As soon as the Gaza ceasefire was finalized last month, Emad Shomar headed north to find the home he hadn¡¯t seen in 15 months. He found himself in a bewildering moonscape of ruination, his house bulldozed.
The 55-year-old considered pitching a tent, but unexploded military devices gave him pause. He had neither the expertise nor the machinery required to create a habitable environment. Even the act of building a washroom next to a tent seemed insurmountable; cement was unavailable. Reality sank in. Shomar returned to his family¡¯s makeshift shelter in central Gaza.
When U.S. President Donald Trump said this week that the more than 2 million residents of Gaza should move abroad so U.S. companies could clear the landscape and rebuild it after the Israel-Hamas war, he was condemned across the world, including by many Gazans who¡¯ve struggled to hold on to their homes and lives and for whom displacement is part of their collective trauma.
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