Gaza must be rebuilt by the Palestinians for the Palestinians

When I first heard that President Donald Trump was presenting comments about the future of Gaza, I was in New York City, in a special show celebrating the new season of my friend Mamers Netflix, “MO”. Another friend then wrote to me: “Trump’s hideous press conference in which America says will take over Gaza. We will talk tomorrow.” I was shocked. But who will take the United States Gaza? The Israeli forces settled the entire neighborhoods and then withdrew. My friend Ahmed, from Beit Hannon, in northern Gaza, told me that people have returned to their neighborhoods not to resume their old lives, but “to live on the ruins of their homes.” But even the rubble in Gaza has a meaning for us. This is the place where our loved ones lived and died. When the time comes, we are the only people who will remove what to remove, just to reuse for rebuilding.

Trump said that Ghazan “will get peace.” “They will not be shot, killed and destroyed such a civilized civilization. From the American government.

Instead, Trump talked about turning the Gaza Strip into “Riviera in the Middle East”, as if no one was living there. Later, when he was asked about the number of people who will need to get out of their homeland, Trump said, “All of them. We may talk about 1.7 million people, and perhaps 1.8 million.. I think they will be resettled in the areas where they can live A beautiful life and do not worry about death every day. “He also said that he was feeling that the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt” would open their hearts “for the Palestinians while rebuilding the region – as if someone other than gasia would do this difficult and slow work.

I will not disturb myself by correcting Trump numbers. Instead, I have a question. Who said that Ghazan worried about death? There are a lot of people around the world who are worried about death, including some Americans who do not have health insurance or who live in areas at risk of forest fires. But our anxiety is not related to death. The Palestinians are concerned about existence killing By Israeli soldiers, settlers, bombs and bullets. How do you prevent people from killing? Not by removing and bombing people – but by stopping people who shoot and bomb.

Since the beginning of the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, in late January, more than a hundred Palestinians have been killed and many were wounded. I heard from their loved ones who return to the places where they lived before October 7. My wife’s family returned to her neighborhood and found her three -storey house. A lot of Gaza has been bombed so that many families cannot say this. Inside, though, the house was completely burned. There was no trace of tanks, ranks or blankets. I could hear, in a video clip, to break the floor tiles while walking. The walls and ceiling looked charred.

My friend Saber, the father of two children, was not in a hurry to return north. After October 7, he fled from northern Gaza to obtain a tent in Khan Yunis. In November 2023, the residential building in which he lived was bombed. On January 27 this year, the day that people allowed him to return to the north, he knew that there was nothing to return to. It did not start until the next day. He told me: “I walked for five hours.” He stayed for two days. “Then another five hours return to my tent in Khan Yunis,” he said.

On January 28, Dr. Hawsam Hamadad, a young doctor volunteered at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, returned to Beit Lahia, the city where she lived before October 7. She asked him to verify a library in English that he founded, in 2017. The library had a reading room full of books shelves. She also had a hall where we held events, often for children. Another room works as a classroom, where children can take lessons in English or drawing. There was a large screen that we showed cartoons, movies and educational videos. Storage room is held in drawing materials, gifts, biscuits, and juice, waiting for children. A wall is decorated with their artwork. In the photos he sent to me, a small number of books remained on one shelf, covered with debris. The rest of the library was in ruin.

I suffered when I remembered the period that each book took to land on the shelves, the eight -week trip from the United States or Europe to Gaza, at the moment each box caught when I arrived at the post office, praised a taxi, and went to the library to arrange books on Shelves. But now the post office is destroyed, the streets are devastating, and hardly has anyone who has books or reads.

Before I can think about rebuilding the library, Hamuda sent a message asking whether I can help him raise money to start a medical tent in the neighborhood, which does not contain hospitals, clinics or pharmacies working. If someone in Lahia’s house feels the disease, Hamda said, “They will have to go to Gaza City to see a doctor.” Taxi taxi alone – in fifty shekels, or fourteen USD, which is one way – too much for most patients.

