and white where small tent camps have been set up in patches of open ground.
And figures, clambering over broken buildings, moving along
streets of dirt, where food markets are springing up under tin roofs and canvas
awnings. Children using a collapsed roof as a slide. After more than six weeks
of Gaza's fragile ceasefire, Jabalia is slowly coming back to life.
In the neighborhood of al-Qasasib, Nabil has returned to a
four-story house that's somehow still standing, even if it lacks windows, doors
and -- in some places -- walls. He and his relatives have made crude balconies
out of wooden pallets and strung-up tarpaulin to keep out the elements.
"Look at the destruction," he says as he surveys
Jabalia's ocean of ruins from a gaping upper floor.
"They want us to leave without rebuilding it? How can
we leave? The least we can do is rebuild it for our children."
To cook a meal, Nabil lights a fire on the bare staircase,
stoking it carefully with pieces of torn-up cardboard.
On another floor, Laila Ahmed Okasha washes up in a sink
where the tap ran dry months ago. "There's no water, electricity or
sewage," she says. "If we need water, we have to go to a far place to
fill up buckets."
She says she cried when she came back to the house and found
it wrecked. She blames Israel and Hamas for destroying the world she once knew.
"Both of them are responsible," she says. "We had a decent,
comfortable life."
Soon after the war began in October 2023, Israel told
Palestinians in the northern part of the Gaza Strip – including Jabalia – to
move south for their own safety. Hundreds of thousands of people heeded the
warning, but many stayed, determined to ride out the war.
Laila and her husband Marwan clung on until October last
year, when the Israeli military reinvaded Jabalia, saying Hamas had
reconstituted fighting units inside the camp's narrow streets.
After two months of sheltering in nearby Shati camp, Leila
and Marwan returned to find Jabalia almost unrecognizable.
"When we came back and saw how it was destroyed, I
didn't want to stay here anymore," Marwan says. "I had a wonderful
life, but now it's a hell. If I have the chance to leave, I'll go. I won't stay
one more minute."
Stay or
go? The future of Gaza's civilian population is now the subject of
international debate.
In February, Donald Trump suggested that the US should take
over Gaza and that nearly two million Palestinian residents should leave,
possibly for good.
Faced with international outrage and fierce opposition from
Arab leaders, Trump has subsequently appeared to back away from the plan,
saying he recommended it but would not force it on anyone.
In the meantime, Egypt has led Arab efforts to come up with
a viable alternative, to be presented at an emergency Arab summit in Cairo on
Tuesday.
Crucially, it says the Palestinian population should remain
inside Gaza while the area is reconstructed.
Donald
Trump's intervention has brought out Gaza's famously stubborn side. "If
Trump wants to make us leave, I'll stay in Gaza," Laila says. "I want
to travel on my own free will. I won't leave because of him."
Across the way sits a nine-story yellow block of flats so
spectacularly damaged it's hard to believe it hasn't collapsed.
The upper floors have caved in entirely, threatening the
rest. In time, it will surely have to be demolished, but for now it's home to
yet more families. There are sheets in the windows and washing hanging to dry
in the late winter sunshine.
Most incongruously of all, outside a makeshift plastic
doorway on a corner of the ground floor, next to piles of rubble and rubbish,
stands a headless mannequin, wearing a wedding gown. It's Sanaa Abu Ishbak's dress
shop.
The 45-year-old seamstress, mother of 11, set up the business two years before
the war but had to abandon it when she fled south in November 2023.
She came back as soon as the ceasefire was announced. With
her husband and daughters, she's been busy clearing debris from the shop,
arranging dresses on hangers and getting ready for business. "I love
Jabalia camp," she says, "and I won't leave it till I die."
Sanaa and Laila seem equally determined to stay put if they
can. But both women speak differently when they talk of the young.
"She doesn't even know how to write her own name,"
Laila says of her granddaughter. "There's no education in Gaza."
The little girl's mother was killed during the war. Laila
says she still talks to her at night.
"She was the soul of my soul and she left her daughter
in my hands. If I have the chance to travel, I will do so for the sake of my
granddaughter."
Courtesy: Saudi Gazette
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