MUWASI, Gaza Strip (AP) — On his key chain, Hassan Nofal keeps the keys to two homes. One is to the house of his grandparents in what is now southern Israel, which his family was driven out of by Israeli forces in 1948 and to which they’ve never been able to return.
The other is to Nofal’s house in northern Gaza that he had to flee last year after Israel launched its campaign of bombardment and offensives in the territory.
Over the nearly nine months since, Nofal and his family have been uprooted four times, driven back and forth across the Gaza Strip to escape the onslaught. Nofal said he is determined to make sure his key doesn’t become a keepsake like his grandparents’.
“If my house key becomes just a memory with me moving forward, then I don’t want to live anymore,” he said. “I must return to my house … I want to stay in Gaza and settle in Gaza with my children in our house.”
Israel has said Palestinians will eventually be allowed to go back to their homes in Gaza, but it is not clear when. Many homes have been destroyed or heavily damaged.
Israel’s assault in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has driven some 1.9 million of the territory’s prewar population of 2.3 million Palestinians from their homes. Most of them have been uprooted repeatedly since then, fleeing over and over across the length of the strip to escape a series of ground offensives.
Each time has meant a wrenching move to a new location and a series of crowded, temporary shelters — whether at the homes of extended family, U.N. schools, or tent camps. Along the way, families have struggled to stay together and keep a few possessions. In each new site, they must find new sources of food, water and medical treatment.
In the latest exodus, people have been escaping eastern districts of the southern city of Khan Younis and parts of Gaza City in the north after Israel ordered evacuations there. Almost all of Gaza’s population is now crammed into an Israeli-declared “humanitarian safe zone” covering about 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) on the Mediterranean coast, centered on a barren rural area called Muwasi.
Despite its name, Israel has carried out deadly airstrikes in the “safe zone.” Conditions are squalid in sprawling camps of ramshackle tents set up by the displaced — mostly plastic sheeting and blankets propped up on sticks. With no sanitation systems, families live next to open ponds of sewage and have little access to drinkable water or humanitarian aid.
Nofal, a 53-year-old employee of the Palestinian Authority, said he, his wife and six children fled their home in the northern refugee camp of Jabaliya in October. First they went to the central town of Deir al-Balah, then to Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah. They had to flee again when Israel launched an offensive there in May and moved to Khan Younis. Last week, they fled Khan Younis to a tent in Muwasi.
“Being displaced to a new place, it’s hard to deal with bugs and living on sandy ground,” he said. “We get sick because it gets hot during the day and slightly cold in the night.”
But the first move, leaving his home in Jabaliya, was the hardest, he said. He held up his key chain with the keys to his home and to his grandparents’ home in what was once the Palestinian village of Hulayqat, just outside what is now Gaza. Nothing remains of Huylaqat -- the precursor to the Israeli military seized the village and nearby ones in early 1948, forcing out inhabitants.
