Palestinians Return to Their Homes in Gaza
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Today on State of the World, Palestinians return to their homes in Gaza.

You're listening to State of the World from NPR, the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Tuesday, January 21st. I'm Greg Dixon. A fragile ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has been in place since Sunday. Some Palestinians finally feel safe enough to return to the homes they fled during the war. Many are finding utter destruction. NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, returned to the southern city of Rafah this week.

He sheltered there at one point after being displaced from his home. Later, an intense bombing campaign caused him to flee again. Ana sent us video and sound of what he found in Rafa. NPR's Ea Batraoui has this report on what he saw and the people he talked to.

Rafah is nothing short of apocalyptic. Gray mounds of rubble as far as the eye can see, and piles of skeletons where bodies have rotted away. This is what Palestinians are encountering in Rafah now, a city once teeming with international aid workers and more than a million displaced people.

Israeli troops launched a ground offensive against Hamas on Rafah in early May, forcing people to flee. And this week marks the first time Palestinians have been able to safely return. Riyad Abu Mahsen says his blood's boiling from what's been done to his city. And he's exhausted by the scale of destruction around him. He doesn't think Rafah can ever be rebuilt.

NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, says the city and its main road are unrecognizable. Eight months ago, this street was called Paris Street in Rafah. But now, it seems that the Israeli bombardment left nothing from this Shenzhen-Zehur-Rafah. We can see that the infrastructure...

The streets, roads, water pipes, every single thing that's needs for a human in order to be inhabited in place is lacking here in Rafah. Buried below all its rubble are the memories and lives of its people who once lived here. A woman looks with disbelief at the mound of concrete and twisted metal under her feet. This was her home. Say, I seek refuge in Allah and I am the only one.

A man tells her, put your faith in God. Through tears, she repeats, God is sufficient and the best disposer of affairs. Nestled near the border with Egypt, this once quiet town became a lifeline for Gaza after Hamas-led militants launched an attack on Israel in 2023 that killed 1,200 people there and sparked the war.

Rafah became the main entry point for aid into Gaza for the first half of the war and hosted Palestinians from bigger cities. But Rafah was never safe. Out of the more than 47,000 Palestinians killed in the war, according to Gaza's health ministry, thousands were buried here in Rafah.

This is what it sounded like at the main hospital's morgue in Rafah in the first months of war. Here, a distraught man fell to his knees, surrounded by the bodies of his relatives covered in white shrouds. In those first months of the war, NPR reported on many of these deaths from the Abu Yusuf al-Najjar morgue, documenting entire families killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The military either would not comment on specific strikes or would attribute them to its aims of dismantling Hamas, which it accused of using civilians for cover. The Al-Najjar hospital today, like much of Gaza, is a charred shell of itself. There's only debris where its departments once pulsed with life. But there is one bulldozer outside, carefully, slowly, working through the rubble.

Osama Ali, a manager at the hospital, says he spent 17 years working in its wards. He says, we don't know how to come out of this. The situation is very hard.

He says he doesn't know how to express how he feels inside, seeing Rafah in the hospital like this. Rafah was a battleground between Hamas and Israel for the past eight months. Israeli forces killed Yahya Sinwar here in October. He was the mastermind of the October 7th attack on Israel. Since the ceasefire started Sunday, people have been making their way back to Rafah and other parts of Gaza.

But their nightmare is far from over. There are losses here of lives and homes that can never be put back together. In one destroyed home in Rafah, a boy dusts the debris off a golden-colored curtain stitched with flowers. The road to recovery here is long, but for some, it has already begun. Aya Botrawi, NPR News Dubai, with Anas Bava in Gaza.

That's the state of the world from NPR. We have more coverage of all sides of this conflict at npr.org slash Mideast updates. Thank you for listening. This message comes from Charles Schwab. When it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices, like full-service wealth management and advice when you need it. You can also invest on your own and trade on Thinkorswim. Visit Schwab.com to learn more.

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