For the first time in more than a year, Ammar Barbakh awoke on Monday feeling refreshed after a night spent in a tent – but free from the threat of Israeli attacks.
“This is the first time I sleep comfortably and I’m not afraid,” said the 35-year-old from Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, a day after a fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war took hold.
“We didn’t hear any shelling, and we weren’t afraid,” he told AFP.
Like Barbakh, thousands of displaced Palestinians have headed back to their home areas across the Gaza Strip since guns fell silent on Sunday.
The Khan Younis native pitched a tent on the rubble of his former home. Despite the destruction, he was thrilled to have had a peaceful sleep.
“It’s a beautiful feeling, and I hope the ceasefire continues,” he said.
Search for bodies
The truce in the 15-month-old conflict, which has laid waste to the Gaza Strip and inflamed the Middle East, took effect with the release of the first three hostages held by Hamas and 90 Palestinians freed from Israeli jails.
Now attention is starting to shift to the rebuilding of the coastal enclave which the Israeli military has all but wiped out in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
That assault killed 1,200 people with around 250 hostages taken into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, relentless Israeli bombardment has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The actual death toll in the enclave could be 40% higher, according to a study by academics at US and British universities that was published by medical journal Lancet earlier this month.
“We are searching for 10,000 martyrs whose bodies remain under the rubble,” Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Services, told Reuters.
Clearing Gaza ruins to take decades
In the tiny coastal territory, practically everyone knows at least one person from the tens of thousands killed in the war, or at the very least someone who lost a loved one.
Displaced Gaza resident Mohamed Gomaa lost his brother and nephew in the war.
“It was a big shock, and the amount (of people) feeling shocked is countless because of what happened to their homes – it’s destruction, total destruction. It’s not like an earthquake or a flood, no no, what happened is a war of extermination,” he said.
Two-thirds of Gaza’s pre-war structures – over 170,000 buildings – have been damaged or flattened, according to UN satellite data (UNOSAT) in December, amounting to around 69% of the total structures in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian data shows that the conflict has led to the destruction of over 200 government facilities, 136 schools and universities, 823 mosques and three churches.
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A UN damage assessment released this month showed that clearing over 50 million tonnes of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.
The debris is believed to be contaminated with asbestos, with some refugee camps struck during the war known to have been built with the material.
‘Happy and sad’
Nearly all of the besieged territory’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once during the war, according to UN figures, and many have nowhere to return to.
Samer Daloul has been sheltering in a school building along with 12 family members, five of them children.
The new-found calm has given him a chance to reflect on the grave losses he suffered during the war, including the deaths of 32 of his relatives, he said.
“I’m happy and sad at the same time,” Daloul told AFP, expressing his hope that the truce would hold and give way to a permanent ceasefire.
Noha Abed, 28, has returned with her husband and three children to their home in the southern city of Rafah, which now has only one livable room.
Her focus is on securing “food, water, electricity, beddings and blankets” for the family, who had been sleeping in a tent further north for about 10 months, said Abed.
The ceasefire deal requires 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Aid agencies said Monday they were racing to ramp up deliveries.
Despite the difficult conditions, Abed said that this was “the first night I sleep without being afraid for my children”. Looking ahead, she said, “the most important thing is that the war does not resume”.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
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