The Current - Gazans return home to search rubble for loved ones

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Palestinian Akram Said says Gazans are slowly returning to their homes, to search the rubble for loved ones killed by Israel’s airstrikes. Said shares why he stayed in Gaza for the last 15 months, and what the ceasefire means for humanitarian aid reaching those who need it most.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. That's the sound of humanitarian aid trucks rolling into the city of Rafa as desperate Palestinians scramble to grab boxes while the trucks are still moving. It is day five of the temporary ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, and this deal requires 600 aid trucks to be allowed into the Gaza Strip every day. It's also a chance for those displaced to return to their homes to see what, if anything, remains. Where are the houses? Where are the streets? Where are the trees? Where are the animals? Where are the people we love? Nobody! That's Adel Labad. He was forced to flee his Rafah home when the fighting began,

and seeing the extent of the damage has left him feeling hopeless. I'm an engineer. I cannot imagine how we would reconstruct it. I have no respect for the future. The future is very dark. Akram Said is also among the almost 2 million Palestinians displaced by this war. He is in Khan Yunus. Akram, hello. Hello and good morning to you and our listeners. Thank you for being here with us. What have the last few days been like for you following the ceasefire?

Thank you very much for having me with you and for the last few days for the people of Gaza. They have been also extremely uncertain ones because they have been following the news about the ceasefire, about specific dates for them to be able to come back to their homes. Some of them have already been successful coming back to the ruins of their homes. Some of them are still extremely busy now trying to get and to find the remains of their dear ones under the rubble of the houses that were targeted in Rafah area. Some of them are still waiting in Khan Younis area to cross from Khan Younis or Gaza central area

to Gaza City and the north for also the very same mission of Seeking to find the remains of their deers under the rubble I have a colleague of mine whose husband and her two daughters are still under the rubble for one year and two months now She's waiting for to be able to find something from their mummery and to be able to retrieve their body. Where are you living right now? I live in Khan Younis area. But in Khan Younis, where are you in a home? Are you in a tent? Where are you staying? No, I've been living in a tent for the last one year or so and I am in the humanitarian zone and it needs a great deal of repair before I come back to my home. Do you know what sort of state

your home is in? Is it still standing? It is still standing but it's damaged and it needs a great deal of repair. We will have to struggle now to get any kind of reconstruction materials, glasses, windows, doors, anything that is needed for the rebuilding the life in Gaza is in the meantime missing. And the only things that are allowed into Gaza, the 600 A-TRACs are mostly food and other non-food supplies, but they are not glass or anything that would be used for the rebuilding and reconstruction. What has it been like trying to get food over the last 15 months?

Personally, I lost 14 kilograms because of the very limited quantities of food and I think also because of the very extreme situation we have been living in. The continuous bombardment, the daily loss of the people around you and also the imminent death that you will be perceiving would be coming to you anytime a bombardment is taking place, the thorough devastation throughout whole areas. It was a very tormenting and psychologically draining experience that have already undermined some of people's psychological resilience and have deprived them from their dears and loved ones.

There has been a surge of aid in the days since the ceasefire, has that helped? Yeah, in the local markets, you can find now different types of things that were missing in the last 15 months or so. And people are also, the prices are dropping because now the availability of those food supplies so the situation is better. But the key question now would that be sustained?

Would that good situation or at least would say acceptable situation continue or it would be undermined or compromised by the end of the ceasefire and the disagreement over the terms of the swap deal in the coming days. Tell me about your family. Where is your family right now? I have part of my family in Khan Younis area, some other part of my family in Egypt. And the ones who are in Khan Younis area are also living outside of their home, my mother and my youngest brother who's 41 years old and And they are now in a rent that was also affected by the bombardment and by the devastation. And they are planning also to come back to their home and repair whatever they can repair

for the sake of justice staying in that home. I have my sister's home that was totally destroyed in Rafah area. They came back to the ruins of the home. Just yesterday, they are extremely sad they lost their home, but this is the situation and this is the case of around a million Gazans recently. Did you have the chance to leave Gaza? Yes, but I decided to stay in Gaza.

