Al-Rashid Street, Gaza City, Palestine- There are many stories among tens of thousands of people walking along Rashid Street in Gaza, heading to the north.

In the crowd, a man has a white beard walking with determination alongside his family. On the one hand, it carries a blanket and some small property. In the other, his adult son, who suffers from Down syndrome, holds.

Rifaat Jouda does not pretend to be tired. He started his journey in the morning in southern Gaza, in Khan Yunis, the annexes, where his family was displaced for 15 months during the Israeli war on Gaza.

The goal was to reach Gaza City, which is a possible journey in the end because Israel allowed the Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip To travel north on MondayAfter a The ceasefire began on January 19.

But it is a long distance – about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) along a coastal road – and the Rivat family forced to stop comfort every hour.

“The journey was very stressful and difficult,” he told Al -Jazeera’s countryside, after his recent arrival in Gaza City. “Nevertheless, we were determined to return.”

Rifaa is not sure of his plan now after he returned home. His financial house, in Northern Gaza City, is no longer present – showing that he was destroyed in an Israeli attack in October.

“they [Rifaat’s contacts in Gaza City] Suppose the situation is very difficult, without water, no services, and widespread destruction. “But what is the difference that it causes? We move from a difficult situation to a more difficult situation. We will rebuild what we can. but [making the journey to return] The back raised our spirits and renewed our hope. “

Displace

Before the war began 15 months ago, the majority of Gaza population lived in the north, and they focused around the largest urban area in the pocket, Gaza City. But this is the place where Israel focused its attacks, and issued forced evacuation orders early in the war, and I asked people to flee “safe areas” in central and southern Gaza.

This led to the majority of nearly 2.3 million people in Gaza in those central and southern regions, below a carved corridor from the center of Gaza called Israel.

While the destruction was overwhelming in the north – nearly 74 percent of Gaza City buildings were damaged or destroyed in the war – the supposed safe areas spared, and the areas that people fled were also destroyed – 50 percent of the buildings in the center of Palmyra Or the destruction of Gaza in Gaza, while in southern Gaza, 55 percent of the buildings in Khan Yunis and 48 percent of the buildings in Rafah.

The fixed Israeli attacks – which killed at least 4,7300 during the war – forced the Palestinians to flee from one place to another and made a lot that they should not leave Gaza City and the north in the first place.

“The days of displacement were the most difficult and most exhausted,” says rural. “We cannot imagine continuing our lives as if they are displaced away from our homes.”

“Anyone who sees these crowds well understands that No plans for forced displacement will succeedHe adds: “Regardless of what is happening,” before indicating that he may be able to return to Ashdod – the city of northern Gaza, but now in Israel – whose family was forcibly displaced in 1948 during what the Palestinians call Nakba, or “a disaster “With the creation of Israel.

The displacement is a central idea for the Palestinians – due to Nakba in 1948 when at least 750,000 Palestinians of their homes were forced. Many people in Gaza themselves are refugees, and their families originally from cities and villages are now part of Israel. Thus, especially after the experiment during the current Gaza war, much unfortunately left their homes in the north.

Sami Al -Dabbagh, 39, returns to Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza, that he had been displaced to several different regions before settling in the center of Gaza. The Fourth father, after walking for hours, says he will not make the same mistake again.

“We will never repeat the experience of displacement, regardless of what is happening,” says Al -Dabbagh.

It is a feeling shared by another man traveling to northern Gaza, Radwan Al -Atara.

He says: “We have never taught us to leave our homes again.”

He was the father of the eighth, 45 years old, lived in the Derstone, but like Dabbagh, who is also from Sheikh Radwan.

He says: “The feeling of return is indescribable, especially since the circumstances do not differ between the north and the south.”

Back without family members

The talks on Al-Rashid Street are passing-the people who walk here were moving for hours, in an attempt to track their family members, help those weakest of them, and carried the few properties that they managed to keep after more years of war and displacement.

But the common details reveal the loss that the Palestinians in Gaza had to carry.

Khaled Ibrahim, 52, came from Khan Yunis and heads to Beit Lahia, north of Gaza City.

His family – has four children – they have no home to return to him. He plans to create a tent instead.

But more than just a house, he lost the closest to it; Ibrahim’s wife, a granddaughter, and two of his brothers, were killed in a bombing near their camp in Khan Yunis last June.

“Our life is difficult. Ibrahim says:” We have lost everything in every way. “

Another Ayed, he called Jahra, he lost his family. One of her sons was killed during the Great Return March – in 2018, before the war. Another killed in May during an Israeli attack. She now has one son and a grandson left – whom she is carrying.

“We are exhausted, physically and mentally.” “I feel very sad to return without my children. My joy is incomplete.”