GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip—The al-Zazas have much to celebrate these days, after returning a few weeks ago to their neighborhood in the Gaza Strip—the first Palestinian family to move back into a completely rebuilt home since last year’s war between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas.
It was a much-anticipated homecoming. Their house was one of thousands of dwellings that were reduced to rubble in the war. A push to reconstruct the battered coastal territory has been sluggish, relying on international funding pledges that have only partially been fulfilled.
But the al-Zazas’ move offers a rare glimmer of hope to the tens of thousands of Gazans who lost their homes in the war. The family’s place in Gaza City’s Shaaf neighborhood, one of the hardest-hit in the war, was among the first 170 completely destroyed homes that were approved for reconstruction under a U.N. mechanism.
“We are very happy ... it’s our home,” 50-year-old Atef al-Zaza, the family patriarch, told The Associated Press in his barely furnished new living room. “Our life is getting back to its pre-war normality.”
About half a million people were displaced at the height of the 50-day conflict and 100,000 were left homeless, according to the United Nations. Israeli airstrikes and shelling flattened entire areas, leaving piles of concrete and debris. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, the majority of them civilians, according to U.N. figures. On the Israeli side, 73 people were killed, most of them soldiers.
Many of the displaced Gazans fled to U.N. facilities serving as makeshift shelters or moved in with relatives elsewhere in the strip. After the war, some opted to return to their shelled-out and damaged homes, leaving about 17,000 still displaced 14 months after hostilities ended.
