The pedestrians soon formed a human column that extended as far as the eye can see: long miles and about 20 people in step. Rarely such an uncomfortable journey seemed such a relief.
“We are so happy,” said Malak Al-Haj Ahmed, 17 years old, a high school student who was selfie with his family next to the coastal road. “There is no more joyful moment than to go home.”
To score the moment, some people have distributed sweets. Some signs of victory flashed to passage photographers. A group of kids led a celebratory song. “On the right or left, the North is the best,” they sang. “In the north we go!”
For the Palestinians, it was a moment imbued with symbolism. From the Foundation of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in what is known in Arabic as Nakba, the Palestinians were defined by repeated displaces and exile.
Most of the Gaza are the descendants of the refugees forced to escape in 1948 and many had considered their movement from northern Gaza in 2023 as according to Nakba. That fear has been strengthened by repeated Israeli calls to establish northern Gaza with Israeli civilians, as well as by the suggestion of President Trump during the weekend according to which Gazan should move to other parts of the Arab world.
To return home on that background, through the land from which the Israeli soldiers had just withdrawn, heard of some Palestinians as a courage against their own history.
“We shot the table on the head,” said Ahmed Shehada, 34 years old, a textile producer who traveled about 15 miles in six hours in Gaza City. Unlike many who have returned on Monday, he found his house still standing.
“They wanted to expel us from Gaza,” said Shehada on the phone. Instead, he added, “I’m sitting on the sofa of my house, and I can’t.”