As relentless fighting and Israeli airstrikes continue to devastate Gaza one year after war between Hamas and Israel began, Palestinians like Mohamed Khaleel Al-Zaneen are beginning to lose hope that their homeland will ever look like it once did — at least not in the foreseeable future.
The 48-year-old father of four says leaving his land before the war would have been like taking a fish out of water — he would not have been able to survive. Now, he says, life in Gaza is unimaginable, but there’s nowhere to go.
“Honestly, three months ago, I told myself even if no humans were left in Gaza, I would stay here and rebuild it,” Al-Zaneen told CBC News.
But things changed when two of his nephews were killed earlier this year and both his houses in Beit Hanoun were flattened, forcing his family to flee from one place to another four times. In the past year, 40 members of his family have been killed in Israeli attacks.
“Nothing was left” for him in Gaza anymore, he told CBC’s freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife in an interview last week.
Palestinians in Gaza say they couldn’t have predicted the war unleashed on their homeland in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel would last so long. The relentless airstrikes and fighting between Israel and Hamas continue to devastate large swathes of Gaza, leaving Gazans with little hope their land will ever look like it did before the war.
Cleanup expected to take at least 15 years
Rough estimates by international organizations suggest it will take at least 15 years to clean up the 42 million tonnes of debris generated by the buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructure destroyed or damaged in the conflict,
“The recent conflict in the Gaza Strip has produced a volume of debris that is 14 times greater than the combined total from all conflicts over the past 16 years,” a UN analysis of satellite imagery from this past July found.
Al-Zaneen says that even if a ceasefire is implemented, the years ahead will be grim.
“I’m [almost] 50 years old. How am I going to stay in Gaza for another 20 years for it to be rebuilt?” he asked. “We’re laughing at each other if we’re saying that we’re going to stay here.”
Al-Zaneen, who worked as a general contractor before the war and now lives in a tent in the devastated southern city of Khan Younis, says that with no livelihood, he won’t be able to live in Gaza even if the fighting between Israel and Hamas eventually ends.
“Gaza is completely destroyed. It’s not even suitable for animals to live in,” he said. “Let alone human beings.”
More than 2 million displaced
On Monday, as Israelis mourned the lives lost and communities destroyed in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Palestinians in Gaza marked a year of suffering and death unleashed in the wake of those attacks, many said they couldn’t have predicted the war would last so long.
The grim anniversary comes as hope of an end to the fighting seems to be getting more remote by the day, with Israel expanding its military campaign on several fronts and its adversaries showing no sign of relenting.
Kibbutz Nir Oz was one of the first Israeli communities attacked by Hamas militants in the morning hours of Oct. 7, 2023. That day, the kibbutz was home to 400 people in the south of Israel, about three kilometers from the boundary with Gaza. A year later, survivors continue to grapple with the devastation.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began a year ago after Palestinian militants staged the deadliest assault on Israel in its history, which Israeli officials say left 1,200 people dead and another 250 taken hostage, at least 70 of whom have since died, according to Israeli media.
The war has displaced most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population and claimed the lives of more than 41,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
“We don’t have any life left in Gaza,” AL-Zaneen said. “They destroyed us … Nothing is left to live for here.”
‘Our lives aren’t going to go back to how they were’
But for those left in Gaza, there’s no way out. The Erez border crossing controlled by Israel remains closed to all but aid, and the Israeli military seized control of the Rafah crossing on the Gaza side in May.
Most people CBC News spoke with in Khan Younis said the desire to return to their homes and start rebuilding is a pipe dream for now, but one they continue to think about daily.
Fadaa Abu Saleh, 55, says that when the bombings stop, she wants to return to her home on the border with Israel, east of Khan Younis, and be reunited with her two daughters and five sons, one of whom is currently detained by Israeli forces.
“I don’t want to leave my home. I want to sit in my home. I don’t want to leave it to go to any place,” Abu Saleh told CBC News, though she doesn’t even know what condition her home is in, having evacuated it nearly a year ago.
Still, she wants to go back to relax and feel the air there. “Sit there like we used to sit, sleep, rest, eat and drink,” she said.
Ali Saleh Soueilem, 14, is originally from the west side of Gaza, but is sheltering in Khan Younis. He says he’s been displaced six times and sees no future where he is now, even if the war ends, because it will take “years and years” to rebuild.
“Our lives aren’t going to go back to how they were.”
Mohamed Ibrahim, 46, meanwhile, says he doesn’t want to leave when the war ends and wants to return to Gaza City, where he used to live.
He says he feels like a refugee in his own country after being forcibly displaced three times.
“I lost my job, I lost my life, I lost a lot of my friends,” said Ibrahim, who worked as an IT engineer before the war. “[But] for me, I will stay.”
Muhammad Awda has been unable to complete his medical training because of the war in Gaza. He hopes for a future that is ‘better than what we lived in this year,’ he told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife in Khan Younis, ahead of the anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that led to the ongoing war.
Scale of destruction hard to fathom
Salma Daoudi says the sheer devastation wrought by the war means Gaza will need resources and funding that it doesn’t have.
“The destruction of hospitals, the destruction of residential areas, the destruction of key civilian infrastructure is obviously not something that could be rebuilt over the next couple of years,” said Daoudi, a nonresident fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy who focuses on health and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa region.
“Even if a ceasefire is kind of negotiated and implemented.”
Daoudi, a former policy analyst who lives in Oxford, U.K., says just clearing the debris and rubble — which has been contaminated by asbestos and all nature of hazardous materials, as well as unexploded munitions— would take roughly 15 years, citing a July estimate from the UN Environment Programme.
Freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife, who has been covering the war in Gaza for CBC News since it began, says the sheer scale of destruction is hard to fathom for those who haven’t seen it firsthand and is not adequately captured in photos and videos.
“Whatever people see on screen isn’t the same as living through reality,” he said. “The shock for [outsiders] would be to see the scale of the destruction in front of them….
“I look around, and there is no house standing, no place suitable for life or living.”
Rebuilding could take decades, cost billions
A report released by the UN Development Program (UNDP) in May estimated that rebuilding Gaza’s buildings and infrastructure would take until at least 2040, a date that is likely to get farther off as the war grinds on.
The organization previously said the overall reconstruction of Gaza is projected to cost between $40 and $50 billion US at least.
The UNDP estimates that the destruction in Gaza has caused the area’s human development index — which assesses factors such as education, health and life expectancy at birth — to regress by about 40 years.
Anas Al-Kassem, a trauma and bariatric surgeon practising in Ontario who completed two medical missions to Gaza in the past year, says psychosocial support and medical assistance, are crucial for Palestinians still in Gaza.
“It’s not just about buildings; it’s not just about the blocks and the stones,” Al-Kassem told CBC News. “It’s about the people.”
He says doctors in Gaza are only able to do so much “damage control” with the supplies and equipment available.
There will be physical disabilities and mental health issues as a result of what he called Israel’s “discriminatory bombardments” that will last long after the war is over.
“I’m afraid this will take years and years.”
Displaced Palestinians who were sheltering in the camp in Khan Younis were still digging people out from under the sand after the early morning attack on Tuesday. Rozan Al-Fahd, 12, said she broke her shoulder, and Omar Abdel Aal says there is no safe place left in Gaza.