JABALIA, Gaza – Inside his partially destroyed home in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, 85-year-old Abdel Mahdi al-Wuheidi sits beside a small fire brewing coffee, staring at what remains of a life, now surrounded by rubble.
Next to him sits his wife, Aziza, also in her 80s, whom he married six decades ago. Despite years of trying, the couple was never able to have children. Today, they live with the five sons of Abdel Mahdi’s late brother, whom he raised and helped marry.
Born in 1940, Abdel Mahdi was only a child when the 1948 Nakba – the mass expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes at the founding of the state of Israel – unfolded. Yet he says that what Palestinians are enduring today, brought on by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, surpasses anything he has ever witnessed.
“We are from Bir al-Saba [Beersheba] … that was our homeland,” he says in a tired voice. The city was captured by Israeli forces in 1948, forcing much of its Palestinian population out. Abdel Mahdi’s sharp memory carries him back to his childhood, living with his parents on their land, among their livestock and property – a normal life, before everything changed.
He remembers heated discussions among families when news spread that Zionist Haganah militias were approaching. The decision was eventually made to leave for Gaza, to the west, with the hope of returning in a few weeks. “We walked for days. We would rest, then continue walking. We never imagined it would become a permanent exile,” he says.
The family initially settled in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood before later moving to Jabalia refugee camp. “We lived in tents. The rain and wind would flood them, the cold was unbearable, then came the scorching heat. There was hunger, exhaustion, long lines for food and water, shared toilets, lice, poor sanitation … painful memories,” he recalls.
Abdel Mahdi worked for years inside Israel in construction, during a period when Palestinian labourers were granted work permits. Together with his brothers, he managed to build homes and buy land, only for the current war to erase everything once again. “We thought we were finally compensating for something after the displacement. But this war destroyed everything completely – no stone, no trees,” he says.
During the latest Israeli war on Gaza, beginning in October 2023, he was forced to flee multiple times: to a UN-run school in Jabalia, then to the Gaza seaport area, and to Deir el-Balah. He recalls Israeli tanks and soldiers storming the school, with chaos, gunfire and screams erupting. “They forced us out of the school. My elderly wife and I leaned on each other to walk. Some people couldn’t get out and were killed there,” he says.
“I wished for death with all my heart,” the octogenarian admits, his eyes filling with tears. “All I wanted was a concrete wall to lean my exhausted back against, but there was nothing. It was unbearable for both the young and the old.”
A small sense of hope came when residents were allowed to return to northern Gaza after the October 2025 ceasefire announcement. “A deep pain took hold of me when I saw Jabalia, where I had lived for decades, turned into endless rubble and destroyed roads,” he says.
Abdel Mahdi insists that what Palestinians are experiencing today bears no resemblance to any previous period of his life. He has lived through the Nakba, the 1956 war, the 1967 war, the Palestinian uprisings, and previous wars on Gaza, yet says none compare. “Back then, the Israelis withdrew from our lands. Today, more than half of Gaza’s land has been seized,” he says.
He expresses deep disappointment with the Arab and international response to Gaza, saying Palestinians have long been left alone to face war, hunger and siege. “History is repeating itself. We were abandoned at every stage and left alone against a ruthless military machine,” he says.
Yet despite the repeated displacement, loss and wars, Abdel Mahdi clings fiercely to the one thing he says the war could not take from him: his connection to the land. “Even if they offered me a palace in New York in exchange for this destroyed house, I would refuse. Those who left long ago never came back. A person should never abandon his homeland. Here I will die, and here I will be buried,” he says firmly.
Source: www.aljazeera.com