Family in Gaza returns home only to be forced out again

Inside the one remaining room of Khayria’s bombed out house in northern Gaza, the 60-year-old woman tends a cookpot of greens over an open wood fire. The smoke can escape because one wall is gone, opening the room to the outdoors.

Through the opening, Khayria can see broken down buildings and rubble where her relatives once lived. Twenty of them have died since the Israeli military’s invasion of the area in 2023. Only Khayria’s first name is used for her security. 

She has tried to make the room look like a home by hanging some pictures on the concrete wall that is riddled with bullet holes. They have a collection of stuffed couches and chairs for the room, which is home for some of her 11 children and 25 grandchildren who are living with her. 
 

It’s February. During the brief reprieve from the Israeli bombardment, Khayria is relieved to be home, even if it is in the remnants of the house they had built. For much of the last 18 months, her family has been moving around Gaza together to escape the Israeli military’s air and ground assault.

A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Jan. 19 made it possible for her family and thousands of other Palestinians to return to their home communities in the north. Tents rose in the rubble as returnees reclaimed their land. 

The ceasefire, which lasted until March 18, also paved the way for increased humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, including Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) shipment of food for 4,000 families, plus comforters and hygiene supplies. Al-Najd Developmental Forum, an MCC partner, distributed the goods to the most vulnerable families, including Khayria’s.

“I couldn’t help it when I saw the comforter,” she says. “I wanted to hold it in my arms and keep my children warm with it. It’s frigid, it’s cold. At night, your ...  heart feels like it’s going to stop because of the cold. So, if you have a warm cover, you can cover up.” 
 

In addition to three comforters, Al-Najd gave her a box of food and a relief kit, a 5-gallon bucket of hygiene supplies. The comforters and supplies were made or donated by MCC volunteers, and the food was funded from MCC’s account at Canadian Foodgrains Bank and includes matching funds from the Government of Canada and the Humanitarian Coalition.

“This will help me a lot,” she says, noting that the food and comforters were most needed. “The bucket will help us with the water delivery. The soap will help us to bathe or wash; the shampoo to bathe; it is all good for us.”
 

Many other organizations brought supplies into Gaza during the ceasefire for displaced people who had gone without food, shelter and basic supplies many times. Before the ceasefire, many humanitarian organizations couldn’t deliver supplies because of arbitrary restrictions on aid by Israel.

“It was a welcome relief to have the eight-week pause and have a flood of all of this aid getting in at the same time,” says Seth Malone, MCC representative for Jordan, Palestine and Israel, with his wife Sarah Funkhouser. “I think the ceasefire and the significant increase in aid coming into Gaza allowed people to feel some amount of relief and maybe even some amount of hope.”

When Khayria and her family fled their home in northern Gaza with nothing, they went to the beach along the Mediterranean. They stayed three or four months until Israel began shelling there too. As the missiles landed, shrapnel flew so close to the grandchildren, she says, it went through their legs. 

They moved further south to Rashad-al Shawwa, but shelling followed them there too. This time one of her sons was hit while he was collecting water. 

“He fell and had shrapnel on his arm and leg, and his tendon (in his leg) was severed,” she said. “He could only respond to us with his eyes, because he couldn’t talk.” Though he was treated at a hospital, his tendon still needs to be repaired. 

The family relocated again to Khan Yunis, a major city in the south. Although her husband and sons could earn some money by buying and reselling supplies, sometimes there was nothing to eat.

“The biggest challenge there was that we couldn’t find food,” says Khayria. “If we get some flour from other women, we’ll sit and knead it. We knead, knead, knead and divide for the little ones, small pieces. We’re going hungry, but the kids have priority to eat. Children have been wronged a lot.”

The ceasefire brought a few bright spots to Khayria’s family after they moved back to their damaged house.

“We received a parcel that contains food for my children and me. Thank God for this parcel,” she says. Rice, cereal, sardines and cans of meat are very expensive to purchase at the market.
 

The food package also included a container of chocolate spread. “The children in Gaza have gone without school, playtime, access to their regular routines for nearly a year and a half,” says Annie Loewen, MCC interim disaster response director. “We’re providing a small treat to give them a sense of a normal childhood, to remind them that there is still a bit of joy among the confusion and displacement they see every day.”

Khayria says the children were delighted with the sweetness. “‘Spread out a lot, Granny,’ said one girl.”

Seeing the comforters reminded Khayria of how her life used to be when their house was still intact. The room they are living in now is what’s left of the third house their family has built. The first two were destroyed by previous Israeli invasions. 

“I don’t know what kind of life this world has brought us. It is a tragedy, a tragedy, a tragedy,” says Khayria. “The young people were doing well, but now they are too broken. They became very angry, and you can’t talk to them because of what they have witnessed, from distress.”

She is enduring, she says, because God is with her. “What helped me is praising God. May God be kind to us. … I say, O Lord, release us and make it easy on us and on my children and on my youth. Thanks to God.”

She has hope that their family can rebuild their house, that she will still see all her children get married and that happiness will return.

In early March, Israel closed Gaza’s crossings to humanitarian assistance. And on March 19, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement by launching a new air and ground campaign in Gaza, including in the area where Khayira and her family were living.

On March 25, MCC learned that Khayira and her family had to flee from their home again. They headed to the beach along the Mediterranean, taking nothing with them, just like the first time they were forced from their home in 2023. 
 

Malone, who coordinates delivery of MCC’s food and supplies with partner organizations in Gaza, says he is very disappointed that Israel has resumed bombing and restricting humanitarian aid again. 

“A permanent ceasefire is the only way forward,” Malone says. “Look what we can do when Israel is not actively bombing people. We can meet people’s basic needs so much better when there is a ceasefire and when Israel allows supplies in.”  

Nevertheless, Malone says, they are still working to get MCC’s next shipment of food into Gaza for another 4,000 families despite the challenges. The shipment is inspected and ready to go when circumstances change.