Why did you stay? As this war was unfolding, why did you decide to stay? This is my homeland. Against all of the odds that we have been facing, I don't see myself going anywhere. And I was hoping also to stay next to my family, to extended family, my mother and my sister, and even the general population, and to try to help as much as I can. You talked about the uncertainty of this moment. How hopeful are you that this ceasefire will hold and eventually lead to a permanent end to this war? I'm extremely hopeful even if this ceasefire does not come to a positive end and it wouldn't be extended. I believe that despite all the odds, despite all the pain that we have been seeing, despite

all the loss that we have been enduring for the last 15 months and ever since we were born. I'm 48 years old. I have lived under the continuous occupation, but I believe that there is some good things that are coming for us and that we should be patient and just wait and have hope and faith as well. How do you see the future? When you think of the future, how do you see that in your own mind? In my mind, Palestine is promised tomorrow. And the Boudouz people who have been

under continuous oppression and occupation will eventually be free. This is what I believe is going to happen and I believe that the under continuous oppression and occupation will eventually be free. This is what I believe is going to happen and I believe that the international community will reach a point when they understand that there would be no stability in the Middle East or worldwide without just dispensing and realizing the right of the occupied people of full freedom and self-determination. And in the meantime, what is your immediate, the most urgent need that you yourself have right now?

Is it to try to get those materials to start rebuilding a home? Yeah, the priority is to go back to my home. Even if you have to improvise and try to get yourself some small thing from here, small thing from there, small thing from there and keep make the home inhabitable. This is my priority now and I hope that I will be able to achieve that in the few coming

days. People have been trying and some of the people have already managed to stay in their destroyed house by clearing the rubble, by making some makeshift walls and trying to live in there, even using the tarpaulins and using the blankets and stuff like that. So the point is we should live, we should recover, we should try to continue and continue hoping. Akram, thank you for speaking with us. I wish you the best. You are welcome and wish you all the best.

Akram Said is among the nearly two million Palestinians displaced by war. We reached him in the humanitarian zone in Chanyounes. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs and this time it's gonna get personal. I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. With that ceasefire in place, aid groups are now trying to reach people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Amand Bazaral is the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders or MSF in Gaza. She's also in Chanyounes. Amand, hello to you.

Hi, hello. How are you? I'm well, thanks. How does, just describe what, I mean, we've seen some of the images and we just heard a description of what life is like there. What does Gaza look like to you now? a description of what life is like there. What does Gaza look like to you now? Well, there's no one Gaza today. Like this location as has been described that are completely destroyed. So it's the case of Haifa

or at least the majority of Haifa and all the Northern governorate. And then there's some location when it's a mix of camps because where we are in Hanyounis and in the former so-called, we'll see if it come back to that, but humanitarian zone, it's just like camps,

like shelters, makeshift shelters, as far as your eye can see. And then there's Gaza cities that is partially destroyed and that people are very eager to be able to go back as soon as they can. What are people returning to when they are able to go back to their homes? It really depends. So there are some people who know what they're going to find, like in Gaza City, because

there are still some people there. They can let them know if their house, their apartment is still around. And then there's the one who are visiting those locations that I mentioned before that they don't know what they're going to find and the northern part of Gaza is completely completely destroyed. The people have been visiting, we have like some reports from our colleagues who are there and they're coming back to Gaza city because there's nothing left and it's absolutely inhabitable and one of the crucial issues will be access to drinkable water. We have seen talk of, as I mentioned, the surge of aid in the days following the ceasefire. Are you seeing evidence of that? Absolutely. We can see the distribution that are starting and that

are ongoing. We can see that the markets are flooded, that there's goods that you haven't seen before that are now available on the market. And the price yet, wait, still very expensive, but much better than they were. So at the end of the day, the markets are empty again, because people can, some people can finally afford to buy goods. So it's restarting a more or less normal life for in that sense. But again, as we know,

we don't know how long it's gonna last. What is the most urgent need that you're gonna be focusing on in the coming days and weeks? So for us as a medical organization, there was 110,000 people that have been affected, that have been wounded during that war. That needs, for some of them, reconstruction limbs,

access to aid material, crutches, and things that have not been entering so far for them, and of course, post-status as well, that have not been entering. So there's at least, the estimation is 20,000 people who would need of those materials. The World Health Organization has suggested that only half of Gaza's 36 hospitals remain partially operational.

What does, I mean, practically on the ground, what does that look like? So the organization had to put up some field hospital to compensate the number of beds that were missing and so at the moment there's a quite a few numbers of field hospital and the plan is to increase the capacity because there was none in the northern part of Gaza which was like barely accessible and now we expecting the population to move back there. It's highly possible that we are not in the right location anymore. We have to move with the population. So that means that we will have to move our field hospitals as well with the movement

of the population. What are those field hospitals? Are they giant tents? Is that what they are? More or less, yes, for some of them. Some are more like semi-permanent, which makes them very difficult to move. So that's been entering some new ones. For ours, it's a field tent and inflatable tents as well.

