“We prefer Gaza’s hell than the paradise of any other country…

KHAN YOUNIS — Life in northern Gaza is desperate – there is no water, no electricity and so much rubble that there’s barely enough space to put up tents.

Yet more than half a million Palestinians have returned to the area over the past week, according to the government there. Most are determined to stay and rebuild – even if US President Donald Trump wants them out of the enclave so he can create a Middle Eastern “riviera.”

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell,” he added. It was the second time in just over a week that Trump said Palestinians should leave Gaza.

His suggestion has sparked criticism across the world – and was met with disbelief and outrage among Gazans.

Amir Karaja told CNN he would “rather eat the rubble” than be forced to leave his homeland.

“We are steadfast here,” Karaja told CNN on Wednesday, as he was working on what remained of his home in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. The building resembles a doll house after the entire front wall collapsed and exposed the insides of the damaged interior.

“This is our land, and we are the honest and true owners of the land. I won’t be displaced. Not (Trump) nor anyone else can uproot us from Gaza,” Karaja said.

Standing in the middle of her heavily damaged home nearby, Iyam Jahjouh told CNN she also won’t consider moving.

“We will not leave our land or homes, despite the great destruction and everything that happened in Gaza, we are here and will remain here,” she said.

The roof and several walls of her modest home have been demolished, leaving Jahjouh with just one room covered with a makeshift roof. Yet in this neighborhood, this house is among the least destroyed.

“Why should I leave my country? You want to send me to Egypt or Jordan? No, we won’t accept it, we will put up a tent and whatever you do, we will not leave our country. We don’t give a damn about Trump’s threats or Netanyahu’s threats,” she said.

Some 70% of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents are already registered by the United Nations as refugees, many of whom are descendants of Palestinians who were displaced in 1948, when some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee their homes during Israel’s creation. They have been barred from returning to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. Arabs refer to the event as the “Nakba” (catastrophe).

The determination to not have that dispossession repeated, no matter the current hardships, was common among the dozens of people CNN spoke to across Gaza on Wednesday and over the past week.

Selling vegetables at a market in Khan Younis, a city that has been heavily damaged by Israeli bombardment, Ahmad Safi said it was “impossible” to transfer people out of Gaza.

“We lived under bombardment for a year and a half. After all this suffering, starvation, bombardment and death, we won’t easily leave Gaza,” he said. “We prefer Gaza’s hell than the paradise of any other country… if we are given all the money of the world we won’t leave this land.”

Awatef Abu Sitta expressed similar sentiments to CNN: “All of our children’s homes have been demolished and our house is half destroyed. Rain comes into the house, cold is coming in, and we will stay whatever happens, even if we stay in the tent, even if they give us castles and villas, we are not leaving our lands.”

Many people across Gaza have been returning to whatever remains of their homes after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect last month.

The Gaza Government Media Office said that some 500,000 displaced Palestinians — almost a quarter of the enclave’s population — had made a journey back to the decimated north in the first 72 hours after Israeli forces began allowing their return last Monday.

Many have celebrated their return home with joy, despite the widespread destruction.

Saleh Al-Sawalha, from Jabalya in northern Gaza, told CNN Palestinians are people who refuse to give up.

“I’ve been displaced 12 times,” he told CNN last week while waiting to make the journey up north. “We’d go to one place, they (Israelis) would tell us it’s going to get shelled. We’d go to another; they say it’s going to get shelled. We were moving from one place to another. We are so, so exhausted. There is nothing like being back in your home. That’s all we want.”

“I will not leave,” he said, in response to the US president’s comments. “Please send this message to Trump: that is the last thought that would cross our mind.”

During the Nakba, many Palestinians were led to believe that their displacement was temporary and that they would be allowed to return home once the war was over. But that never happened.

Speaking last month, Trump suggested that both Jordan and Egypt should house Palestinians from Gaza, saying potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long term.”

On Tuesday, he said that some Palestinians could return to Gaza in the future. He envisioned “the world’s people living” in what he said would be “an international, unbelievable place.” Asked if Palestinians would be living in Gaza, he said: “Palestinians also. Palestinians will live there. Many people will live there.”

Awni Al Wadia, who was forced to flee his home in northern Gaza last year, said that the collective memory of the events of 1948 is one reason why he won’t leave the enclave.

“These comments have been made in the past. In 1967 (the Arab-Israeli war), when they displaced Palestinians, they said it was temporary, only until the situation calms down. And until now, they haven’t returned. They remained displaced,” he told CNN.

Like tens of thousands of others, Al Wadia rushed to return to northern Gaza as soon as it became possible. — CNN