Mohammad Al-Amarin never imagined he would be able to return to his home in the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City. The 34-year old father of four and head chef of Al-Taboon, one of Gaza’s best known pizzerias, had been displaced five times since being forced to flee his home during Israel’s ground incursion in November 2023. He remained in southern Gaza with his family, and even partnered with World Central Kitchen to feed thousands of other displaced Palestinians in tent camps. But he always eagerly awaited the day he could go back north.

Al-Amarin was one of more than 586,000 displaced Palestinians who began their journey home in the days after Jan. 27, when the Israeli military opened passage through the Netzarim Corridor — a six kilometer stretch of land that bisects Gaza, and from which Israeli forces have only recently withdrawn after occupying the area for over a year. Most of those returnees had been forcibly displaced in November 2023 when Israeli forces declared northern Gaza a military zone.

Al-Amarin made the difficult trek back north alone; he wanted to make sure his house was still standing and livable before his 70-year old mother and young daughters joined him. Setting foot in his house, which was only partially destroyed by bombing, Al-Amarin was overcome with emotion. “It felt like a dream to be in my house again after all I had endured. I cried. I kissed the walls and the floor. I started cleaning the rubble immediately, as my wife and daughters urged me to bring them home,” he told +972.

Yet the joy of coming back home was already tempered by the scenes of utter destruction that greeted Al-Amarin. ““I was filled with [both] tears of joy and pain as I walked through Gaza City’s streets,” he recalled. “I was grateful that I could return — but the place I grew up in, once known for its beauty, was gone, turned into a pile of rubble.”

Now, with the lack of sufficient humanitarian aid reaching northern Gaza, Al-Amarin’s situation has only grown more precarious. While he used to regularly receive humanitarian aid parcels in Khan Younis, he has received nothing since returning to Gaza City. “Many displaced people, like me, returned with very few belongings and found nothing to eat unless they could afford to buy food themselves,” he told +972. “I don’t know when, or if, I will receive anything next.”

Since the ceasefire took effect on Jan. 19, the UN reports that it has been able to surge aid and supplies throughout the Strip, including north of Netzarim. But officials admit that they are nowhere close to meeting the needs of more than 2 million Gazans, many of whom endured famine in recent months, and currently face frigid winter conditions with inadequate shelter.

The question of humanitarian aid, too, has threatened to derail the ceasefire, with Hamas accusing Israel of violating the agreement by obstructing the entry of urgently-needed medical supplies, tents, fuel, and construction materials — which even Israeli officials and mediators have confirmed. Israel now appears to be increasing the number of aid trucks it allows into Gaza, yet as Israeli forces continue to attack Palestinians, and as American and Israeli leaders loudly proclaim their plans to displace and ethnically cleanse the entirety of Gaza’s population, it is unclear how long the truce can continue to hold.

‘We have nowhere to go’

Like Al-Amarin, Sharifa Hassan, 35, was eager to return to Gaza City after a harrowing series of evacuations. Hassan and her family of four first fled their home in Tel al-Hawa, a neighborhood in the west of Gaza City, on Oct. 14, 2023, during the early stages of Israel’s ground invasion.

“We didn’t want to leave our house until an Israeli artillery shell hit our roof in the middle of the night,” she recounted. “We fled on foot to Al-Quds Hospital under Israeli fire and remained there for 30 days until Israeli forces surrounded the hospital and forced us — both evacuees and patients — to move southward.”

Hassan was injured twice in Israeli airstrikes during her displacement in southern Gaza. Her family had been sheltering in the Al-Turkmani residential building in Nuseirat, central Gaza, when Israeli forces bombed it on Oct. 18, 2024 without warning. Hassan recalled that three ambulances had arrived to take the injured, but Israeli quadcopters opened fire on them. “People pulled my children and me out from under the rubble,” she recounted. “We were lucky to escape with minor injuries.”

Hassan and her family were hopeful following the news after the ceasefire announcement. They waited a few days until they felt that it was safe to return to Gaza City and reunite with Hassan’s two brothers and sisters who had remained in the north.

