As soon as the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on Sunday, Hamza Othman had only one thought in his mind: to go and see whether his home was still standing.
The 22-year-old had refused to leave the Fallujah neighborhood of Jabalia refugee camp for over a year — even after he was wounded by an Israeli airstrike that killed his mother and brother as they sold candy from a stall in front of the house last May. In October, however, as Israeli forces intensified their attacks on the north and closed in on his neighborhood, Othman decided he had no choice but to flee south with his aunt’s family to Gaza City.
Othman knew there was a high chance that his home had sustained damage since then: Jabalia camp was one of the main loci of Israel’s 100-day campaign of annihilation in the north of the Strip. But the scale of devastation that he found upon his return was beyond anything he could have imagined.
“When I reached my neighborhood, I couldn’t even recognize where my house once stood,” he told +972. “The entire neighborhood was completely bombed.”
The shock of finding his home reduced to rubble left Othman unable to speak for two hours. His family of 14 is now not just displaced but homeless. “I was a homebody,” he said. “My favorite time of the day was when I was sitting in the living room catching up with my mother. Now both are gone.”
Hamza Othman next to his destroyed home in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Ahmed Ahmed).
After getting over the initial shock, Othman walked over to the houses of his aunt and uncle nearby, but both were totally destroyed too. “I went to check the graves of my mother and brother in Fallujah’s cemetery, and even those had been bulldozed,” he recounted.
Othman’s father, a doctor, had traveled to Egypt on Oct. 2, 2023 to attend a medical conference, before becoming stranded when Israel sealed Gaza off from the world following the Hamas attack a few days later. Unable to return for over 15 months, he anxiously awaited news about the condition of their home once the ceasefire took hold. Othman hesitated to tell his father about the extent of the destruction, knowing it would devastate him.
“My father has a heart condition, for which he has a stent implanted,” Othman explained. “Bad news significantly affects his health. He broke down in tears when I finally told him the house was bombed.”
For now, Othman and his family have erected a tent on the rubble of their destroyed home where they will live until they can rebuild it. Once the Rafah Crossing reopens, Othman plans to travel to Egypt to see his father and to pursue a law degree.
“Gaza was beautiful, but now it will take years to rebuild,” he said. “I will travel, but when it’s rebuilt, I will return.”
Palestinians returning to Jabalia amid the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in northern Gaza, January 19, 2025. (Omar El Qataa)
‘I couldn’t find the bodies of my two sons’
Many more Palestinians displaced from the northern district to Gaza City in recent months have been returning to their homes since the ceasefire — only to find them unrecognizable due to bombing, burning, or demolition by Israeli forces. Families are having to sift through rubble to try and locate personal belongings or the remains of loved ones killed by Israeli attacks so they can give them a proper burial. Some are identifiable only by their clothes; others are now just bones.
Abdulkarim Omar, 31, was desperate to return to his house in Al-Saftawi, next to Jabalia, as soon as the ceasefire started. He, too, had been displaced since early October 2024, staying at a relative’s home in Gaza City’s Al-Shati refugee camp. A relative had reassured him that his house was still standing, so Omar gathered his few remaining possessions and rushed to see it for himself, hoping to clean it up before the rest of his family arrived.
“I thought my house might be covered in dust from the bombings,” Omar told +972. “But when I finally reached it, after struggling through rubble-filled streets, I found it severely damaged and uninhabitable due to artillery shelling. My neighborhood, which was one of the most beautiful in the northern Gaza Strip, is now a heap of rubble.”
With his 30-member family set to return to Gaza City next week from the south of the Strip as per the terms of the ceasefire, Omar is now scrambling to find a rental property where they can live — but almost everything in the area is either already occupied or destroyed. “I tried to create a makeshift shelter by covering a corner of my house with tarps to shield us from the cold and stray dogs,” he explained. “That’s all we can do for now.”
Abdulkarim Omar next to his house in Al-Saftawi, northern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Ahmed Ahmed)
Hassan Saleh (who asked to use a pseudonym due to safety concerns), a 61-year-old father of seven displaced from Jabalia camp to Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, lost two sons in an Israeli airstrike in November 2024 while they were checking on their home in the camp. “A neighbor told me he saw them heading to the house just before intense bombings destroyed the neighborhood,” he recounted.
Saleh was waiting for a ceasefire to search for their bodies, or what remains of them, in order to bury them, but he was skeptical that such a deal would ever come. “Israel has been sabotaging the negotiations and accusing Hamas [of being responsible] all year, while they were the ones unwilling to commit to a ceasefire,” he said. “They were planning to destroy Gaza and displace us to Sinai, but the Generals’ Plan failed.”
Saleh’s seven-story house had already been badly damaged even before Israel’s latest siege of northern Gaza, but he managed to keep living in it with his extended family until having to flee under intense artillery fire in mid-October. Upon his return earlier this week, however, “I couldn’t find the bodies of my two sons, and my entire house was flattened to the ground. I prayed to God to grant me patience.”
Saleh doesn’t know where to go next week when the rest of his extended family return from the south, and has so far been unable to find an appropriate rental property. “I need a place to protect my family, including my eight grandchildren who lost their father, from the cold, rain, dust, and fear,” he said.
Palestinians returning to Jabalia amid the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in northern Gaza, January 19, 2025. (Omar El Qataa)
‘The whole world abandoned us’
Since the ceasefire began, residents of the decimated northern cities of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya have been spending their days clearing up the rubble of their houses. While some are setting up tents and sleeping there, most return to their makeshift shelters in Gaza City before sunset; the rubble-filled streets and total collapse of infrastructure in the north make it extremely difficult to find safe drinking water and secure routes for travel.
Youssif Yakoub (a pseudonym), a 48-year-old mental health professional, hurried north on Sunday from eastern Gaza City to check on the condition of the homes of his three sisters — two from Beit Lahiya and one from Jabalia — who had fled to stay with him and his family in October.
The conditions have been difficult: “There are 42 of us staying in the 111-square-meter house,” he explained. “One of my sisters sleeps with her family on the kitchen floor due to lack of space.”
Palestinians returning to Jabalia amid the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in northern Gaza, January 19, 2025. (Omar El Qataa)
Yakoub told +972 that two of his sisters’ husbands were killed by Israeli airstrikes, “so I wanted to inspect the houses on their behalf. I was disappointed to find that all three houses were completely destroyed.”
Like all Palestinians subjected to Israel’s genocide over the past 15 months, Yakoub was desperate for a ceasefire. But while some went to cheer the handover to the Red Cross of three Israeli hostages staged by Hamas in Gaza City’s Al-Saraya Square on Sunday evening, Yakoub had no appetite for celebrations; instead, he felt crushed under the weight of everything he’d lost.
“I had never been as angry in my entire life as when I saw them celebrating [in Al-Saraya Square],” he said. “I wondered how they dared to celebrate after all the sacrifices we made during the war. By showing those videos, the world thinks Gaza was not affected by the war. They don’t understand that the missiles Hamas sends to Israel don’t even come close to the destructive power of Israeli missiles.
“After seeing the rubble in the north, I cried at how the whole world abandoned us,” he continued. “If we had any victory during the 15-month war, it would only be staying alive.”
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