At 89, Gaza Resident Recounts Cycles of Displacement, Sees Current crisis as Unprecedented
Al-Mawasi, Gaza Strip – Ayish, 89, finds himself once again sheltering in a tent, a haunting echo of his childhood. This time,however,the devastation feels different. Having witnessed the rebuilding of his Gaza homeland after the 1948-49 war,Ayish says the scale of current destruction and the uncertainty surrounding its future are unlike anything he has experienced.
In 1948-49, Ayish and his grandmother fled their home near Barbara, traveling seven miles south by camel to a small coastal corridor then under Egyptian control – the area that would become the Gaza Strip. The war resulted in an estimated 700,000 Palestinian refugees, with around 200,000 seeking refuge in that 25-mile-long, few-miles-wide territory. “We had bits of wood which we propped against the walls of a building to make a shelter,” ayish recalls. He later moved to a United Nations-established tented camp, eventually seeing the region rebuild.
But in May of last year, seven months into a two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas, Ayish was forced to evacuate his home in Rafah following an israeli military order.The four-story house he shared with his children and their families was destroyed, believed to be by Israeli tank-fire. Now, his home is a small white canvas tent just a few meters across, located in al-Mawasi near Khan Younis.
“We rebuilt before,” Ayish says, his voice heavy with concern. “But this… this feels different. The scale of it,the feeling that it won’t come back the same.” The current conflict has triggered a massive displacement crisis, mirroring the conditions of his youth, but with a sense of hopelessness he hadn’t known before.