Like we can have an operation theater. So we are doing all our consultation and inpatient in those facilities, as well as providing water and generators and electricity. Who is arriving at those hospitals and what sort of care are they urgently looking for? It depends. Our world, we have a pediatric board,

so we're receiving children. And so they have like all the disease that you can expect the children to have in general. And on top of that, due to the very dire conditions, they are like even more sick. So you have all the upper respiratory tract infections, a lot of skin disease due to the lack of access to water and diarrhea as well. So like either for the drinkable water or the water just to be able to take a shower. And do doctors who are there treating those people who are arriving, do they have the supplies necessary to be able to provide the care that those patients are looking for?

It depends on what kind of care. There's also the constraint and the impediment that were imposed by the Israelis that are not lifted yet. So yes, there's more entering. So we have the drugs that we need and that, but there are some material like, for example, we were not allowed to have operating tables, the machine for the sterilization, the scalpels, the scissors, crutches, all of that we are not being able to provide and to enter at the moment. So that's what we're looking for but it's still in negotiation and has to be validated by the

Israelis and that's not the case at the moment. So how are you doing, how are surgeries for example being done if there's an operating table, if the scalpels that you don't have can't be sterilized, how are those surgeries actually taking place? So luckily there were still some things available if the scalpels that you don't have can't be sterilized? How are those surgeries actually taking place? So luckily there were still some things available inside, but that means that we cannot increase the capacity and so in the field hospital. So for example, we're also working in Nasser Hospital,

which is today the biggest hospital remaining in Gaza City. And then we're doing the surgery there, but we are not able to transfer some of the cases in the field hospital, because we cannot increase the capacity in those locations. So that's a limitation of the number of cases that you can see, and then the follow-up of the patient after. Do you have a sense as to when those materials

that you're looking for are going to be available, when they might flow into Gaza? That is a constant discussion with the Israelis that we have since the beginning of the war. So we're hoping if there's progress with the ceasefire that at some point those materials are going to be available again. But yeah, we're trying every day. As this war has dragged on, I mean,

the other issue here is that there are still Israeli hostages that are being held in Gaza. Do we know whether they have any access to medical care at all? We know that we don't have access to them, nor the other organizations. We have never been informed of where they were located, and we have never been requested to provide them any kind of support.

So no, we don't have that information. What are you, aside from the supply of goods coming in, what are you up against in terms of trying to create the infrastructure such that people, you talked about the markets being available, the infrastructure such that people can start to begin thinking about living a normal life? Well, everything is needed today. Like there's a shelter, like you start with the basic needs for the people.

So like they're still needing any kind of shelters. They will move, but they will move to places that when they're still gonna need to have some tents. So we are starting to get them in at the moment. But then there's then we can see the kids on the street, there's no school, they absolutely need to go back to school, they don't know what to do, they're outside. And then the hospitals, as we are moving, as I'm saying, we feel the hospitals are just a patch, you know, like they're not going

to last forever, so we need to start to rebuild all the facilities and we're really looking forward to that. It's going to be semi-permanent at the beginning, the time as well for all the material to come. But as we can see, the devastation of Gaza is going to take decades to be able to rebuild the street. For those who have suffered catastrophic injuries, I mean, do they need to be removed from Gaza? There's been talk, and we've seen this in Canada, of a couple of kids who came to Canada who required care.

Is the sense that those who are in grave danger now is the opportunity perhaps to get them out of Gaza to get that care? Absolutely. So it's dropped drastically at the time then Haifa border was closed. It was much more open at that time and it still need to be validated by the Israelis.

So it's a very slow pace at the moment and we're really hoping that with the reopening of Haifa we're gonna be able to refer more patients outside. There's everything, like there's a dialysis that is not available, there's all the cancer patients, oncology is not available, so it's not just a trauma, but there are some specific surgeries that definitely need to be referred in other countries, but you need on the other side to have the countries to welcome them. It's two ways, it's to be able, we have a waiting list of 10,000 people to be evacuated. But it's on the other side as well that we need to call on the different countries to

open the beds and to welcome the patients in their hospitals. Just before I let you go, you've mentioned children a couple of different times right now and I've heard you say in past that people in Gaza don't feel as though they have a future. What impact do you think, the lasting impact that this war is going to have particularly on children in Gaza? Well, they've seen horrific things. It's not just not being in a house like any people in Gaza today, every people have seen or have somebody who died in their family and might have seen some very horrific images and it's going to have a very lasting print in their memories. So we're trying to scale up the mental health support for the children.

But honestly what we can bring today, it's a drop in the ocean when you consider that the entire population in Gaza is in need of support of mental health today. Amand, thank you very much for this. Take care of yourself. Thank you. Amand Bazarol is the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, MSF in Gaza.

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