Life in northern Gaza is desperate – there is no water, no electricity and so much rubble that there’s barely enough space to put up tents.
Yet more than half a million Palestinians have returned to the area over the past week, according to the government there. Most are determined to stay and rebuild – even if US President Donald Trump wants them out of the enclave so he can create a Middle Eastern “riviera.”
“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell,” he added. It was the second time in just over a week that Trump said Palestinians should leave Gaza.
His suggestion has sparked criticism across the world – and was met with disbelief and outrage among Gazans.
Some 70% of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents are already registered by the United Nations as refugees, many of whom are descendants of Palestinians who were displaced in 1948, when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee their homes during Israel’s creation. They have been barred from returning to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Arabs refer to the event as the “Nakba” (catastrophe).