“All the houses were reduced to rubble,” Najjar told AFP in Jabalia.
Jabalia:
Mohammed Al-Najjar, a 33-year-old Gazan, said on Saturday he was “shocked” and feeling “lost” when he returned home, only to find much of the Jabalia refugee camp in ruins after an Israeli offensive.
“All the houses were reduced to rubble,” Najjar told AFP in Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“You are lost, you don’t know exactly where your home is in the midst of this massive destruction.”
Israeli forces have carried out a massive bombing campaign in Jabalia in recent weeks, part of a fierce ground offensive in northern Gaza – an area the military has previously said is beyond the control of Hamas militants.
“I was shocked by the extent of the destruction in the latest assault on the Jabalia camp,” said Najjar.
In recent days, AFP correspondents have seen dozens of Palestinians streaming into the area, trying to find their homes and salvage any remaining belongings.
Men, women and children walked through the streets where their houses once stood, now filled with gray concrete slabs.
Charred furniture, beds and shattered iron doors were scattered across almost every street in the camp, a once-bustling area home to more than 100,000 people, according to pre-war UN data.
Many families carried their belongings in carts pulled by donkeys, while others walked with beds and mattresses on their heads.
“We have no place other than our homes,” said Suad Abu Salah, 47, who also returned after fleeing the region at the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which is now approaching its eighth month.
But “Jabalia has been wiped off the map,” she said.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on October 7 in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 who the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive killed at least 36,379 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
– ‘Stay in our land’ –
Despite the destruction, Najjar said people were “determined” to return to the neighborhoods they left to avoid the fighting.
Residents were willing to “set up tents and temporary shelters in the midst of the rubble,” he said, although “there is fear, fear that the (Israeli) occupation could return.”
“But we will stay on our land. We have no other place.”
On Friday, the Israeli military announced that it had completed its mission in eastern Jabalia, where it had previously said Hamas militants had regrouped.
On Saturday, residents of Jabalia said they could still hear constant gunfire and artillery shelling coming from the east.
New fighting broke out in the north in early May, around the same time that Israeli troops took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
During the latest operation, Israeli forces in Jabalia recovered the bodies of seven hostages, and last month the military reported “perhaps the fiercest” fighting there since the start of the war.
Mahmud Assaliyah, 50, said that “houses were destroyed and entire apartment blocks were completely destroyed in Jabalia.”
“There is not a single house that has not been targeted by the Israeli occupation army.”
He returned to find that his house had also been destroyed.
“Cement pillars fell, walls were destroyed, furniture was scattered, burned and destroyed,” Assaliyah said.
Abu Salah said many residents are tired of being displaced and just want to stay where they are no matter what.
“We want to live like other people in the world,” she said.
“We need a solution and an end to this war, so we can live in peace.”
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