DaysofPal- At the edge of a worn-out tent pinned beneath a bomb-scarred tower in Gaza City, 45-year-old wheelchair user Tareq Abdel-Rabbu sits quietly, talking with what remains of his family and a few displaced neighbors who have found in the crumbling building a last refuge.
Around them, talk grows louder of Israeli leaders’ threats to resume the war on the Gaza Strip.
Each time Abdel-Rabbu hears such threats, on a small radio or in the chatter of passersby, he shakes his head in deep despair and says in a heavy voice: “We don’t want the war to come back… we can’t bear any more.”
Abdel-Rabbu, who has a physical disability, not only lost his two-story home in Jabalia town in northern Gaza; he also lost his eldest son, Ziad, killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a group of civilians during the war.
Before his death at the age of 24, Ziad had been the family’s main breadwinner, working day and night to provide for them and compensate for his father’s inability to work due to a long-standing mobility impairment.
His absence has left a deep wound, especially in his father, whose health has deteriorated and who has now almost completely lost the ability to move, confined to a wheelchair that sums up, in a single image, the tragedy of a man stripped of everything by war.
“Isn’t what the occupation has already done to us enough?” Abdel-Rabbu tells the newspaper of Palestine.
“We lost our homes and our sources of income, and many times we don’t even find anything to eat.” He added.
Every evening, Abdel-Rabbu sits in front of the structurally unsafe Shawa & Husari Tower in Gaza City, where he and his family of six found no shelter but a tent anchored between its shattered ground-floor walls.
From there he watches people pass by, asking for any help they can offer, a small amount of money or a simple meal to feed his family for just one day.
His story is only one facet of a much wider catastrophe: hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents have seen their homes flattened, entire neighborhoods erased from the urban map, and livelihoods wiped out. For many, the struggle now centers on securing just one meal a day.
Yet, despite the scale of their suffering, survivors of what Palestinians describe as genocide refuse what they see as attempts to “trade” their basic needs and humanitarian aid for political concessions.
They reject linking the entry of urgent relief or the provision of temporary housing to demands for disarming Gaza, or tying reconstruction to political conditions that would leave hundreds of thousands without homes.
These fears come as the Israeli occupation forces continue to control more than half of the Gaza Strip’s 365 square kilometers, keeping large areas “behind the yellow line” and preventing residents from returning to their completely destroyed neighborhoods.
Since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, Israel has committed around 2,371 violations of the agreement, according to official figures in Gaza.
These breaches have resulted in the killing of 750 Palestinians, including women and children, rendering the ceasefire fragile and heavily burdened with ongoing violations.
The pattern of attacks has created a constant sense of anxiety among residents, many of whom feel that the war has never truly ended.
“For us, the war hasn’t ended. That’s how it feels every time we hear a plane overhead or the sound of shelling,” says 43-year-old Mohammed Abu Ouda, a survivor of both bombing and displacement.
“Of course the ceasefire is full of violations,” he adds, “but it’s still better than a return to the killing,” referring to the more than two-year-long war that Palestinians widely call a war of extermination.
Abu Ouda lost his home in the northern town of Beit Hanoun and still cannot return because of the continued presence of Israeli forces in the area. A former real estate trader, he has lost his business and income entirely.
He now lives with his family of seven in a single small room inside a damaged house in Gaza City’s al-Nasr neighborhood, fully aware, he says, of what he believes are Israeli plans to push residents toward permanent displacement.
“We hope the ceasefire will continue, but its terms must be improved in a way that serves Gaza’s people, especially those whose homes were destroyed, and Israel must be compelled to fully implement the agreement.” Abu Ouda says.
Responding to calls for disarmament, he asks: “What weapons do they want to take? Gaza has been destroyed completely. Even our lives are no longer what they were.”
As Israel continues, according to Gaza authorities, to evade its obligations under the ceasefire, tightening the blockade and restricting the entry of sufficient food, medical supplies, and reconstruction materials, displaced residents say linking any progress in the agreement to disarmament is nothing more than a pretext to keep the humanitarian catastrophe intact before a largely silent world.
Local officials and rights groups warn that, if this situation persists, the ceasefire risks becoming nothing more than an open-ended truce with no clear political or humanitarian horizon, leaving hundreds of thousands of survivors trapped amid the rubble and under constant threat of renewed bombardment.
During the war on Gaza, the Israeli army killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded over 172,000, according to official figures from Gaza. Thousands more remain missing, believed to be under the rubble or in areas that cannot be reached.
These numbers, combined with repeated threats to resume large-scale military operations, have turned the ceasefire into what many describe as a “truce of anxiety,” in which survivors live in a state of permanent anticipation of the next escalation.
For Tareq Abdel-Rabbu, sitting in his wheelchair at the entrance to his torn tent, the demands are minimal: “We just want to live without bombing. We want to bury our dead, rebuild our homes, and feed our children. Is that too much to ask?”
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