As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold, Palestinians have been making their way back to their homes in Gaza. But many of them are finding that their homes are gone. The UN estimates that 70% of the total structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed and that it could take decades just to clear the rubble. The post Many Palestinians in Gaza have no homes left to return to appeared first on The World from PRX.

Sixty-one-year-old Adel Labad stood on top of a pile of rubble where his home once stood. All that was left was scraps of broken concrete and twisted rebar, or reinforcing steel.

Shaking his head in disbelief, he searched for anything he could salvage — family photos, children’s textbooks, a pillow — finally giving up the search.

“Where are the houses? Where are the streets? Where are the trees? Where are the animals? Where are the people we love?” he asked.

Nothing is salvageable, he said. Everything has been destroyed.

Labad and many others in Gaza are returning home — amid the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas — to neighborhoods that don’t exist anymore. There are rows of pancaked apartment blocks. Schools, hospitals and sewage infrastructure are all gone. Around 90% of the population of Gaza has been displaced by this war, according to the United Nations.

Labad said that the Israeli military forced him and his family to leave their home a few months ago. Life became so intense that he stopped counting how many days they were away from home.

Although he is an engineer by profession, Labad said, “I cannot imagine how we [will] reconstruct. It is a catastrophe.”

The UN estimates that 70% of the total structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed during this war. The scale of the destruction is so vast that the UN said it could take about two decades just to clear the rubble alone.

Khadra Ayoub Rizq and her husband returned to what was left of their home in Rafah this week. As they looked through the rubble, they found a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and some pots and pans.

“We left at the beginning of the war,” she said. “The Israeli army told us it was carrying out a ‘limited operation.’ We were hopeful that our house would not be damaged.”

But that wasn’t the case when they returned.

“This is a big shock,” she said. “What can I say? Our hearts have been broken for a long time.”

Rizq said her brother-in-law was killed, along with his son. When the fighting stopped, they found their bodies under the rubble and buried them.

“There is no joy here,” she said.

Gaza’s Civil Defense estimates that around 10,000 bodies are still stuck under the rubble.

This is another factor that needs to be taken into account as the reconstruction process begins, according to Shaina Low with the Norwegian Refugee Council.

“We need to see the entry of heavy machinery to help remove that rubble, and we need to see the entry of fuel [into the Gaza Strip] in order to power those machines and the humanitarian response.”

Meanwhile, Israel controls everything that gets into Gaza, including building materials, concrete, metal pipes and the necessary machinery, which it says is necessary to prevent Hamas from using the material to build tunnels.

But Low says this slows down much-needed reconstruction.

“We have some lessons learned from the past escalations [in Gaza], in particular the 2014 escalation,” she said. “It was very difficult for organizations to bring in materials; the restrictions were quite strong in terms of what could be brought in and how those materials needed to be stored before they were used.”

The process took so long, she added, that in October 2023, when the new Israel assault on Gaza began, they hadn’t even completed reconstruction from the previous war.

Mark Jarzombek, who has studied urban reconstruction post-World War II, said Gaza also faces other challenges such as a lack of building materials.

“Gaza is a shattered community, physically, economically, socially, psychologically,” he said.

Jarzombek teaches architectural history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He explained that after World War II, countries like Germany, Italy, and France had industries and factories that could help revive the economy.

“In Gaza, there is no industry,” Jarzombek said. “Gaza is a land of farmers and citrus growers, or fishermen, of shopkeepers, so that means one has to operate at a very small-scale economic level.”

He said reconstruction would have to be financed by outside actors, aid groups, the United Nations and donors.

He predicts that Gaza will turn into what he calls a “Rubik’s Cube of reality.”

“A brand new hospital next to a temporary housing settlement, next to a tent enclosure, next to a half-finished building with dangerous rebars sticking out of it, next to a shopping area where you can buy food for your family,” he illustrated.

For Raged Hamouda and her family, a version of this reality is already taking shape.

This week, the 19-year-old returned to her house for the first time in five months. She shot a video showing her home completely destroyed. In the video, she was silent as she observed the wreckage.

In a voice note, she said, “Removing the rubble is very difficult. It seems that I will be living in a tent for a long time.” But, she said, this time “at least we’re close to home.”

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