My brother Hamza sent me pictures of the cemetery in the house of Lahia. He apparently referred to the path of Israeli tanks. I crossed from the two ends of the cemetery to the other, and wipe the graves along the way. In one place to rest, there was a metal staircase from a bombed house. The cemetery was covered with grass and volunteered in destroyed homes. I thought about my uncle and my brother buried there. Are their graves still sound? We withdraw our death from the rubble, where should we put all the new bodies?

In the summer of 2014, Israeli strikes destroyed more than twelve thousand housing units and severely damaged. Nearly one hundred and fifty thousand units have become uninterrupted. But the end of violence was the beginning of reconstruction. One of my neighbors used to go out on a donkey vehicle and collect concrete from destroyed houses. He sold every load for ten shekels – less than three dollars – and was crushed into the quarries to make gravel for new structures. Other men extracted the reinforcing steel from the damaged walls and ceilings. Metal bars can be evaluated and reshaped to enhance new walls and ceilings.

In northern Gaza, there is no ongoing water, electricity, nor hospitals, and not enough clothes, blankets or ranks. However, people are designed. Last week, journalist Abd al -Qadir posted a video clip on Instagram. He referred to a group of tents in the middle of what looks like the demolition site. Some tents were detonated from the strong winds. But the next day, he submitted reports from the Gabalia Refugee camp, which posted a video of men who are doing construction. Nearby, there was a United Nations Relief and Business Agency (UNRWASchools, one of whom is clearly burned and the other was severely damaged. Men were building a five -storey house.

I know Ghazan who want to leave. My friend Walid, from the Gabalia camp, was dreaming of going to another place “from the first month of the war, whether Trump had said anything or not.” However, crossing the border is still closed in both directions. According to the director of field hospitals in Gaza, in the last three weeks, thirty -five thousand patients needed to leave Gaza for treatment. Only one hundred and twenty of them made it outside. Meanwhile, many people who left after October 7 are stuck in Egypt, pending return so that they could reunite them with their families. My mother and sister, who went to Doha, could not have a medical treatment, to return to my father and my brothers.

For a person like me, the issue of when to return to Gaza is difficult. My wife and I have three children, and we often think about returning to our homeland, but we cannot do this until we Palestinians control the Rafah crossing – when it opens and when we close it. The crossing has not been opened to the returnees since the end of 2023, and it has not been open to anyone who left since May 2024, when Israel occupied and largely transferred the Gazan team. I do not want to return to Gaza and find myself imprisoned.

Since Trump’s press conference, many people I knew in Gaza have been afraid of the opposite – which led to its closure. My friend Saber called Trump’s terrifying comments. “Most people refuse to move one inch and ready to live in tents throughout their lives,” he wrote to me. “Especially after they realized that leaving may not mean not to return.” My mother -in -law has a different fear. What if our family re -forced the departure? She is concerned about wasting all work.

I often feel shocked to hear the Palestinians talking about their hopes. We mention the basic things. We want to get jobs, build homes, go to the beach, and perhaps travel abroad and know that we can return. Even the things we dream collectively-from the airport and our marine port, and we meet and display tourists around them, visit Jerusalem and pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and return to the villages and cities in which our fathers and grandparents live-are popular for many people all over the world. We deserve these things and more.

The Palestinians do not need President Trump to talk about Gaza as if it were an empty hotel room needed to be redesigned. What we need is to hear the rest of the world about the immediate basic necessities of Gaza. We need to hold tents and fill them with teachers so that children who have seen sixteen months can learn to return to school. We need to search in debris for anything from the remains of our brothers, sisters, parents and children so that we can bury them. We need heavy equipment to clean fifty million tons of rubble and replace them with places to live and work. We need to cultivate destroyed fields so that Palestinian farmers can grow our food again. We need to replace death sites with hospitals where people can recover. We need an extent to the siege that surrounds us. People who make up this future need to be Palestinians – and not the people who made Gaza resemble a demolition site, or they seem to believe now that an entire people should also be demolished. All these things are important. But there is nothing more important than staying. ♦