BBC News, Jerusalem
Getty imagesJabalia, seen from the air, is breathtaking.
A wasteland of the Hiroshima type extends until the eye can see. The mutilated carcasses of buildings dot the blocked landscape, some leaning over crazy angles.
Large wavy waves of rubble makes it almost impossible to distinguish the geography from this formerly animated and closely packaged refugee camp.
And yet, while a drone camera flies on the wreckage, she chooses touches of blue and white where small tent camps have been installed in open ground spots.
And figures, climbing on the broken buildings, moving along the streets of dirt, where the food markets spring up under tin roofs and canvas awnings. Children using a collapsed roof as a slide.
After more than six weeks of fragile ceasefire from Gaza, Jabalia slowly returns to life.
In the Al -Qasasib district, Nabil returned to a four -story house which is somehow standing, even if it lacks windows, doors and – in some places – walls.
He and his loved ones made coarse balconies from wooden pallets and suspended tarpaulin to prevent the elements.
“Look at the destruction,” he said, examining the ocean of Jabalia ruins from a gaping upper floor.
“They want us to go without rebuilding it? How can we leave. The least we can do is rebuilt it for our children.”
To cook a meal, Nabil lights a fire on the naked staircase, sweeping it carefully with pieces of torn cardboard.
On another floor, Laila Ahmed Okasha washes in a sink where the tap was dry months ago.
“There is no water, electricity or wastewater,” she said. “If we need water, we have to go to a distant place to fill buckets.”
She says she cried when she came home and found her destroyed.
She criticizes Israel and Hamas for destroying the world she once knew.
“Both are responsible,” she said. “We had a decent and comfortable life.”
Shortly after the start of the war in October 2023, Israel told Palestinians in the northern part of the Gaza Strip – including Jabalia – to move south for their own safety.
Hundreds of thousands of people took into account the warning, but many have remained, determined to get out of the war.
Laila and her husband Marwan hung on until October of last year, when the Israeli army reinvadies Jabalia, saying that Hamas had reconstructed combat units inside the narrow streets of the camp.
After two months of refuge in the nearby Shati camp, Leila and Marwan returned to find Jabalia almost unrecognizable.
“When we returned and saw how it was destroyed, I didn’t want to stay here anymore,” said Marwan.
“I had a wonderful life, but now it’s hell. If I am lucky to leave, I will go. I won’t stay a minute more.”
Stay or leave? The future of the civilian population of Gaza is now the subject of an international debate.
In February, Donald Trump suggested that the United States takes control of Gaza and that nearly two million Palestinian residents should leave, perhaps for good.
Faced with international indignation and fierce opposition from Arab leaders, Trump later seemed to move away from the plan, saying that he recommended it but would not force it to anyone.
In the meantime, Egypt has led Arab efforts to offer a viable alternative, which will be presented Tuesday during an Arab emergency summit in Cairo.
Above all, it indicates that the Palestinian population should remain inside Gaza while the area is rebuilt.
Donald Trump’s intervention highlighted the famous obstinate side of Gaza.
“If Trump wants us to leave, I will stay in Gaza,” said Laila. “I want to travel to my free will. I will not leave because of him.”
On the way is a yellow block of nine floors so spectacularly damaged, it is difficult to believe that it has not collapsed.
The upper floors have sold completely, threatening the rest. Over time, he will surely have to be demolished, but for the moment he houses even more families. There are sheets in the windows and a hanging washing to dry in the sun from the end of winter.
The most incongruous of all, outside a makeshift plastic door in a corner of the ground floor, next to heaps of rubble and waste, stands a headless model, wearing a wedding dress.
It is Sanaa Abu Ishbak’s dress store.
The 45 -year -old seamstress, a 11 -year -old, created the company two years before the war, but had to abandon it when she fled south in November 2023.
She returned as soon as the ceasefire was announced. With her husband and daughters, she was busy cleaning up the store debris, organizing dresses on hangers and preparing for business.
“I love Jabalia Camp,” she said, “and I will not leave him before dying.”
Sanaa and Laila also seem determined to stay in place if they can. But the two women speak differently when they talk about young people.
“She doesn’t even know how to write her own name,” said Laila about her granddaughter.
“There is no education in Gaza.”
The little girl’s mother was killed during the war. Laila says she is still talking to her at night.
“She was the soul of my soul and she left her daughter in my hands. If I am lucky to travel, I will do it for the good of my granddaughter.”
