(24 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip – 24 January 2025
++SOUNDBITES PART OVERLAID BY CUTAWAYS++
1. Wide of displaced camp
2. Woman baking bread in clay oven, displaced people waiting around her
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fatima Rayhan, displaced woman from Jabalia:
"For a year and five months, we have been under siege, war, fear, terror, and a lack of stability and security. Thank God, our Lord is finally bringing us back to our homes safely."
4. Woman baking bread in clay oven
5. Camp avenue
6. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Nafouz Al-Rabai, a displaced woman from Al-Shati camp:
"It is enough—sheltering in tents, living in humiliation, losing our children as martyrs. God knows if I will find my house standing or not. Life has been very, very hard. We’ve been living here in a tent with five people crammed together, enduring the cold winter and the filth. Who could accept this? No one would. But we were humiliated and forced to live like this. What could we do? The war was stronger than us."
7. Washing line by tent
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fatima Rayhan, displaced woman from Jabalia:
"We waited day by day, minute by minute, and second by second for a ceasefire and for peace to prevail. The day we return to our homes will be the happiest day of our lives. This is the day we have been waiting and hoping for, and thank God, our Lord has finally granted it to us."
9. Various of displaced children singing and playing next to tents
STORYLINE:
For Palestinians in central and southern Gaza hoping to return to what remains of their homes in the war-battered north, the terms of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas has forced an agonizing wait.
The agreement allows Palestinian civilians in the south to take the coastal Rashid road to northern Gaza starting on Saturday, when Israeli troops are expected to withdraw from the key route and Hamas is set to release four Israeli hostages in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners.
For the first time since Israel invaded Gaza 15 months ago, Palestinians will enjoy more freedom of movement from the north to the south of the enclave.
As Palestinians in other parts of the strip seized on the ceasefire this week to reunite with scattered family members, pick their way through vast swaths of rubble and try to salvage what remained of their homes and their belongings, Palestinians seeking to return to the north have been waiting, their hopes and worries building.
“The first thing I will do is kiss the sand of the land where I was born and raised. Thank God, He will fulfill our hopes—we will return, my children will reunite with their father,” said Nadia Al-Debs, one of the many people gathered in makeshift tents in Gaza’s central city of Deir al-Balah preparing to set out for home in Gaza City the next day.
Nafouz al-Rabai, another displaced woman in Deir al-Balah from Gaza City’s al-Shati coastal camp, said the day she walks home will be a “day of joy for us.”
The return is bittersweet. Al-Rabai acknowledged it would be hard to absorb the scale of damage to the homes and the urban refugee camp she knew and loved.
"God knows if I will find my house standing or not. Life has been very, very hard," she said.
AP video shot by Abdel Kareem Hana
Production by Wafaa Shurafa
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