On Jan. 25, they took down their tent in Az-Zawayda, a neighborhood of Deir Al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, and collected their belongings. The next morning at 9 a.m., they started on the 13-kilometer trek to Gaza City that lasted 12 hours, due to the crowds of other people also moving north.

“The journey was extremely exhausting, especially for my three children,” Hassan told +972. “We were in desperate need of water, as we carried our belongings and walked along the route that was damaged by Israeli bulldozers.”

They were also shocked to see the catastrophic scale of destruction in Gaza City — including in their own neighborhood. “I couldn’t recognize my house or my neighbor’s houses; all of them had collapsed onto one another,” she said. “My children started to cry, as they had imagined they would finally sleep in their own beds in their rooms. My husband broke down. I looked at him and I didn’t know what to do or where to go.”

Hassan and her family went to stay in her parents’ partially destroyed house in the Al-Karama neighborhood, north of Gaza City. However, they continue to suffer from a lack of clean drinking water and internet connection, due to Israel’s systematic bombing of most of Gaza’s water sources during its siege of the north.

In the three weeks since Hassan returned to Gaza City, she has not received a single aid parcel. “My siblings share all the food and clothes they have with me. Although there is some affordable food in the markets, people in Gaza don’t have the money to buy it.” She fears, moreover, that the slow process of aid distribution is not a quirk of the situation but an intentional move on Israel’s part to force Palestinians out of the Strip. “I’m worried that Israel and America are manipulating the situation, delaying Gaza’s reconstruction to let us keep suffering,” she told +972. “Their goal seems to be pushing people in Gaza toward ‘voluntary migration.’”

‘I was counting the days until I could return’

Ahmed Al-Zaim, 32, evacuated his home on Al-Nasr Street, western Gaza City, in the first week of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023. He rented a small studio in the Az-Zawayda neighborhood. Months later, a relative called him to say his home had been severely damaged during Israel’s ground invasion.

“Losing my home was heartbreaking,” said Al-Zaim. “Every part of it held memories. But I was grateful my family and I weren’t there when it was bombed. As long as we are alive, we can rebuild.”

Al-Zaim owned a cellphone shop on Al-Nasr Street before the war, but it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in November 2023. When he evacuated to the south, he took all of his savings and a few days’ worth of food, thinking the war would be over soon.

“After the first month of evacuation, I spent all the money I had — I had to borrow money from my friends to buy food for my family,” Al-Zaim explained. “I opened a stall selling phone accessories to make a living. I was counting the days until I could return to my neighborhood in Gaza City; it was like a dream.”

Al-Zaim was one of the first to return to the north, but he went without his family: his 69-year old father has knee rheumatism and would not be able to bear the walk, and his wife, Marah, is three months pregnant with the couple’s second child. “I was afraid the exhausting journey would affect her health and our coming baby.”

Al-Zaim returned north with the hope that there would at least be some small section of his house left standing for his family to return to, which he and his brothers had worked seven years to build. But the extent of the destruction was crushing. “I’ve been physically and mentally sick since the day I returned and saw my destroyed house,” he told +972. “I’m afraid that if we try to sleep here [in my house], the stones will fall on our heads.

He has yet to tell his father about the extent of the damage. “I’ve advised him to stay [in the south] until we can fix it. I’m worried that if he comes and sees it, it could affect his health, as he has heart issues.”

In the meantime, Al-Zaim has returned to the same studio apartment he had been renting in the south until reconstruction begins in the north. As of now, he and his family have not received any aid, and he is wracked with uncertainty about his next steps.

“The area where I used to live in Gaza City is uninhabitable. Even if I want to set up a tent on the rubble of my house, the nearest point to bring water from is two kilometers away, and there is no transportation. I don’t know what to do: to take care of my pregnant wife, fetch water and clean the rubble of my house, or work to earn money to bring food and medicine to my father,” he explained.

“Israel left nothing for us in Gaza. The war may have stopped, but our suffering only continues.”