The Halawa family’s building still rises two stories above the flattened remains of Gaza City, an improbable silhouette in a landscape of broken concrete and twisted steel.
After more than two years of Israeli bombardment, the structure stands only in part: one side has collapsed entirely, the roof is gone, and rusted metal rods jut from the wreckage where walls once held.
To reach their apartment upstairs, the family climbs a narrow staircase made of wooden planks scavenged from debris.
It creaks underfoot, bending slightly with every step – a daily reminder that the line between shelter and danger is thin.
Yet for Amani Halawa, her husband Mohammed and their five children, returning was not a question of choice so much as necessity.
The family fled Gaza City three months after the war erupted, moving from place to place as fighting intensified and evacuation orders expanded.
They spent months in overcrowded displacement camps, where winter rains flooded tents, sanitation was scarce and privacy nonexistent.
When a fragile cease-fire took hold in October, they returned – not because the house was safe, but because it was still theirs.
“Living here is dangerous,” Amani said. “But living without a home is worse.”
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, following Hamas' incursion into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.
Israel’s subsequent military offensive in Gaza has devastated the territory, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, displacing most of its roughly 2 million residents and reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble.
By late 2025, a U.S.-brokered cease-fire brought a measure of calm, sharply reducing large-scale airstrikes and ground fighting.
But it did not bring reconstruction.
Aid remains limited, debris removal has barely begun, and officials say rebuilding Gaza’s homes, roads, hospitals and utilities will take years – even if sustained peace holds.
For now, families are rebuilding on their own.
Inside the Halawas’ apartment, survival is a daily exercise in improvisation.
Amani prepares meals over an open flame, heating coffee in a small tin as thin shafts of daylight slip through cracks in the concrete.
The family has filled holes in the walls with broken blocks, plastic sheets and cloth.
School backpacks hang from exposed rebar.
Pots, pans and salvaged furniture sit on uneven floors layered with dust and debris.
On one wall, a painted tree stretches upward – a symbol of resilience – surrounded by handwritten messages to relatives scattered across Gaza or forced into exile by the war.
Across Gaza City, similar scenes play out inside thousands of damaged homes.
Families sweep rubble from carpets, wash clothes in buckets and cling to routines that help restore a sense of normal life.
Children attend makeshift lessons or watch movies on laptops powered by solar chargers.
Adults spend nights listening to the groans of weakened buildings, afraid that the next rainstorm or aftershock could bring everything down.
The danger is constant.
Gaza health officials say structurally compromised buildings are collapsing with increasing frequency, particularly during winter storms.
In one week in December alone, more than a dozen people were killed when damaged homes gave way, often trapping entire families beneath tons of concrete.
Rescue teams, lacking heavy equipment, are frequently forced to dig by hand.
In another ruined apartment nearby, Sahar Taroush gently sweeps dust from carpets laid directly over rubble.
Her daughter, Bisan, sits nearby, her face lit by the blue glow of a computer screen as she watches a movie beside gaping holes in the wall.
Elsewhere, a family has hung a torn photograph of their grandfather – once a member of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in the 1990s – on a cracked wall, preserving a fragment of identity amid destruction.
In the Al-Karama neighborhood, now almost entirely leveled, a man lies on a mattress perched dangerously close to a collapsed balcony, scrolling through his phone above the ruins.
For many, returning to unsafe homes is a calculated risk.
Tent camps are overcrowded and exposed to the elements.
Aid shelters are limited.
With little prospect of immediate rebuilding, families say they would rather face danger in familiar surroundings than remain indefinitely displaced.
