For Gazans displaced for 15 months, the distance is not far – the Gaza Strip is a tiny place – but today's journey is just the start of a desperately uncertain future for this war-ravaged place. The scale of the looming humanitarian challenge is hard to comprehend. "There are no facilities, no services, no electricity, no water, no infrastructure," Gazan journalist Ghada el-Kurd said, as she prepared to make her own way back north from Deir el-Balah, where she's been sheltering for months. "We have to re-establish again from the beginning, from zero." The immediate needs – food and shelter – are starting to be addressed. "Aid is flowing at levels we've not seen since the start of the conflict," Sam Rose from the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, said. "So we're able to meet the bare minimums in terms of food, water, blankets, hygiene items. But beyond that, this is a long, long road." Finding shelter in the apocalyptic ruins of Gaza is going to be the first of many huge, long-term challenges. As many as 700,000 people fled from Gaza City and the surrounding areas during the early weeks of the war. An unknown number, perhaps as many as 400,000, stayed put. Some of the areas left behind were obliterated, while others have just about survived. The UN estimates that around 70% of the Gaza Strip's buildings have been damaged or destroyed since October 2023, with much of the worst destruction in the north. Jabaliya, home to a pre-war population of 200,000, about half of whom lived in one of Gaza's oldest and biggest refugee camps, has been virtually destroyed. It is clear that for many people, the days of living in a tent are far from over. Gaza's Hamas-run Government Media Office has put out an urgent appeal for 135,000 tents and caravans. The UN says it's now able to bring in 20,000 tents that have been stuck on the border since August, along with large quantities of tarpaulin and mattresses. But it says it's going to struggle to meet the sudden demand for shelter. "There simply aren't that many manufactured tents for aid operations anywhere in in the world," Rose said. People who have managed to stay in the north throughout the war fear that pressure for accommodation, already acute, will get worse as civilians return and look to move back into homes abandoned over a year ago. "There's a huge problem because people used to stay in houses of relatives or friends who are in the south," says Asmaa Tayeh, whose family had to flee Jabaliya but never left the north. "Now they have to empty these houses and give them back to their owners. So a new kind of displacement has started." Asmaa says four families are already living in her building with three more expected soon. The lack of space and privacy, she says, have already led to tensions. The return of refugees is having other knock-on effects. "I went to the market today to buy frozen fish for the first time," Asmaa says. "But already sellers are raising prices." Pressure on already scarce water and electricity supplies is also expected to increase. But for all the widely anticipated hardships, those returning speak, sometimes in widely optimistic terms, of their relief and sense of expectation. "We are overjoyed to return to the north, where we can finally find comfort," one woman told the BBC. "Leaving behind the suffering we endured in the south and returning to the dignity of Beit Hanoun." According to recent accounts from Beit Hanoun - in the far north-eastern corner of the Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel - the town is unrecognisable. What of Donald Trump's suggestion that people should move, temporarily or permanently, to Egypt or Jordan? Egyptian and Jordanian officials were quick to condemn the suggestion. Both countries fear the social and security implications of a sudden influx of traumatised refugees. "Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians," Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said. His country is already home to 2.4 million registered Palestinian refugees. Among Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right cabinet colleagues, President Trump's suggestion received an enthusiastic welcome. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who favours Israeli annexation and settlement of the Gaza Strip, called it "a great idea". Last year, speaking at a conference of supporters, he talked of creating "a situation where Gaza's population will be reduced to half its current size in two years". Unless Gaza is quickly rehabilitated and Gazans are given a glimpse of a better future, Smotrich may have his way. "I think for the first few months, they will see what will happen," journalist Ghada el-Kurd says. "If they lost everything and the reconstruction process is delayed, I think people will not stay in Gaza." Around 150,000 people have already left since the war began in October 2023. Ghada says she expects others who can afford it to follow, seeking futures in the Arab world or beyond, while the poorest and most vulnerable are left behind. "I agree with Trump that people deserve a better life," she says. "But why not in Gaza?" — BBC
