Israel must allow tents and caravans to immediately be delivered to the Gaza Strip, a United Nations expert says, as displaced Palestinians returning to the north of the bombarded territory have found their homes and neighbourhoods destroyed.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, said people are finding nothing but rubble in areas from which Israeli forces have withdrawn in northern Gaza.
“The psychological impacts and trauma are profound, and that’s what we are seeing right now as people are returning to northern Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview on Saturday.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been streaming back into Gaza’s north after Israeli forces pulled back on Friday as part of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to halt the two-year conflict.
Palestinians across the coastal enclave have welcomed the suspension of Israel’s bombardment, which has killed more than 67,700 people since October 2023 and plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.
The UN estimated that 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the war began, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been forced to live in tents and other makeshift shelters.
Rajagopal noted that tents and caravans were meant to be delivered to Gaza during a ceasefire early this year but “almost none” of them was allowed in due to Israel’s strict blockade.
“That is really to me the crux of the issue right now. Even immediate relief and aid to the people of Gaza is not possible unless Israel stops controlling all the entry points. That is essential,” the UN expert told Al Jazeera.
Rajagopal, who has used the term “domicide” to describe the decimation of homes across the Strip, said the destruction of housing in Gaza has been a central component of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
“The destruction of homes and clearing people from the area and making the area uninhabitable is one of the main ways in which the act of genocide has been committed,” he said, adding that the recovery process will ultimately take generations.
“It’s like another Nakba,” he said, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine when Israel was created in 1948. “What has happened in the last two years is going to be something similar.”
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