There is shelter and food for them in the south, whereas the center and northern areas of Gaza are destroyed, they noted.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Some of the more-than-300,000 Gazans who sped north to their hometowns as soon as the IDF allowed them to cross the former no-go zone of the Netzarim Corridor just a few days ago are regretting that decision and have begun returning south, Abu Ali Express reported Thursday.
The Israeli Telegram channel ran a translated Arab news clip from Tuesday in which a female interviewer spoke with young men striding along the A-Rashid coastal road that was serving as the main route for Gazans to head back home in the north – but they were using it to go in the opposite direction.
When she asked where they were from, they said they had been in the south, gone back to their former neighborhood in the north, and were now returning to the south.
“We walked there yesterday, and today we are coming back,” one of the men told her.
When she asked what it was like “in Gaza [City],” they answered immediately, “Destruction, complete destruction.”
They had no interest in staying there under such circumstances, with their houses gone and “huge sand dunes in their place,” they said.
One commented, “We’ll leave it in God’s hands,” while another young man, with a more practical bent, said, “Find people a solution. Where should we go?”
“We want to live, sleep, we want to find shelter… there is no shelter there,” he added, so they were “returning home,” referring to where they had stayed safe over the course of the war.
“That’s the best solution,” he said.
When the interviewer asked if they really thought that it was the right move to return, he responded, “Yes, yes. Now that is our place, the one we want to return to.”
A whole family then passed by on a horse-drawn cart, and when she called out, “Are you also returning?” they answered, “Yes, [because] there’s no water, no nothing.”
Several people could also be heard telling people off-camera, “Open the crossing points” — referring to the border crossings through which they could leave the Gaza Strip.
The only other country besides Israel that has a land border with Gaza is Egypt, and it has kept its gates very firmly shut against any kind of mass influx of Gazan refugees.
Over the last few days, U.S. President Donald Trump has raised the idea to both Egyptian and Jordanian leaders of allowing entry to tens of thousands of Gazans at least until the devastation of war can be cleared somewhat, but he was firmly turned down.
The interviewer was shocked by what she had seen and heard, saying, “This is indeed an unusual situation, dear viewers, the return of those who had been uprooted from Gaza City going back to the places they had left” in the south.
She specifically named the Al Mouassi safe zone, which was set up by Israel along the coast near Khan Younis some nine months ago and is well supplied with humanitarian aid.
She also noted that there was no problem walking in either direction on the coast, where no officials or soldiers of any kind could be seen.