The road to recovery is impossible to envisage given the extent of destruction caused by the worst war in Gaza’s history, especially for those who had already lost their homes in earlier conflicts.
Mohammed Abu Sharia, 37, fulfilled his promise to return to the same plot in less than a year after an Israeli attack destroyed his family’s home in Gaza City in 2014.
The grant they were awarded covered only two levels rather than the initial four, indicating that the procedure was not flawless.
However, they lived there contentedly until October of last year, when it was once more targeted by airplanes as a result of Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel.
This time, the family could not flee in time and five people were killed, four of them children.
The rest remain displaced nearly a year later, scattered across Gaza and in neighbouring Egypt.
“A person puts all his life’s hard work into building a house, and suddenly it becomes a mirage,” Abu Sharia told AFP.
“If the war stops, we will build again in the same place because we have nothing else.”
